So after several posts just whinging and complaining about life, I spent today working on a personal finance project that was long overdue.

I am in my mid-thirties and single. It’s crossed my mind a few times that if anything happened to me, no one would even really know where to look for my money.

My brother knows about my blog and would probably think to check it, but while my accountability posts are like a broad treasure map, that would be a super unpleasant project trying to figure out how to crack all my passwords and exactly where all my is stored.

So I made a last will and testament. It took me all of 5 minutes online. I mean, I don’t exactly have a complicated estate. Everything goes to my brother, except my blog, which I would prefer go to a friend.

I just have to go get it notarized at the bank.

I made sure my Personal Capital account had everything in it – which I have regularly slacked off on. Even if it disconnects or he has some trouble with a password, the account will be listed there for my brother to find and be able to contact the bank with.

As I did this, I realized there was literally zero chance he would’ve had of finding all my assets. Between the random banking and investing experiments I do for this blog, I have like the equivalent of a $100 here and $100 there all over the place.

He also doesn’t really know what companies I’ve worked for over the years, so the odds of him tracking down several small 401(k)/403(b)s without some help were unlikely.

Hopefully we’ll both be good and old and well-off when I kick the bucket, but if not, those little bits could be useful to him. And also, I want them to go to him in that case, I didn’t work just for the banks to benefit off the interest of those accounts forever.

The free service I used online to make the will was freewill.com. Definitely the weirdest part was the section about what I wanted for a funeral – which you could totally skip, but I realized again, how would they know?

When my mom died two years ago, we were working off a few statements she had made (we were fairly sure she was joking about being propped upright in a mausoleum with a window in it – and yet I like that her ashes are in our living room because it’s the same not alone feeling – which is all sort of nuts because she’s just dead, but death isn’t the most logical thing all the time), but generally, we didn’t have a clue. My dad’s side of the family likes to take pictures around the casket, which always freaked her the heck out, so we made sure that didn’t happen.

Overall though, we had no idea what we were planning. My mom was actually pretty calm and accepting of the whole thing and she had a lot of faith, so those things colored our choices, but she was never like “sing this hymn, do these things, bury me here, etc.”

My grandma was really the same way. We didn’t know a lot about exactly what she wanted because she was in denial the entire time she was dying. We knew she would probably want her funeral to look good, so that was what we went with.

I realized that my family would be totally clueless. So I wrote down some of my favorite hymns and how I absolutely don’t want to be embalmed (I am a big fan of green funerals).

I also mentioned above that I have this digital asset to consider. It’s not worth a lot, though if someone wanted to continue to run it, it could probably continue to bring in a similar income stream to what it does now. If someone wanted to just sell it, the domain is worth a few hundred dollars. In both cases, it would be better suited to go to a friend who actually understands these things, so that’s what I decided.

Now if I make it to old and gray Mel, the odds of brokeGIRLrich still being around – or run by me – at pretty slim. But we never know when death is coming for us.

Because I could not stop for Death –

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves –

And Immortality.

-Emily Dickinson

(Total side note: Is anyone else really enjoying the strange teenage trashiness that is Dickinson on Apple+?)

All of that being said, I created essentially a one sheet of brokeGIRLrich logins and password info to put with my will.

One I get the will notarized, I will put it all in a black binder and draw a goofy skull and crossbones on it that I hope make my brother laugh one day. I’ll add a paper with the password to my computer and my Personal Capital account, and hopefully that will be enough to make sorting out my assets and liabilities a little less of the endless goose chase it was for my mom when she did my grandmother’s and me when I did my mom’s.

The new goal in estate planning is to check it once a year and update the password/website info as needed.