A while back I had a dream. It was sort of a 'Ghost of Christmas Future' type thing. I don't remember the details (they were lost as soon as I awoke), but the rough gist was that I was seeing my family post-me. I manage practically everything in this household. I manage the budget, the bills, the network, important files, passwords, everything. It isn't that I demand control, but I'm an obsessive planner/organizer, so everyone just leaves that sort of the thing to me. In a post-me world, people wouldn't even know what bills need paid, or how to find the passwords to get a bank balance.
So I lay awake that night after the dream and realized that I need to address all of that. I'm not expecting to kick the bucket anytime soon, but I'm months away from 50, so it moves into the realm of 'entirely possible' and with 'without warning.'
I decided that I needed to make what RunningMn9 calls a 'Death Binder.' I'm thinking an actual binder so that I can replace individual pages as they need updated, and so that nobody has to 'find' it amongst all of my PC files.
I expect that it will include:
A list of contacts with relevance and phone numbers
A list of important accounts with login information
How to access my password manager
A list of expenses paid monthly
A breakdown of my monthly balance/budgeting process
Where important documents are located
What some of the things around the house are (including what's valuable that might not be recognized as such - like that old beer bottle on the shelf that's actually ~180 years old.)
Personal post-death preferences from me (like "Don't spend anything you don't have to on the funeral - I won't care.")
A more detailed breakdown of who might appreciate some of my 'stuff' (like tabletop stuff) than is found in a will, and suggestions on how best to sell the rest if nobody wants it.
I also recognize that I need to have a will made, although that's pretty cost-prohibitive right now (and the free/online ones won't do the job.)
So, what would you add?
And how are you setting up for your demise? Or maybe it's time you should be?
Prior to me, the family (on my father's side) was huge. My grandmother was born in 1909 with eight siblings, and she had nine kids (mostly during the Depression!) When I lived with her - about four years total - Christmas and Thanksgiving were 'dinners' with 70+ people coming and going all day. There were so many aunts and uncles that I had trouble keeping track. And every one of them had stories. The problem was that it grew so large that once she died and her kids started dying, the rest were all cousins, each with their own families and not much direct connection, . My mother's side of the family was smaller, and after my mother died (when I was 8), I hardly ever saw them. But in both cases, I'm the only link between my current family and all of that history.
Plus, I have boxes of photos and albums. My father was pretty prolific with a camera, and all of those photos, all of that history - nobody knows what the photos are but me. I go, they're meaningless faces that will likely never be identified.
So I've been slowly working my way through the process of recording all of that, plus identifying and labeling everything.
So far all I've really done is dig through all of the old papers I have sitting around. I moved around so much in my first 20 years, from state to state and school to school, that coming up with what happened when and in what order has been a real challenge. My current house is the 30th I have lived in, with the first 21 by the time I finished high school. I changed schools 12 times. So, I've been going through all of those old papers, from receipts to report cards to contracts that my father kept (and haven't been lost to time/flood/trash), and entering every date, address, and other relevant data into a OneNote notebook on a sort of timeline (one page for each year, plus a page for each person, home, school, or job.)
I also went through any older documents, such as parents' birth certificates, wedding certificates, death certificates, old articles, and other documents from before my time.That included my father's military documents. At least those he had personal copies of - everything else was apparently a victim of the National Personnel Records Center fire of 1973. Still, I put a lot of stuff into context through what was left (although reading through piles of 70-year-old Korean War personnel orders took some patience.) It also cleared up a lot of his 'stories' and bullshit. Aside from the military records, there was surprisingly little left, but I went through every line with a fine-toothed comb.
Eventually I will go back and scan all of those records, and attach them to the research (and make some available online for other researchers.)
The end result will be a framework that I can then go plug my own memories into to give me a working timeline of when everything happened. After that I can tackle the dating and labeling of a couple of thousand old photos. And eventually, again, scanning them (although I'm not sure what I'll do with the resulting files beyond sharing them with family members.) The idea being to leave behind piles of photos that nobody will care about with actual meaning as opposed to them being totally meaningless.
I have considered actually writing out my own memories as a story. Not in a 'publish my memoirs and get famous' sort of way, just as a way to give future generations some insight. I'd love to see something similar written by my mother or grandmother.
When I got my mom's stuff there was a lot of old photos. She had a lot. A lot of them were photos of her and her boyfriend which I certainly didn't want. Then I got to thinking about all the other photos and I realized that I would never be looking at them again and I have no relatives to give them too and I threw them all away. But of course with children I might have made a different choice.
I'm leaving all my stuff with my youngest stepson and he doesn't have any sentimentality for my side of the family so I'll just leave it to him to dispose of it.
Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 1:51 pm
Mom's the genealogist in our family, but seeing as both her kids are childless and likely to remain so, I have no idea where it will go.
Did your mom have sisters? Cousins? Then someone will eventually want the data that she's collected. Someone you've never met may trace their own line back to your great-grandparent, and your mom's research could have an impact on their own. That's why I plan to share a lot of my data and scans online via one of the portals designed specifically for that - to make it available for other people doing their own research.
Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Aug 12, 2022 1:55 pm
That's why I plan to share a lot of my data and scans online via one of the portals designed specifically for that - to make it available for other people doing their own research.
Huh. And I left orders that crap like that be used as kindling for my funeral pyre.
