I have a non-technical spouse. She isn’t into technology at all. She knows I have a blog, but I doubt she knows the URL (and that’s ok). She has no idea about my Uberspace server, our smart home setup, or our home wifi. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t expect her to know about all these things. It’s my jam to take care of these things.
But last weekend, for no particular reason, I thought about what happens when I go “end of life”. There are so many things to take care of:
- Subscriptions I used, that my wife is not interested in (Action: Cancel)
- JetBrains IDE
- Uberspace server
- Subscriptions that are running on my user accounts (and/or bank account) (Action: Transfer ownership or at least keep it alive)
- Streaming services (like Netflix) and other cloud services (like iCloud)
- Smart Home automation that my wife doesn’t know how to change/deactivate (Action(s): Learn or Remove)
- and there is more…
It occurred to me that I would need to document these things (at least to some extent) in case of my unexpected passing. But what’s a good way to do this? What should be in it, and what would be too much?
Fediverse to the rescue
I was somewhat confident that I’m not the first to come across this issue. So I decided to ask the Fediverse for help:
Let me tell you: The Fediverse is just awesome. I received a ton of responses with super helpful tips, links, and personal stories. Using the right hashtags is key here (just like on every other social media as well). I have less than 100 followers on Mastodon and most of my posts don’t generate a lot of interest or even replies. But the hashtag #AskFedi is well-known for questions like this. That’s where the magic happens. 🙂
In the following paragraphs, I will summarize some of the replies I received. But if you are interested in all the details, I recommend reading all the replies to my post (follow the link above). There is so much goodness in them that I won’t be able to include it in this blog post.
“End of Life” planning? It’s a thing!
The first thing that I learned from the replies is that technical documentation in the event of your own death is an important thing, and people are actually creating it. One of the stories that was posted in the replies was about a super-organized father-in-law who had documented all the relevant information for his wife and children. What a great example. But there were other stories as well. A story that stuck in my head for quite some time was the one where the father-in-law died without documenting anything. Didn’t sound like an uncommon scenario, right? But here is the scary part of the reply:
4.5 years later, we’re still unraveling it.
4 and a half years later! That’s more than 50 months. Now, imagine the father-in-law would have invested a day or two to document the most important things. It’s just a guess, but I’m sure that would have reduced the number of months significantly!
The bare minimum – Passwords + smartphone
Most of the users replying to my question agreed to the bare minimum that everybody should take care of. That’s access to your password manager and your phone or whatever MFA (multi-factor authentication) device you are using. This prevents your loved ones from making time-consuming access requests or guessing passwords.
Having access to your password manager and therefore to all important accounts will enable your loved ones to cancel subscriptions, change billing details (your credit card will be blocked or expired at some point), and much more.
In short: If you don’t want to do anything in preparation, but care about your family, at least ensure access to your password manager and phone.
Involve technical friends
Documentation is great, but if you are facing the loss of your partner, you might not be in the mood to familiarize yourself with technical stuff you never cared about. Other, more important tasks need your attention in this situation.
Most developers, sysadmins, homelab enthusiasts, and technical folks in general have friends with similar backgrounds. Talk to one or maybe better two of them about the scenario. Prepare access to your password manager and phone in advance, or at least tell them where to find the stuff when the time has come.
Make them call your partner, not the other way around. As I said, your partner will face a ton of issues and TODOs at that time. Don’t add more to that pile. -> Therefore, give them your partner’s telephone number.
Templates and ideas for the “End of Life” handbook
There are great templates out there that will help you get started. For example, D. Moonfire mentioned his “Exit Planning” documentation in his reply to my question, which grew to a remarkable size over the years. He didn’t stop at the “document your technical legacy”, but covered a wide range of topics you should keep an eye on.
If the “Exit Planning” is overwhelming for the start, you could look at chookity’s recommendation called “End of Life Disaster Response“. It’s a relatively simple checklist focusing primarily on tech and finances. I think it’s a great starting point that everybody could fill out in a couple of hours. These few hours would certainly be well invested.
Last but not least: Talk to your partner about your thoughts and plans
Writing all this documentation is awesome and will be very helpful when you kick the bucket. But talk to your partner about it. Show him/her what you created. Make sure your partner understands the content and can navigate it quickly.
If you achieved that, you’ve done your loved ones a big favor.