I saw this yesterday, and thought I would share it with you all. I have done many of these things, prompted by my heart attack in 2019, including completing my will, and power attorney for finances and health care. Still, I will review these lists, and see if there are some items that I may have missed.
On YouTube yesterday, I ran across a video that a man made for release after his death. In his case, he had an active YouTube account, and he knew he was dying, so he prepared for that eventuality.
One thing is sure: We will all die. It is a good thing to prepare for that day. And this isn’t just for old people!
One more thing: Review your plans regularly. It’s important to review your plans at least once each year and when any major life event occurs, like a divorce, move, or major change in your health.
From an X post by @NoFilterSkin
Planning for your death feels weird and morbid. But you know what’s actually morbid? Leaving your family to play detective while they’re grieving. If you died tomorrow, could your family actually ACCESS anything? Here’s the checklist nobody wants to make, but everyone needs:
Money Stuff You Need Documented:
Every bank account you have + login info
Investment accounts
Any debt (mortgage, car loans, credit cards)
Life insurance policy details
Where you keep your tax returns
Venmo/PayPal/CashApp accounts
Crypto wallets + recovery phrases
Who owes you money
Automatic payments that need canceling
Health Information:
Insurance cards + policy numbers
Current medications you take
Known allergies
Chronic conditions
Your doctors’ contact info
Preferred hospital
Pharmacy details
Medical records
Do you want to be an organ donor?
End-of-life care preferences
Your Entire Digital Life:
Phone passcode
Computer password
Email accounts + passwords
Social media accounts
iCloud/Google account access
Password manager master password
Two-factor authentication backup codes
Any online businesses you run
The Legal Stuff:
Birth certificate location
Social security card
Passport
Marriage/divorce papers
Your actual WILL (get one!)
Trust documents (if you have assets)
Power of attorney designation
Healthcare proxy
Living will / advance directives
Custody papers for kids
Things You Own:
Car titles + registration
Home deed/mortgage info
Rental property documents
Storage unit locations + keys
Safe deposit box
Valuable collections (with photos)
Jewelry appraisals
Where you hide cash (yes, really)
Anything worth over $1,000
The Day-to-Day Stuff:
All your monthly bills + due dates
Utility account numbers
WiFi password
Security system codes
Where you keep spare keys
Pet care instructions + vet info
Kids’ school contacts
Babysitter/daycare info
Employer HR contact
The Uncomfortable Stuff:
Burial or cremation preference
Funeral wishes (or no funeral?)
Who should speak at your service
What to do with your ashes
Who gets your sentimental items
Letters you want read to specific people
Who should NOT be contacted
What happens to your pets
Your social media legacy
Debts you haven’t told anyone about
I put this off for YEARS because “I’m too young” and “I’ll do it later.”
Then I spent 5 nights in the hospital wondering how much my family would have to scramble if something happened to me.
Never again.
Stella's Place 
Thank You Stella !
Before dear hubby died, he had refused to do ANYTHING because he insisted I would die 1st.
No will, no trust, no burial plots. I had to find somewhere to bury him, which surprisingly was difficult because many cemeteries are restricted to town residents &/or full. I did not know his passwords on accounts. I love him dearly, but it made my life hell. I was left with a complete overwhelming mess that took me 11 months & over $10,000 to a (what turned out to be lousy) lawyer to straighten out. The stress I was put under was totally unnecessary. I had doctors & medical companies threatening me with collection agencies. He died right around Memorial Day. I even had a hard time finding flowers – forget about a restaurant for the mercy meal.
The other big part of straightening things out was that Fidelity was in charge of the pension & life insurance for his employer. They are the most incompetent group of people on the planet. McDonald’s workers are 50 times better than Fidelity. Even the next year they screwed up my finances & the IRS got involved & I had to pay more taxes. STAY AWAY from FIDELITY.
Do NOT assume you know the laws in your state. The state where I am in now I really like, but the laws are different than the state where I came from.
Know your insurance benefits & the laws for hospitalization coverage. Dear hubby wanted to live to a natural death according to our religion. The supposedly Catholic hospital where he was wanted to put him in hospice which would not have been able to give him the testing and fluid electrolyte IV’s needed to keep him alive. He would have died in 1-3 days versus the 5+ weeks he did live (& he was talking & lucid the whole time). I had to agree to pay for his room at a rate of $3500-$4000 per day, which of course I did. I did not care if I needed to take a 2nd mortgage or sell the house – it would not have mattered. Luckily Dear Hubby was very highly thought of where he worked, & the people there donated their vacation time to him, so he would have full benefits (otherwise cut in half) & be “on vacation” for the time he was in the hospital.
People should not be forced to die in days because there is no place for them to go that they can afford where they can get basic testing & hydration, when if received they can live for months. I really want to do something to start a ‘hospice’ like that where people can get what they need, but multiple laws must be changed to do so.
Do everything you can think of ahead of time, Spend the time NOW to find a GOOD lawyer & GOOD financial advisor.
If it was not for a couple of wonderful friends, I would have completely fallen apart under the physical & financial strain added onto the emotional strain of losing my best friend of 41 years & the love of my life. At times I was under so much stress, I thought I was going to literally pop a blood vessel the headaches & chest pain were so bad.
SAVE YOURSELF & YOUR LOVED ONES THE ADDITIONAL PAIN
START DOING IT TODAY.
