Here's How You Can Organize Your Digital Life - Perhaps the Single Best Advice I Can Give (Week 12)

 

If you’re over the age of 50, I’m guessing you now realize how much stuff you have accumulated that your kids will never want.  If you are under the age of 50, you’ve probably looked at some of your parents’ stuff and silently hoped that they would get rid of it at some point so you won’t have to do it later.  In our household it’s the sports memorabilia that I’ve collected over the years and the silver that has been passed down in my wife’s family and now all is proudly displayed (but rarely used) in our living room.  Let’s have some fun with this topic.  Add into the comments below one item you have that you know your kids don’t want.  

The HOF plaque the Cardinals gave to Lou Brock

Just some of my wife's family silver

Getting rid of tangible things when a loved one dies might be a hassle, but it’s relatively easy.  In actuality, my kids will gladly take my sports memorabilia and my wife’s silver, but they will keep it only as long as it takes for them to figure out how best to turn it all into cash.  But what about the things they can’t find in an attic?  Things that need an online password or a combination or a pin number to access.  Do you have a plan for those things?  Let’s just start with your phone.  Stop for a moment and think about all of the things that are stored on this little device.  You probably have all of your important contacts, passwords for your financial accounts as well as years of pictures and videos.  But no one will be able to access any of that if they don’t know the passcode for your phone.  If you have not personally had to deal with sorting through the financial affairs and digital life of someone that has died, you likely know someone that has.  If someone dies without leaving behind a road map as to where all of the assets are, it can be a nightmare trying to make sense of things.  The best outcome under such circumstances is that your heirs just waste a bunch of time trying to track everything down.  The worst outcome is that valuable assets that are needed to provide income are either misplaced for a period of time or never found at all.

 

Fortunately, there is a solution for this potential plan that far too few have heard of.  It’s called Everplans and everyone should have one.  Everplans.com is a website that makes it simple to document and organize your digital life.

 No matter what you think about this blog, do yourself a favor and go to Everplans.com and start your own plan.  If you stop to think about this task, it likely seems very daunting.  Between your bank accounts, financial accounts, retirement accounts, credit cards, mortgage, car loans, insurance policies, etc., that’s a lot to document.  And then there are wills, health directives, burial instructions…. the list goes on and on.  But here is the good news.  Everplans makes it easy.  It will walk you through this process step by step.  It even gives you a place to store Grandma’s famous chocolate pecan pie recipe or leave final thoughts for your family.  One of the first things you do with your Everplan is to designate deputies that have the ability to access your information.  You can decide if a particular deputy can access everything now or after you die.  For example, I made my wife a deputy that can access everything right now, thereby making Everplan our shared digital vault.  My brother is my other deputy.  Once Everplans has proper notification of my death, he will be given access to my Everplan.

I have to warn you that while Everplans is really easy to use, it is still a time-consuming task.  Once you start, you will begin to realize just how much stuff you need to document.  And you are never really done because things change.  If you don’t keep it up to date, your deputies will find an incomplete roadmap.  On the day after I retired, the first thing I did was to go to my Everplan and make sure everything was up to date.  I was a bit surprised as to how much had changed in a short amount of time.  But once I was done it was like a tremendous weight had been lifted.  I hope no one has to access my Everplan for a long time, but it’s reassuring to know that if something does happen to me, my family will know what to do and where everything is.

I’ll be sharing a lot of advice in this blog, but if you only follow one suggestion, make it this one.  You won’t be around for your family to thank you, but they most certainly will.