When You Only Have a Few Months to Live

Paul Kalanithi was a resident in neurosurgery at Stanford when he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. He described a night in bed where his wife, Lucy, had asked him what he was most afraid or sad about. His response was simple: “Leaving you.”

What you’re really afraid of

You might understand that feeling. You’ve never lived like a millionaire, but that’s never bothered you before. Your life has been filled with people whom you love, and that has always mattered more than money. But now you’ve been told you only have a few months to live. You’re dying and you’re scared. But you know you’re not actually scared of dying.

You can’t stop thinking about what happens to the people you love when you’re gone. There’s guilt because you’re leaving them with barely any money. Maybe you’ve had to empty out your retirement account too soon or cashed out your investments for an emergency.

Now that you have limited time on Earth, your first plan of action is to become a workhorse to make as much money as possible, as quickly as possible. After all, you need to make sure the people you care most about in the world are taken care of after you’re gone. The time you have isn’t enough to make a big financial difference, but that’s okay. Nobody expects you to change your financial position overnight.

Your absence at the kitchen table

After you’re gone, your husband or wife will sit at the kitchen table without you. Their elbows will rest on the table as they shuffle through the usual monthly bills in front of them: the rent or mortgage, groceries, electricity, insurance and everything else that needs paying. Silence is the biggest difference. Before, you’d sit together, one with the statements and the other with the calculator. Now, they’re alone adding up what money is coming in and what needs to go out.

The first thing they’ll notice is that the household income has automatically shrunk. Once a spouse dies, two Social Security checks become one. Your spouse generally keeps the larger of the two. If you had been working up until your final moments, that paycheck simply stops.

What about your children? If they are under 18, they can generally receive benefits based on your record. As a widow or widower, your spouse can also qualify at any age if your child is under 16 or disabled. Unless your grown children have a disability that began before turning 22, they can’t claim any benefits. The reality for many in your position who don’t meet those criteria is that your checks can simply stop coming once you die.

To understand who qualifies and estimate what the numbers look like for your specific situation, you can read our guide on Social Security survivor benefits.

In a rough comparison using 2025 figures, the estimated Social Security average for a widow or widower living alone is $1,832 per month. According to the Elder Index from UMass Boston, a bare-bones budget for a single person in good health is $2,162 a month if they own their home outright and $2,836 a month if they are renting.

From our calculations, this leaves a monthly shortfall of $330 for a homeowner or about $1,000 for someone who is renting when you consider Social Security as the sole household income. Keep in mind that this bare-bones budget only covers the basics. We’re not considering dinners out, vacations, gifts, savings or any long-term care.

Crunching the numbers, you have every right to fear the moment you’re no longer at the kitchen table together. But perhaps there’s some comfort in knowing that your fear isn’t new. In 1938, a government advisory council studied this exact issue and wrote: “A haunting fear in the minds of many older men is the possibility, and frequently, the probability, that their widow will be in need after their death.” This realization is what prompted lawmakers to add survivor benefits to the law in 1939.

What doesn’t follow them

The fear of leaving a legacy of debt is powerful. It’s so powerful that oftentimes it overshadows how debts are legally handled.

When Brandeis sociology professor Morrie Schwartz was dying of ALS in 1995, his former student Mitch Albom remembered the immense medical debt that loomed over the family. Albom feared his mentor’s family may need to sell their home in order to pay the debt, which led to him writing Tuesdays with Morrie in an effort to help.

Many of the burdens you think will fall on them won’t. Imagine them opening up a bill that has your name on it. That’s not their debt to pay, usually.

As a general rule, family members aren’t personally responsible for a deceased relative’s debts. How it works is that these debts belong to your estate, which is made up of the assets you leave behind. If that money in the estate runs out before the bills are paid, any remaining debt generally goes unpaid.

There are some exceptions, though. For example, if someone signed an agreement promising to repay a loan if you didn’t, they are still responsible for paying it back. The same applies to joint account holders. If you and your spouse jointly signed to open a credit card account, any debt becomes their responsibility after you’re gone. This doesn’t apply if it’s your credit card and your spouse is an authorized user who merely carries a card on your account.

Location also plays a role. In community property states like Texas or California, a surviving spouse can share certain debts from the marriage. Laws in some states also hold a spouse responsible for specific necessary costs, healthcare being one of the main expenses.

The threat of your family needing to cover your debts might have you wondering whether you should file for bankruptcy. If you have few assets to leave behind, filing for bankruptcy might change very little for your family. Although it can wipe away medical bills and credit cards, those are generally the debts that go unpaid anyway when an estate is out of money. It’s still worth asking a lawyer or legal aid.

What about your car or mortgage? Generally speaking, nobody inherits those loans if they didn’t co-sign for them. A car loan or mortgage is tied to the car or the house. If keeping the house or car becomes a burden after you’re gone, you can tell them that they can give it up. That doesn’t mean handing back the house or car keys to the lender. Your home or vehicle may be worth more than the remaining loan balance. They can sell it. Just be aware that if someone else co-signed the loan, they could still owe money if the sale doesn’t cover the full balance.

Giving your family permission to move on can go beyond the financial. Dying of ovarian cancer, children’s author Amy Krouse Rosenthal chose to release her loved ones from the emotional debt of her passing. In a March 2017 New York Times essay titled “You May Want to Marry My Husband,” she publicly announced her terminal illness and openly sought a new partner for her husband.

What you can still do

You might not be able to leave money behind, but you can do some things that will make life easier for the people you love. One of the hardest things to do might be sitting down with your husband or wife and explaining the situation.