A long time ago, I read an article about a "Big Book of Everything," a giant form you can fill out to keep track of all this. To my surprise, it's still available:
It looks like it was last updated in 2015, so you'd have to adapt it for things that have become recently prominent like cloud storage and social media.
Here's a FindLaw article about how your digital accounts can be managed.
Hipolito wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:34 pm
Here's a FindLaw article about how your digital accounts can be managed.
My will specifies that someone log into OO every week and disparage the Amish, Chick-fil-A, or anything with Cilantro as an ingredient. The only way you all are going know I'm dead is if you trip over my grave (assuming my wife does not abide by my wishes that there be no grave)..
Dont tell dbt you're over 50. He'll show up and make you learn a secret handshake and to tell the future by which goat bonks heads with which other goat. It gets weird after that.
--------------------------------------------
I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
One of the best gifts I’ve ever received was from my father-in-law back in 2019. He connected us with an estate planning attorney who did a “death package” for us.
Set up a family trust and moved our assets into it, then set up wills, power of attorney, and health care directives for both me and Mrs Skinypupy. Everything’s in a binder (which I really need to get in a fireproof safe somewhere) with step by step instructions on what to do if one of us passes.
It’s something I never would have been able to do (or would have even thought to do) on my own.
When darkness veils the world, four Warriors of Light shall come.
rittchard wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 4:43 pm
I need some way to dispose of all my porn in the least embarrassing way for both whoever finds it and for my poor dead soul.
Skinypupy wrote: ↑Mon Aug 15, 2022 7:28 pm
One of the best gifts I’ve ever received was from my father-in-law back in 2019. He connected us with an estate planning attorney who did a “death package” for us.
Set up a family trust and moved our assets into it, then set up wills, power of attorney, and health care directives for both me and Mrs Skinypupy. Everything’s in a binder (which I really need to get in a fireproof safe somewhere) with step by step instructions on what to do if one of us passes.
It’s something I never would have been able to do (or would have even thought to do) on my own.
We did the same thing many years ago, and updated it once. We should look at doing it again as people age out of contact.
I prepared a book for my father, and now for me listing all current investments and bank accounts. When my dad died that really made things easier to organize.
Hipolito wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:34 pm
Here's a FindLaw article about how your digital accounts can be managed.
My will specifies that someone log into OO every week and disparage the Amish, Chick-fil-A, or anything with Cilantro as an ingredient. The only way you all are going know I'm dead is if you trip over my grave (assuming my wife does not abide by my wishes that there be no grave)..
Unless there is talk of good and bad beers we will know it’s faked, with ABV listings of course,
Hipolito wrote: ↑Sun Aug 14, 2022 2:34 pm
Here's a FindLaw article about how your digital accounts can be managed.
My will specifies that someone log into OO every week and disparage the Amish, Chick-fil-A, or anything with Cilantro as an ingredient. The only way you all are going know I'm dead is if you trip over my grave (assuming my wife does not abide by my wishes that there be no grave)..
Unless there is talk of good and bad beers we will know it’s faked, with ABV listings of course,
The death celebration will only include good beer if my wishes are followed. But it could be a problem if I expire in the Philippines, they don't have good beer anywhere in that country as far as I know (I'll find out next year if that changed at all, but I'm not counting on it).
Scuzz wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:21 pm
Does any Latin country make really good beer?
The Philippines are not a Latin country (prior to independence, they were an American colony, hence their use of English as a business language). Mexico has some good craft beers...I wish the Mexican restaurants would serve them and not the usual swill (Corona, Modelo, Dos Equis, et al). The Philippines though has a beer monopoly by San Miguel -- their Red Horse will help you to a buzz, but for the most part all of their offerings are along the lines of Miller.
Scuzz wrote: ↑Tue Aug 16, 2022 10:21 pm
Does any Latin country make really good beer?
The Philippines are not a Latin country (prior to independence, they were an American colony, hence their use of English as a business language). Mexico has some good craft beers...I wish the Mexican restaurants would serve them and not the usual swill (Corona, Modelo, Dos Equis, et al). The Philippines though has a beer monopoly by San Miguel -- their Red Horse will help you to a buzz, but for the most part all of their offerings are along the lines of Miller.
I guess I mistakenly put any region controlled by the Spanish as Latin. Maybe you need some other roots for that.
Scuzz wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 2:27 am
I guess I mistakenly put any region controlled by the Spanish as Latin. Maybe you need some other roots for that.
Their control never supplanted the local culture as it did in Central and South America. Relics of their 400 year occupation only exist in some Tagalog words. FWIW, English contains more Tagalog words than Tagalog does Spanish words, but it contains even more English words and listening to a conversation in Tagalog there will be whole sentences uttered in perfectly understandable English. The food is uniquely native, with no real Spanish influence for the most part (although some Filipino restaurants serve Sangria).
Steven Colbert, when he had the Colbert Report, once mistakenly identified a Filipino author as Mexican. When corrected, Colbert replied, "oh, so an Island Mexican!" Having been to both Mexico and the Philippines, about the only thing they have in common is some old Spanish forts and other relics.
Scuzz wrote: ↑Wed Aug 17, 2022 2:27 am
I guess I mistakenly put any region controlled by the Spanish as Latin. Maybe you need some other roots for that.
Their control never supplanted the local culture as it did in Central and South America.
Sorta too bad, I'm always wanted to combine Latin & Thai food. Thai larb moo burrito sounds right up my alley. At least Vietnam got some good baguettes out of their tribulations.
