A note on this article.
My Lasts shares general guidance to help you plan with confidence. It isn't legal, financial, or medical advice. For decisions about wills, estates, taxes, or health, please consult a qualified professional where you live.
Digital estate planning sounds like a big project. In practice, it's a series of small, specific decisions — and most people can get through the essentials in under an hour.
Use this checklist to organize what matters, one item at a time.
1. Primary Email Accounts
Your email is often the master key to everything else — password resets, bank alerts, subscription confirmations. List every email address you actively use, starting with the one most accounts are tied to.
2. Financial Accounts
Banking, investment, and retirement accounts. You don't need to record every balance — just the institutions and account types, so your family knows where to look.
3. Bill Pay and Subscriptions
Recurring charges quietly continue long after they're needed. Note anything that auto-renews: streaming, software, memberships, insurance.
4. Social Media Profiles
Decide, platform by platform, what you'd want: memorialized, deleted, or left as a place for people to share memories. This is a personal choice, and it's one your family shouldn't have to make on your behalf without knowing your preference.
5. Cloud Storage and Photos
Google Photos, iCloud, Dropbox — wherever your photos and files actually live. These are often the most emotionally significant accounts and the easiest to lose access to permanently.
6. Passwords and Password Managers
You don't need to hand over every password today. What you need is a secure way for the right password information to reach the right person, at the right time — not sitting in a spreadsheet or sticky note that could be lost, stolen, or outdated.
7. Legal and Insurance Documents
Wills, insurance policies, property deeds. Digital copies, even scanned ones, save your family from a document hunt during an already difficult time.
8. Work-Related Accounts
If you're self-employed or manage business accounts, note what needs handling — client access, domain registrations, business banking, invoicing tools.
9. Personal Messages
Separate from account access, many people want to leave something more personal: a letter, a set of instructions, or simply a message to be read at the right time. This isn't about logistics — it's about being present for a moment you won't be there for.
10. A Trusted Person (or People) With a Clear Path to Access
This is the step people skip most often, and it's the one that makes everything else useful. Organizing information does nothing if no one can find it. Decide who should receive what, and make sure there's a reliable way for that to happen automatically — not dependent on someone remembering where you kept a notebook.
Turning the Checklist Into a Plan
Once you've worked through this list, the next question is simple: how does this information actually reach your family when it's needed, and not a moment before?
That's the part MyLasts handles. You organize your accounts, documents, and messages once, designate who should receive what, and the platform takes care of the rest — checking in with you periodically and releasing everything to your chosen people only if you ever stop responding.
Start your checklist inside MyLasts and turn this list into a plan your family can actually use.