Before sitting down to have this conversation, you need to already know what to say. You need to explain your prognosis, the money you owe, where most of your money is and what they might have to deal with once you’re gone. Perhaps you’ve been putting off this talk because you know it will upset them. But until you do, you will have to carry this heavy dread alone.

If you don’t know how to initiate this conversation, you can ask for help. The National Cancer Institute recommends arranging a family meeting with a leader from your faith community or a medical social worker to help guide this difficult conversation.

Once you’ve had this conversation, you can start preparing a place for the things they’ll need to find after you’re gone. The National Institute on Aging suggests putting important documents in a dresser drawer or a desk. These could be things like insurance policies, income sources, bank accounts, your will and records of debts and mortgages. Add your digital passwords and the latest beneficiary forms too. Then tell someone you trust exactly where they can find this information when the time comes. This could be your spouse, an adult child or a lawyer.

If you own a property, you could also sit down with your spouse and go through the deed together. Check if the deed includes rights of survivorship or whether your state allows a transfer-on-death deed. Understanding this will help you understand what happens to your home after you die. This is especially useful if you don’t have thousands of dollars for a living trust to keep your home out of probate.

Another thing you can do is find the paperwork that determines who receives your life insurance and retirement savings. The person named as a beneficiary for your life insurance and retirement accounts generally receives the money, regardless of what your will says. It doesn’t cost anything to change these forms, so it’s worth checking them while you still can.

You don’t want to skip this step. A DuPont employee named William Kennedy had put his wife, Liv, on his savings plan form in 1974. The couple divorced in 1994, but her name was never taken off the form despite having a decree that said she gave up any claim to his retirement plans. When he died in 2001, DuPont paid approximately $400,000 to Liv. Kennedy’s daughter, who was running his estate, sued, but in 2009 the Supreme Court sided with DuPont.

What if you don’t have a life insurance policy? If you’re still relatively healthy and someone relies on you financially, it’s worth taking a look. If you’re already very sick, buying a new individual life insurance policy is often too difficult or heavily capped, but you should still check whether you already have basic group life insurance through a union or current job. Be sure to look closely at your benefits paperwork to confirm you don’t only have accidental death coverage (AD&D), which wouldn’t pay for a medical illness.

You can also make one final conversation easier for your family by telling them what you want for your funeral. If you want a simple farewell, tell your family so that they don’t overspend out of grief. You can make all the arrangements so that your family doesn’t need to plan it while grieving you.

You also need to acknowledge that facing a terminal illness is heavy, and it’s only natural to feel incredibly low some days. You don’t need to carry this feeling by yourself. A hospital social worker or doctor can connect you with support groups and phone services to help you feel less alone when you’re struggling with your diagnosis. You can also call or text 988, the free, confidential national crisis line, at any time of day or night.

There’s still time

It might not always be easy to take time away from work to be with the people you love. Perhaps you need to take unpaid days off to see your family. Maybe you need to pay for an expensive flight or a hotel in order to visit your loved ones.

Spending that money might make you feel guilty because you’re wondering whether you should save it for the people who will need it after you’re gone. Money can matter a lot, especially if your family has very little to fall back on. You also have limited time to spend with them.

In early 2006, Danny Perasa, a Brooklyn off-track betting clerk, was dying of pancreatic cancer. For years, he had left his wife, Annie, a note on the kitchen table with the weather and when he’d call. Later, he became too ill to travel to the StoryCorps booth. That’s when the audio project came to his home to record one last time. Danny died on February 24, 2006, at the age of 67.

In that final home recording, the couple spent their time discussing what would happen after his passing. Danny had openly spoken about what he hoped for Annie’s life after he was gone. He encouraged her to find joy again, even if that meant marrying someone else down the road.

His words for what he had left to give to her were: “a poor gift, and it’s myself.”

Sources

• Social Security Administration, 2025 Cost-of-Living Adjustment fact sheet, for the estimated average check for a widow or widower: ssa.gov; and the 1938 Advisory Council's final report, for the "haunting fear" quote and the 1939 law: ssa.gov
• James Mak, "What It Takes to Age in Place in Hawaiʻi," University of Hawaiʻi Economic Research Organization (October 2026), Table 1, for the national Elder Index budgets from UMass Boston for 2025: uhero.hawaii.edu
• Federal Trade Commission, "Debts and Deceased Relatives," for who owes a debt after a death, co-signers, joint accounts and community property states: consumer.ftc.gov; and "Planning Your Own Funeral," for telling your family what you want: consumer.ftc.gov
• National Institutes of Health: National Cancer Institute, "Advance Directives," for a family meeting with a social worker or someone from your faith community: cancer.gov; and National Institute on Aging, "Getting Your Affairs in Order Checklist," for the papers to gather and where to keep them: nia.nih.gov
• FINRA, "Investment Accounts," for why the person named on a beneficiary form usually gets the money, whatever the will says: finra.org
• U.S. Supreme Court, Kennedy v. Plan Administrator for DuPont Savings and Investment Plan (2009), for William Kennedy's savings plan form: law.cornell.edu
• Paul Kalanithi, "To have a child?", Stanford Medicine magazine, from When Breath Becomes Air, for Lucy's question and his answer: stanmed.stanford.edu
• Library of Congress, "25 Years Later, Tuesdays with Morrie Still Resonates" (2022), for Morrie Schwartz and why Mitch Albom wrote the book: blogs.loc.gov
• NPR, StoryCorps: Danny and Annie Perasa (August 2021), for Danny's notes, his hopes for Annie and his words: npr.org; and the report on Amy Krouse Rosenthal's death (March 2017), for her essay: npr.org
• Arcanomy calculation: the monthly gap between Social Security's estimated average for a widow or widower ($1,832) and the Elder Index budget for one older person ($2,162 owning a home outright, $2,836 renting).