What Key Features Should You Consider When Looking to Buy an End-of-Life Planner / Personal Affairs Manager?
Today we are going to be looking at the features you might like to consider before purchasing an end-of-life planner, otherwise known as a personal affairs manager. The traditional end-of-life planner focuses on the legal documentation necessary to facilitate your affairs if you were to pass away, in conjunction with additional personal information regarding your private affairs and wishes.
Features you need to consider:
1. Focused on Your Stage in Life
Look for an end-of-life planner that has been built for your specific stage in life. What does that mean? A single person would need a different set of pages compared to that of a family, for example, given a single person would not yet have children. A carer would need to detail all of their caregiving duties, in conjunction with their own personal responsibilities and finances. A business owner, documenting their business affairs would have different needs to a couple. A couple may prefer to have a document that reflects their joint lives together as well as separate sections, for both individuals.
2. Fully Customisable
Make sure that the end-of-life planner you are purchasing has the flexibility to be fully customisable to you. Ideally, it would offer the ability to add and remove sections of information within the document or pages themselves, based on your specific needs. It should have the ability to modify the inbuilt sections of the pages provided also, to again, make it truly custom to you. You need to have it flexible so that as things change in your life, you can easily include or change that information.
3. Comprehensive
An end-of-life planner should be well thought out, displaying well-organised, relevant parts and sections. It should include a Table of Contents that can easily be updated as you modify/add/remove sections of the document. This would provide the user the simplest way to read the document and to easily access the section they need.
For a more comprehensive approach, especially if you have children and pets, we recommend that you buy a planner that enables you to fully document their lives, as well as your own. This then allows the person taking over guardianship of your children or pets to have full knowledge about them personally, in order to adequately care for them.
4. User-Friendly
While you need a detailed end-of-life planner, you need to ensure that it is easy to use. That it is designed in a way that you can easily modify and easily find where that information is. Ideally, whoever you buy your end-of-life planner from should offer the ability to easily understand your planner, by way of tutorials and videos and personalised support if you need further assistance.
5. Security of Your Confidential Data
Security of your private information is paramount. We cannot stress this enough.
Your planner needs to have security mechanisms in place for documenting online account details so that all of the access information isn’t lumped together on a single document. Why? Imagine if someone with malicious intent got a hold of this document and you had listed all of your online account details (website address, username and passwords together) for your bank and credit cards accounts and the like. It could be a disaster. Mindful consideration needs to be given to where your information is stored while entering data into the documents. Consideration also needs to be given regarding where that information is housed, awaiting use should you pass away.
On Computer
Ensure that the documents you are filling out are saved to your local PC and not housed “in the cloud”. Ensure that your computer is protected by current internet security/anti-virus software and password-protection. Protect the documents themselves with password-protection at the document level.
External Storage
Upon completion ensure that your confidential data eg online account access information, is saved securely. This could be on an external hard drive or USB, with both the document and device password-protected. