It may sound morbid, but it’s true: if you’re working on getting your personal finances in order, it’s time to make a will. And every time your personal finances go through a major change, you need to update your will. If you buy a new house, if you have a child, if you pay off all your debt (and that does include mortgages and student loans) — your personal finances are the key constraint to what sort of documents you need to protect your estate.

I’ve heard people — especially young people — ask what a will has to do with personal finances. Odds are that you’re not entirely alone in life: you may be married, have parents, siblings, children, none of whom are going to know where to start tying up your affairs. Furthermore, depending on what you plan to do with your assets in the long run, personal finance and estate planning go hand in hand. If you plan to help out specific family members — usually children, but the laws allow for other relatives as well — you may want to consider setting up a trust or other vehicle to reduce taxes or other personal finance issues.

Having a conversation about estate planning can feel a bit strange — after all, most personal finance gurus tell you to focus on earning money so that you can enjoy life, not think about everything that can go wrong. But talking with your loved ones about how you want to handle your estate is a good first step. You may also want to talk to a financial planner or a lawyer — the laws involved are fairly complicated. Even if you feel competent in doing your own taxes, you may want professional help for estate planning.

There are some issues to consider when planning your estate, beyond how you choose to handle your assets. Decisions that are going to affect your finances, such as your health care and which family members should receive power of attorney if something happens to you, should also be considered. Think about a situation in which you were temporarily incapacitated: do you want a judge to pick one of your relatives to handle your finances, or do you want to pick that individual? If you care, you should take care of that issue sooner rather than later.

I know that the entire thought of planning in the extreme long-term seems morbid at best, but it’s worth taking care of in the near future. And there are ways to make long-term planning pay off in the short-term, if you’re willing to investigate your options.