On Sunday, my husband and I sat down and went over our finances. Normally this is his lane, but since he'll be gone he's turning the reins over to me. He showed me how the computer program works and we talked about what we're going to do with his extra entitlements. In the course of discussing our day-to-day finances, I asked my husband what he would suggest I do if I did suddenly end up with SGLI money.
We had a good talk about a couple different things I could do with such a large sum of money, and he pointed me in the direction of financial services and planners who could help me if I found myself in that situation. I'm glad we discussed this, because I would have no idea what the best strategy would be. And I certainly wouldn't want to have to figure it all out right in the middle of my grief.
After our conversation, I got to thinking. In a sick way, we military families are lucky that we're forced to talk about things like this. Because of the nature of our lives, we have to know some pretty morbid things, like our spouse's burial wishes or what to do with SGLI money. We also have to constantly update our wills and childcare plans. We periodically have to have these hard discussions, discussions that I am certain most other couples in our age range don't have very often or at all. But this is a good thing. This helps us prepare for the worst. Our civilian friends can die too, in car accidents or tragedies, and their spouses might be left with many unanswered questions and a mess to sort through. But because my husband deploys, I know where he wants to be buried, what I should do with life insurance money, and, in my relatively unique case, whether I will continue with fertility treatments if something happened to him this year.
I'm glad our lifestyle gives us the opportunity to have these hard conversations.
