What a cheerful blog post title! But it’s true: We all die eventually and many unexpectedly. If you’re reading this, you may have also lost your partner much sooner than expected. At some point after my husband died, I became terrified of what would happen to my daughter if I died too. My husband did not have a will and while he had casually mentioned wanting to be cremated, we had not had any serious discussions or made any preparations in case one of us died.

I also started worrying about how unprepared my parents were. Both in their eighties, my mom has dementia and my dad takes care of her, their bills, everything. If my dad were to die first, I would need to step in to take care of my mom and I knew nothing about what they needed or wanted.

Since I love lists, I made a list of tasks to tackle:

Legal:

• Will – This was the first thing I took care of as it worried me the most and was easy to do. I created a will online in just a matter of hours, naming my sister as my daughter’s guardian, and had nearby friends witness it. At the time I used Nolo.com which now looks to be Quicken WillMaker & Trust, and it just happened to be on sale for $40.
• Living Will – I bought the Five Wishes booklet, which walks you through documenting your healthcare agent (a.k.a. power of attorney for healthcare) and healthcare directive. It arrived in the mail and has now been sitting on my desk for a few years. But it’s on my list of things to do this year!
• Power of Attorney – It’s part of the living will to choose a power of attorney for healthcare, but I also still need to choose one to make legal and financial decisions on my behalf.

Financial:

• Financial Beneficiaries – I updated the beneficiaries for all my retirement and financial accounts. For some financial accounts, you can’t add beneficiaries, but you can make the accounts payable on death (POD) or transfer on death (TOD) to an individual. The beneficiary information supersedes whatever is written in a will so if you haven’t yet created a will, make sure to at least do this.
• Life Insurance – The rule of thumb is that if someone (like a spouse or kids) is depending on your income, then you should get life insurance with coverage equal to ten times your annual income.
• Trust – If your money or assets (like a house) are in a trust, they can bypass probate and get passed on to your beneficiaries more quickly. Also, you can dictate how and when your money gets passed on, for example if you want to wait until your kids are a certain age before they inherit money. I just found the Trust & Will website which might be worth checking out.
• Autopay Bills – I’ve put all my recurring bills on autopay. In case I die, I don’t want collection agencies coming after my daughter or the house going into foreclosure because no one knew what bills to pay. This is generally a good practice anyway to avoid fees in case the bill gets lost in the mail or you go on vacation.

• Doctors & Medications – I made a list of my parents’ doctors and their daily medications. Since my dad takes care of my mom’s medications, it occurred to me that if anything happens to him, no one would have any idea what she needs or who her doctors are.

Organization:

• Red File/Folder – I recently learned of the concept of a red file or folder where you store all the important information that someone would need to have if you became incapacitated or died. It should include your will, your living will and a comprehensive list of personal information, such as your financial, email, social media, and airline loyalty accounts with usernames and passwords. Short vent: I did not have my husband’s Gmail password so Google would not give me access to his email or stored photos. They also charged me a monthly fee for his storage for years because, despite many calls, they kept bouncing me to different departments to cancel it. The charges only stopped when I eventually canceled the credit card.
• Social Media – Besides writing down your username and password, consider including instructions on what you want done with them. You can keep them going, memorialize them or delete them. This information would go in the Red File.
• Safe – After years of thinking “I should really have a fire-proof safe to store all my important documents,” I finally bought one a few weeks ago. I randomly found it at Aldi between socks and fitness equipment! This is where my red file will go.
• Purging Stuff – This is an ongoing process, but I periodically go through our stuff to donate or throw out things we no longer need or have outgrown. Besides making it easier to find the stuff I do need, I want to spare my siblings from having to sort through so much stuff if I die. I seem to have a much easier time throwing out stuff than my parents do though… My Dad thinks it’s rational to own 10 pairs of duck boots and will not part with any of them.

Legacy:

• Photos – Now that we all take photos on our phones, I rarely print them out. I want my daughter to be able to access all the photos I’ve taken throughout the years so I’ve stored most of them on Amazon Photos and Apple iCloud. I also recently made a handful of photo albums and framed photo collages.
• Stories – I asked my parents to each fill out a book I got them about their lives for my daughter to have, but they haven’t yet started, despite owning the books for years now. I think it’s too daunting a process for them, so I’ve started writing down my mom’s stories, while she still remembers them, and filling out the book for her. This is the Grandmother’s Journal and the Grandfather’s Journal which I bought from Amazon. There are also versions for Mom and Dad like Dad, I Want to Hear Your Story and Mom, I Want to Hear Your Story.

Have I missed anything? Let me know if anything should be added to my list!