Some of you may already be familiar with the concept of a ‘death box’, but many others are not (and no, it has nothing to do with coffins!).
Although it sounds a bit unnerving, a death box is just somewhere to put anything you think might be helpful to the people sorting out your finances once you’ve died.
You might be entirely on top of your financial accounts and ongoing arrangements, but if you passed away suddenly, would your surviving family know what to do in terms of your bank and investment accounts or your credit cards and any ongoing payments you are making?
A death box should contain information on all of your financial arrangements. You should include the following:
-Information on your pensions, assets, debts, investments, insurance plans, digital assets or other financial accounts.
-A copy of your Will or details of where to find your Will.
-Specific instructions for the care of any dependents.
-Details of any trusts you have set up or large gifts you have made and contact details for your financial planner and solicitor.
-You can even include information such as desired funeral arrangements or lists of people you would want contacted in the event of your death.
It is worth noting that passwords should not be included in your death box. Your surviving family will need to request access to your accounts with each provider, usually on the presentation of your death certificate.
Still, the information in the death box will clarify what accounts you have and which providers hold them.
Looking through this list, it seems quite daunting to get all of this information together, but imagine how much worse it would be for someone else to have to deal with this, especially at a time when they are dealing with your death.
Bringing it together now makes good sense and can highlight any missing information that may be needed.
AgeUK has an excellent free resource called (rather more sensitively) a LifeBook, which offers prompts for information you might wish to include.
Some people choose to store this in an actual storage file, but you can also store this digitally, such as in a Dropbox or Google Drive folder with a password manager. You should choose a trusted emergency contact for your password manager and let them know!
Once you’ve created your death box, you’ll need to keep it up to date. An old death box can be as useless as no death box, so checking it and updating it with current information should be part of your annual financial spring clean.
If you need any help with creating or updating your death box, please contact your Financial Planner.
