Elderly man died during a 10-hour wait for an ambulance - Sarah Coles

And in the midst of their grief, they’re wading through the administrative nightmare that hits whenever someone passes away.

My friend is a financial expert, so they had made a huge number of very sensible preparations that will make life far more straightforward in the months to come.

Before he fell ill, they had drawn up a lasting power of attorney for health and a second one for finances, so that when his illness left him unable to make decisions, his children were able to arrange care and pay for it.

The impact of this is profound. For the cost of a lawyer drawing up the documents, and £82 to register each of them, it has saved them a huge amount of angst, frustration, and additional expense.

He also had an up-to-date will, so the family know his wishes, and he kept a register of assets listing all his accounts and pensions. Both of these will make an enormous difference.

I know people who have died without either, and while they felt they didn’t have complex enough finances to bother, it made the whole process far more complicated and stressful than it needed to be.

But while my friend made sure his dad had all of these things in place, he now finds himself mired in a whole host of decisions that nobody had thought to prepare for.

And while some of these things are very minor, others have bigger financial implications.

It means that in addition to covering off the financial practicalities while we’re in good health, we need to leave instructions for our loved ones to help them through this process.

We need a plan for what’s known as ‘chattles’ – which is essentially all the things that can generally be moved around and weren’t bought as investments.

Talk to people about anything specific they would like, and make a list of them in a ‘letter of wishes’ you keep with your will. Be really clear in your wording – you’d be astonished at the legal wrangling over something as simple as someone saying their ‘favourite ring’ should go to their ‘favourite daughter’.

For everything left over, you can specify that your family can go through these things together, or nominate a single family member to make decisions, and then send the rest to a charity shop.

The best option will depend on the dynamics of your family, so it may help to ask them what they’d prefer to do in advance.

While some families will baulk at the idea of everyone picking over your belongings, others will worry that leaving one person in charge will mean sentimental items end up as landfill.

We also need to make decisions about the funeral. Some people will have bought a funeral plan, or set aside a specific sum to cover the cost. This is a useful start, and it’s vital to leave details of this alongside your will, but it doesn’t end there.

There are choices to make around whether you opt for a cremation or burial, where you would like services to take place, and who you want to be invited.

All of these have profound financial implications, because a simple cremation and wake in the village hall for a handful of friends costs a fraction of a burial and hotel reception for a hundred people.

When you’re leaving instructions, consider the cost, so you don’t fall into the trap of being so specific that it ends up causing financial difficulties.

If you really don’t care, but don’t want to leave them in the dark searching for the right answer, specifically request the most cost-effective option.

Other decisions are less financially sensitive, but someone needs to make them, and it will either be you choosing now, or your loved ones worrying about it later.

This includes religious or spiritual aspects of the service, any music or readings and who should give them, whether you want family members to be pallbearers, whether you want flowers or donations to charity – and which charity.

In many cases, people find themselves fretting in a funeral parlour over the specific handles they want on a casket, with no idea of what might possibly constitute the right answer.

These things seem unimportant, and when compared to big things like wills, they are.

However, if you overlook them, you’ll leave your family with indecision and possible disagreement at the worst possible time, so it’s worth dotting all the i’s and crossing all the t’s plenty of time in advance.

That way they can spend the time focusing on what’s important, without having to fret about the details.

Running on empty by November

Bank of England figures this week revealed that relentless inflation left millions of us financially exhausted by November.

We borrowed another £1.5bn during the month, the lion’s share of which was on credit cards (£1.2bn).

It means card borrowing is up 12.2 per cent in a year – the fastest rate of growth of any time in the past decade.

This is perhaps understandable in the run up to Christmas, but raises the risk that people are building unmanageable debts.

We’re plundering our easy access savings too, eating into £5.2bn of the cash that was earning no interest – which is likely to include money sitting in current accounts.

We also withdrew £1.6bn from easy access accounts paying interest and £0.3bn from NS&I.

This will include a significant chunk of cash that some people were able to build up during the pandemic. And while it has made an enormous difference to have these savings to fall back on, when it runs dry, it’ll leave people with incredibly difficult decisions – and no safety net.

However, the burden of price rises hasn’t fallen equally. Those on higher incomes – who tend to have more savings and more wiggle room in their budgets – still have the flexibility to save.

It means some of this cash has been withdrawn and moved into fixed rate savings to take advantage while rates were particularly high. October had seen record moves into fixed savings, and November saw another £10bn tied up for longer periods.

It was brilliant timing, because rates had been pushed up in the aftermath of the mini-budget, and the average new fixed rate was 3.27 per cent.

Sarah Coles is a senior personal finance analyst and podcast host for Switch Your Money On Hargreaves Lansdown