Planned Departure – Leave memories … not a mess

Planned Departure is all about planning well in life so that you leave memories and not a mess!

It is about starting the conversation and answering some important questions such as:

• Is your life plan ready?
• How do you want to plan for your family?
• Offer the best education?
• Or gift them happiness?
• Or hope things will eventually fall in place?
• Have you taken any financial advice?
• Do you have life insurance or critical illness cover?
• Or Do you have a Will in place?
• Have you started the important conversation?
• Such as where all your documents are?
• Or shared your secret recipe?
• Does your family know your assets and investments?
• Or your liabilities!
• Are they aware of important online accounts?
• Can your family find everything they need?
• Even when you are not around?
• Will you leave them CHAOS ? Or Mess?
• Or Will you leave them memories?
• Have you planned for everything? or anything?

Now you can!!

With Planned Departure,

• Organise scattered information in one place.
• Leave clear instructions.
• Put everything in order.
• Ensure everything is there even when you are not.

We can help you avoid the mess

So that you can focus on creating memories.
Planned Departure – Leave memories… not a mess!

Sign up now and start planning.

The Autobituary

In the past, when a loved one died a funeral service would be held followed by a burial service at the local cemetery. Family and close friends would attend both services and each year some would gather round the gravesite in remembrance. The numbers, however, would get less and less as the years passed.

Mourning practices not only vary from culture to culture but also person to person. Where there is no burial service, for example following a cremation, the mourning process is generally much shorter. With the advent of the digital era, however, a new platform is emerging for people to pay their respects.

With the increasing use of social media networks, family and friends will be able to keep the remembrance of the loved ones they have lost going in perpetuity. Facebook will now memorialise a deceased person’s account and other digital media companies are providing similar services.

And with this a new trend is emerging and is attracting a rapidly growing number of followers: Writing your own obituary in the living years.

For as long as they have been in existence newspapers have contained an obituary section that was generally edited by a staff journalist. In the majority of cases, those appearing in this section were celebrities, politicians and other well-known people.

Today, people are beginning to write their own obituaries and having these posted up online when they die. They are compiling their ‘autobituaries’ (as they have been coined) to ensure that the final words on their life are not only accurate, but also express the thanks and thoughts they want to leave behind.

One autobituary that was sent to us recently by a member struck a real chord with us. He wrote, in part, that he supported the notion that people should be able to view his body after he has died in order to pay their respects. He continued: “Unfortunately, there will be no viewing because my wife adamantly refuses my request to prop me up on the sofa with a bottle of Single Malt in my hand so I would appear to my friends in death as I did in life.”

Some of the obituaries we have received are coming from people who are terminally ill and, for them, it is an important part of coming to terms with that fact. They want to ensure they have the final say online about themselves and are remembered in the way they want to be remembered.

For us here at Planned Departure, many of these self-penned obituaries have inspired us to live our lives more fully and not to miss a moment of it.

If you would like to write your own obituary, please create an account on Planned Departure today.

To Will or not to Will?

(DIY)Do-it-yourself may work in various aspects of our lives like plastering your living room or cleaning the dust out of your laptop.
Here are some interesting figures about Wills, DIY wills and the general attitude from the public towards them.

Children and the internet – What you didn’t know

The internet plays a major role in our lives on a day to day basis and that of our children without us realizing how long they spend online each day.

Whilst this might in itself not be a bad thing, the jury is still out on weighing the pros and cons. Key really is for parents to take responsibility of their children in terms of how they engage online.

Here are some facts and figures to show the visual seriousness of this online addiction.

Children and the internet – How safe are they?

No one seems too surprised by the fact that some 7.5 million users in the US alone violate Facebook’s member requirement every single day – simply by being under 13 years of age.

We have reached a stage in our digital era where digital consumers are increasingly starting younger. According to a study by the non-profit organisation, Joan Ganz Cooney Centre, more than two-thirds of 8-year-old children go online each day.

