I need to start making plans for when I am gone, much sooner than I thought, and I realized our finances are pretty opaque to my spouse. Our bank account is shared, but there are other sites that only I have access to.
The easiest solution would be to physically write down logins and what needs done, put it in an envelope, and tell my family where that envelope is. I’m not thrilled about that, because I would have to shred and rewrite it every time I update a password or a URL changes, and it’d be vulnerable to nosy guests.
Putting it in a shared Google Doc would be easiest for everyone. But then Google has that data. Even supposing I trust a cloud SaaS provider not to misuse the data (which is a big ‘if’) I do not trust them to never have a data breach.
Self-hosting seems like the next step, except I expect my home server to be the first thing to collapse once I’m gone. Filing login info with an estate attorney would still require frequent updates. Putting a document on a flash drive risks data loss, but is what I’m leaning towards.
Is there a solution I’m missing?
My mother died recently, and she was the breadwinner and was in charge of everything financial, because my surviving father is a toxic narcissist with zero financial literacy who refuses help from anyone. So I just have to say kudos to you for thinking about this difficult stuff. Your family will appreciate it more than you can imagine.
Other commenters have already given you solid advice, and I don’t have anything to add there, but more people need to have these difficult conversations and make real practical preparations, as soon as possible. Speaking from experience, not having clear guidance about where things are and what should be done with them, makes an already emotional situation even harder to deal with. Everybody dies, but in death you can make your family’s grieving process slightly easier by thinking ahead like this.
I’m sorry for whatever you’re going through, but props for thinking about other people while you go through it.