Paperwork, bank accounts, a house. A few drawers full of mysterious cables and instruction manuals for every toaster owned since 1974.
Now?
We’re also dealing with:
– phones that no one can unlock
– thousands of photos stored “somewhere in the cloud”
– email accounts full of important information
– social media profiles that are still very much alive
– subscriptions quietly ticking away in the background
– and entire chunks of a person’s life that exist… but can’t be accessed
And more often than not, nobody knows where any of it is.
We’re seeing this more and more.
Families sat around kitchen tables saying things like:
“Does anyone know his phone password?”
“Where are all the photos?”
“Wasn’t there something important in his email?”
“Why is money still coming out of that account?”
“An old post of his just popped up on my timeline… oof.”
And let’s not even get started on Kate T’s mum’s tablet.
Cracking that thing open was basically Mission Impossible.
And underneath all of that is something else:
Frustration.
Stress.
Sometimes real distress.
Because the things people often want most — photos, messages, little bits of someone’s life — are locked away behind passwords and privacy settings.
When we talk about planning ahead, people often assume it’s about:
– wills
– inheritance
– “important” assets
But when someone dies, the things that matter are often much smaller — and much more human.
Photos of ordinary days.
Videos nobody else has seen.
Messages that suddenly mean everything.
Your digital life holds a lot of that.
And without a bit of planning, it can become surprisingly difficult to access.
Part of the problem is that the world of death and the world of tech don’t quite line up.
Different platforms have different rules.
Some allow access.
Some don’t.
Some need proof.
Some need court orders.
There isn’t one simple, joined-up system.
Which means that, without guidance, people are often left trying to figure it out at exactly the moment they’re least able to.
That’s why we’ve created this guide.
To give you:
– a clear starting point
– a simple way to think about your digital life
– and a way to make things easier for the people who’ll be sorting things out after you die
A bit of planning now means:
– fewer locked accounts
– fewer unanswered questions
– fewer “we think it might be somewhere…” moments
And more chance that the important things — the photos, the memories, the pieces of your life — are actually accessible.
Even a small amount of organisation now can make a big difference to your family once you’ve ditched Facebook in favour of pushing up the daisies.
We talk about this stuff not because we’re obsessed with death…
…but because avoiding it tends to make things harder.
This is just another part of modern life that needs a bit of attention.
Alongside wills.
Alongside funeral wishes.
Alongside all the other bits people often put off.
If you’d like a simple, no-nonsense way to get started, our guide will walk you through it.
👉 Get the Digital Legacy guide
👉 Or go a step further with the Plan Your Own Funeral course — where we cover all of this (and everything else) properly, in one place
Sort it now… Thank yourself later!
