My charming & delightful roommate and I spent a good bit of time this past summer doing adult stuff. No, not that – the boring adult stuff that’s really easy to kick down the road for another day: estate planning.

We’d done some of the necessary work, but there were a lot of details we were overdue in addressing. It also got me to thinking about what kind of planning is needed for modern digital times. I tried to consider as many angles as possible, and started to write them down. As long as they’re written down, I thought I’d share them here in case it helps someone else.

The goal is simple: make it easy for whoever is tasked with sorting out your affairs. Leave them a playbook, be clear about your intentions. Here are the things someone will need to have or know about.

Your Phone

Make sure someone can get into your phone – which means writing down the device pin in a safe but accessible place. Too many pin attempts to unlock devices tend to result in turning them into bricks. This is probably the easiest thing in this list to do – and might be the most critical to making the rest of this work:

• Your phone probably has apps to access financial systems.
• You might have authenticator apps (like Microsoft Authenticator, Google Authenticator, or another of the many available apps) that you will need to verify identity using a code.
• Some systems will text a verification code to the phone – someone may need that to access important info.

Your Computer

Do the same things you would with your phone. These days, a lot of people have their own device (even the kids). Make sure the machine that has access to your playbook, along with other important information, is accessible and can be unlocked.

Electronic Billing and Banking

Most of us by now are conducting some part of our affairs online. That could be utilities, banking, online subscriptions, or anything else involving a username and password. If you’re really doing the right things, you’ve got some multifactor authentication schemes set up. Here’s what you’re going to need to document:

• It might be challenging, but try to inventory the sites on which you do business. Collect the site URL, and the username/password used on the site. Here’s a starter list:
  • Your email
  • Banks and Investments
  • Credit card companies (including the department store cards if you still have them)
  • Health records (things like MyChart or CVS), for health history or medications
  • Utilities
  • Pensions, Insurance
  • Social Security Administration
  • Streaming services and other subscriptions
  • Amazon
• Consider using a password manager – something that can act as a vault for your information. Using solutions like 1Password, LastPass and others, you can store (and in a lot of cases, share) your login information in a location that can sync across your devices. They also have built-in tools to support emergency access, should the need arise.
• I would suggest collecting Account Numbers as well. You may not need them for gaining electronic access, but having account numbers handy and in one place will eliminate confusion.
• Don’t forget the mobile apps  – most of them have credentials as well (and it’s likely that face recognition won’t be an option).

How and where to store it

It’s perfectly fine to collect and store everything in an electronic format, as long as you’re able to do two things with it: print it (so you can include it with your other important documents), and be able to open it up later (choosing a file format that you expect to be supported down the road is important). Some options:

• A text file – a universal format that can be opened in a variety of editors.
• A Word document – it’s a popular format, and the tools are familiar to many.
• A spreadsheet – Excel, Apple Numbers, or something like it will work well for organizing columns of information.
• A PDF – while you may not be able to edit it, most everything will open a PDF for viewing.

You’ll certainly want to keep a paper copy of everything with your other estate planning materials. In addition, I’d suggest having a PDF version of all documents someplace you can access quickly. Sometimes circumstances are urgent (I know this from experience), and knowing right where to look helps.

Keeping some electronic version (PDF or the native files themselves) in a secure online location will also help on the accessibility front (while also providing a means to back things up). This can be iCloud storage, OneDrive, or some other online storage solution that can be appropriately secured.

Another option is to use your password manager – services like 1Password and LastPass support secure notes that can receive and store attachments in a highly encrypted manner.

The Major Online Services

Let’s face it, a lot of our lives are in those mobile computers that we carry around. Not just the phone numbers, it’s also got our notes, reminders, files, photos and videos. The good news is that a lot of those things are synced to cloud locations for recovery later (should something happen to the phone). That is, as long as you’ve prepared for it.

Apple, Google, Facebook, and other big services have features that allow you to designate a “legacy contact” for your information. Some of these things are a little difficult to find, so I’ll offer some links here.

• For Apple, everything is attached to your iCloud Account. You can set up a Legacy Contact by going to Settings > Apple ID > Legacy Contact (here’s a link to documentation).  
• For Google, it’s your Google ID. Set up your Legacy Plan from your profile and going to Data & privacy > Make a plan for your digital legacy (or go to this link once you are logged in with your Google ID).
• For Facebook, define a Legacy Contact that can manage your memorialized account (yes, they actually planned for and support such things). Your contact can write and pin a post, see your past posts, download your content, and a few other operations that are appropriate. Check out these two URLs from the Facebook Help Center for more information.
  • Account Settings > Legacy Contacts
  • About legacy contacts on Facebook

Pro Tip for Facebook/Instagram – take a few minutes to write what you would like your last post to say, and make sure your legacy contact knows where to find it. Nothing like signing off on your own terms with your own words – you can bet I’m going to make you laugh.

The Secret Sauce

The key to making all of this work is making the time and effort to get it done – and keeping it updated. Be sure to have a discussion with or hand over an envelope to those that will need to know where you “buried the treasure” so to speak. If someone is looking for this information in a time of crisis or grief, you’re not going to be of much help.

Make it easy for them, give them a playbook to run. It makes all the difference in the world.