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I’m so sorry that it was so difficult for you. I know what it was like for me when my parents died and they had taken care of almost all the details.
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Thank you for sharing this God and Country. I know it is not easy to share such difficult moments. But your personal experience and Stella’s help bring to live what survivors must face.
It is a gift to those you love to take care of matters like this.
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Thank you, thank you, thank you. This is so helpful. I have done a lot of this and have been thinking I need to update my will. But, there are other things I need to do and this list is great. There are things on this list I had not even thought of.
My mother died about 20 years ago and my father asked me to take care of the funeral arrangements. He also told me to make them for him, too, at the same time. He had cancer and we knew he was on borrowed time. They had already downsized their home and belongings which was very helpful. And, having their funeral arrangements already set made my life easier when the time came. Daddy died a year after Mama.
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We did most of this last year. In Tennessee it’s a lot easier for your beneficiaries, especially if you are a property owner, if you have a trust instead of a will. I think it cost us only about $500 more to do that, and our sons will not have to go through probate court, which takes a year, to sell our house, among other things.
I’d always thought only wealthy people set up a trust. I was wrong. There will be a lot of benefits to our sons, and especially to the executor of the estate. Certainly worth the money in this state.
One thing I did learn, laws are really different in each state. Find an attorney who specializes in estate planning and is recommended by people you trust. This really helped us. Our daughter in law is an executive banker in wealth management, and she was most helpful to us.
Our attorneys provided us with forms regarding disposition of personal items. This isn’t really included in the trust, but we can write it out and include it with the trust documents, as well as give those named their own copies.
Finally, I was a little surprised at the advanced healthcare directive. You have to make more choices than you’ve thought about, at least in Tennessee. To my surprise, some of them were quite difficult, which I was not totally prepared for.
For example, suppose I get Alzheimer’s, or terminal cancer, or like my brother, ALS. Well, I don’t want to be artificially kept alive. But that’s not what you need to tell healthcare officials to help them execute your choices. Food, water, medications? A lot more involved than just whether or not you want CPR. For example, when I completed my AHD, I was about to undergo a nephrectomy. That’s a serious surgery, but my prognosis was good. I wanted CPR if for some reason things went bad during surgery. But if I am in the end stages of a terminal disease, I don’t.
As a Catholic, my first step was a meeting with my priest, to be very sure my wishes were as compliant with Catholic doctrine as I thought they were. My second was a deeper conversation with the attorney, asking her about these, and other scenarios. The solution for me, at the attorney’s suggestion, was leaving some of those choices blank, to be determined in the moment by my designated representative. This is legal in Tennessee, and as I have several representatives I would absolutely trust to execute my choices, even though they don’t exactly agree on them, it was best for me.
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P.S. I have that book, I’m Dead, Now What. Highly recommended and gifted to me by the banker DIL.
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I am not a lawyer, nor would I want to be one, but something to consider if you don’t know, or can’t necessarily “afford” one. There are prepaid legal plans available for somewhere in the range of $25-$30/month. They may not be the top of their class, but I would argue that you can spend less than $300 in a years time and get most things well set up with one of these attorneys.
The other thing to do (your state may be different) is to make sure any beneficiary designations you have already made are still good. My FIL had hs brother listed as a beneficiary on a couple things and his brother passed away 10 years before FIL did. This pertains to bank accounts, insurance policies of all types, and any retirement accounts you might have. If you still have a mortgage, make sure that’s all up-to-date.
The last thing I’ll say is this – make sure you have your final wishes laid out as Miss Stella mentioned. You also need to make sure that you’ve got the expense taken care of. I sell life insurance and do a fair amount of what is called Final Expense. Part of the reason I do is because I see someone every day who is setting up a GoFundMe for funeral expenses. IIRC, in 2023, there were over 120,000 accounts set up on GFM just for this. No one wants that to be their legacy.
For those unaware, an “average” traditional funeral and burial can easily cost $15,000 or more. When my mother passed away over 30 years ago, the cost for the funeral alone was $6500. That didn’t include the plot or headstone or any of that other stuff that’s been mentioned. When my Dad’s last wife passed, her cremation service was over $7000. Talk about this stuff now.
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Have you got any idea about what to do to leave one’s portion of a ranch in Texas to a 1st cousin once removed? A current dilemma for moi, as I’m in LA with their propensity to sue for anything. Not covered in trust, yet, and I’m sitting on a target as it were.
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I got nothing here. I would either look for a Trust Attorney in the general area of the property, or go with one of those prepaid plans and see what they tell you. My first forever wife was the attorney who taught me what it meant when they said that lawyers “practice” law. I’ve been gun-shy ever since. 😉
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Louisiana still runs under a bunch of French crap – talk about a PITA. We, too, have had to set up a trust simply to avoid excess attorney involvement and taxes. My mother died without a will (and under the laws of usufruct after my dad’s death – I’m not even going into it -French) and it took a full year of constant work to iron that mess out. And I’m not sure I handled ANY of it correctly. Thank God we DID have access to her funds through my little brother – he was on her accounts from back in the days when he was the last one at home.
We were very fortunate to have her lucid in the end and she made her own decisions and signed her own DNR. Very, very tough time for everyone left behind – and it’s all a guess when one hasn’t set up any guidelines at least for the family.
All that to say I have work to do in other of the mentioned list points above!
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