Whilst this might in itself not be a bad thing, the jury is still out on weighing the pros and cons. Key really is for parents to take responsibility of their children in terms of how they engage online.

Certainly this age of super connectivity has some drawbacks – from attention deficit, to lack of face to face engagement – having said that there are numerous positives from the way children can find out about the world around them, gain access to information, share, connect and engage – granted this is a whole new way of doing it but that does not mean it is all bad!

It is interesting to note that books were once considered bad for us – that they may indeed ‘brain wash us’. There are always two sides to any coin and the fact that we are neophobic by nature accounts for why we tend to be suspicious of any change in our lives.

Let’s focus instead on the benefits that digital offers us and ensure we keep our children safe as we would in any environment – familiar or otherwise!

 

Image Source

Digital art in the 21st Century

Van Gogh certainly would not have thought about it and Picasso I feel sure would have agreed had he understood the concept, however art, whether it be digital or etched on canvas, is still, very much art by definition.

Over the years the argument that digital art wasn’t an actual form of art because it was computer generated and had infinite copies without an ‘original’ has pretty much been silenced. As technology has evolved, so too has our views on digital art.

The difference between digital art and any other art form is the fact the artist works mainly with digital technology as an essential part of their art piece – gone are the paint brushes and easels of old.

The first steps towards the evolution of art towards digital started in the 1950’s when a lot of artists and designers started working with mechanical devices and analogue computers.

Bear in mind during those times computers were very expensive. Only research laboratories, universities and large corporations could afford them. Regardless of these constraints, when the computer came into existence that’s when digital art started emerging.

From digital painting to animations, digital photography and 3D models, movies and games, they all come under the category of art. On the plus side they are accessible, on the downside there is no such thing as an original digital art form.

With digital art starting to dominate the art industry, it’s safe to assume that some artists may have numerous art pieces, complete and incomplete that need to be organised and saved securely, especially in the case of something happening to the artist. His friends and family may not know where all these art pieces are or what the artist in question would like to do with them.

As with all digital assets, digital art is yet another facet which needs to be protected, stored and effectively passed on. I can think of nothing worse than an unfinished Rembrandt entombed in the ether for no one to access and enjoy….

Photographic trends made possible because of Digitization

It is possible to take pictures anywhere and everywhere not just because its free, quick and effortless but because we can.

Social media pages and apps like Facebook,Instagram and Snapchat have taken advantage of this and are making billions.

When was the last time you took a picture and shared it with your friends or updated your Whatsapp, Facebook or Twitter display picture?

Its the era for the photographic generation. Agree or Disagree?

 

 

 

Picture trends made possible with Digitization…

In the past, when all we had was film photography, we had to be very selective of the kind of pictures we wanted to take. I’m sure there wouldn’t be half as many ‘selfies’ ‘photo bombs’ or ‘duck pouts’ as there are today. Images have a strong emotional factor, and emotions have a powerful pull on us as human beings.

It wasn’t that long ago that taking a photo involved substantial decision making. With a mere 24 or 36 shots on each roll, the expense limited us from wildly shooting away. Not to mention the actual insertion of the roll, the fact that one ray of sunlight would ruin the film. Then of course there was the cost of developing the film and the time it took to do so.

Now with digital cameras and technology there’s relatively no cost at all and it is immediate – don’t get me started on Polaroid cameras!

Our next evolution came rapidly too. Who would have thought, 15 years ago, that we would be taking quality photos using our phones?

As a matter of fact the digital camera was invented almost 40 years  ago,by an engineer at Eastman Kodak named Steve Sasson. The camera weighed 8 pound and recorded 0.01 megapixel black and white photos to a cassette tape. To images were stored as data on the cassette and played back by displaying the images on a television set. It probably seemed like science fiction back then!

Regardless of which era our photos record and which form they come in they will always be memories which we treasure. They capture time and give our future generations a glimpse of moments we wanted to capture. Whether in black and white, sepia or overexposed, they are very precious.

