When I Die
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What happens whe I die? This question haunts me. I’m worried about my relatives who, without me being around, would be left with a technological and non-technological mess I’m leaving behind. I’m worried that the day I’m gone they’ll learn about the scope and complexity of things they depend on.
Here I’m exploring some ways to mitigate these problems and make their lives easier.
Perfect and not Perfect Solutions
I believe that perfect solutions should be transparent. My relatives shouldn’t even think about them. Of course we have to do X, because this is what a sane person would do!
But perfect solutions are not always possible, so next best thing is to not require any technological savviness from my relatives. Forget about Docker, command line and long, weird instructions. etc. Web browser is the way to go because this is what people are familiar with. Leave the instruction: visit this page and you’ll know what to do next.
Next best thing are checklists which tell what must be done, without assuming how it’s done. I musn’t require my relatives to use any of my devices (phone, laptop) to perform any of these tasks. They must be able to use their own laptop which they’re familiar with. They already have enough on their heads to fight with a computer which is configured for a hardcore programmer.
Why such strict approach? Because of a comment I recently read on Hacker News:
I am picturing a room full of non-programmers staring at all these documents, codes and Docker commands and saying “Well, Greg was obviously crazy. Instead of leaving any of his passwords, he just left pages of gibberish. I guess we’ll never be able to access anything.”
– xp84
Incapacitation
Death isn’t the only thing which worries me. Once I die, my family has some legal options in terms of inheritance, liabilities or transfering assets. But what happens when I’m incapacitated? It’s the area which you can’t navigate without a court order and these take time. Thus, my solutions to the question what happens when I die should also work in times when I’m not dead, but when I’m not able to help in any way.
Problems and Solutions
Passwords
Money Access
Shared Mailbox for Bills and Others
I pay bills in our house – I mean the physical act of collecting the bills each month, logging into our bank account and ordering bank transfers. The problem is, I receive most of the bills to my personal e-mail and bills for electricity, gas or water still must be payed after I’m gone.
That’s why I think it is useful to setup a shared mailbox, mail list or a “team mail” which can be accessed by me and my partner. Setting up a rule which automatically forwards the bills to another e-mail works too, but might be more problematic when if my partner would like to change the e-mail after my death. Some services send special confirmation e-mails from different addresses which the rule might skip.
Shared e-mail is also useful to setup for other purposes, like a contact address for our kids’ school and kindergarten.
This way my family has to do exactly nothing regarding the bills, at least in the first few weeks or months. Ultimately my partner probably would want to change the bills recipient, but thanks to this setup she has time for this and doesn’t need to worry that someone will cut her access to the water.