So the question is, if you misplaced your phone, your computer crashed or your house burned down would you lose all your photos? With our current ease for taking photos we have accumulated a huge visual memory bank which needs to be protected and managed.

Chances are you probably have more than one electronic gadget; mobile phone, computer, tablet, digital camera etc and on all these gadgets you have digital images stored.

It is easier to manage if all your pictures are stored in one place but how do we do that?

The first step…

If you haven’t done this already you can make it easier by setting your camera to the correct date and time. This allows your pictures to automatically be categorised which helps in organising your pictures.

Finding all your pictures…

It’s a good practice to go through all your stored images and delete the ones that are not needed. In fact delete them as soon as you have taken photos you don’t want to keep.

Use the right names and appropriate tags for your various folders. Example image:  20141012_093416 will be hard to place in a folder without viewing the actual image compared to image: Bella’s first school day.

Geo-tagging photos as they’re taken can also be a useful tool for helping to organise your digital pictures in advance.

Import all you pictures to one device, most likely a PC and create various albums based on the tags and names you chose.

Back up all your images onto an external drive but if you want to be safeguarded the ideal back up is via CD’s or DVD’s or in a cloud. Also,protect your images from hackers and identity thieves, switch off automatic backups on your phone or other device and add a watermark to your images.

And remember to protect your photos carefully – the recent picture hacking scandal from iCloud accounts is still fresh in our memories Apple iCloud leak and serves as a cautionary tale that sensitive photos are best stored in encrypted digital vaults.

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Growth rate of the Music Evolution

Music distribution has evolved so drastically over the last few decades that we don’t have to glance too far back to see the changes. It wasn’t that long ago cassette tapes seemed such cool ways of transporting our music, certainly less clunky than their vinyl cousins. Then the CD turned that on its head, very swiftly followed by digital music.

Advanced Directives : Being in control of your destiny continued …

Following on from last two week’s blog relating to the value of setting up an Advanced Directive, it is worth noting the 1990 Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) in the United States, which encourages everyone to decide now about the types and extent of medical care they want to accept or refuse if they become unable to make those decisions due to illness.

Taking responsibility for this type of information is not just about giving yourself more peace of mind, it also helps those closest to you should the unforeseen strike and breaks down the communication barriers between the patient, doctors and loved ones. It also serves as a proactive tool which prompts people to think about difficult topics and guides them once they have identified how best they wish to be treated.

Nowadays health care institutions are required to ask patients if they have an Advance Directive document or would like to fill one out, and in the UK there is also the Mental Capacity Act 2005 which is designed to protect people who can’t make decisions for themselves or lack the mental capacity to do so.

An Advance Directive tends to maximise the independence and comfort of patients and makes it easier for family members to know exactly what you would like without doubting or putting themselves in an awkward position.

Each form is different, clearly influenced by the individual and their preferences, based on religion, cultures and backgrounds.

In 2007 a woman in Canada gave birth to sextuplets which led to a battle between religion and medicine, between the children’s right to life and their parents’ right to practise their religious beliefs. Two of the babies, born 15 weeks early, died. The parents, who are both Jehovah’s Witnesses, refused to allow blood transfusions, in accordance with their faith, and three of the babies were taken into custody by social workers so they could be given the treatment.

Custody has now been returned to the parents, who have not been named, but they are angry at the intervention and have gone to court to prevent officials stepping in again. Read more …

All these factors are taken into consideration in creating an effective document tailored by the individual. We are all different and as such no two documents can be the same. Taking the time to discuss your preferences helps you and those around you.

In planning ahead, it’s easier to determine the medical care you prefer, avoid unnecessary stress, pain and spare your loved ones and caregivers the decision making during moments of crisis. You also make it easier and avoid the misunderstanding or disagreements about the choices you would want people to make on your behalf.

Speak to your doctor or nurse today.

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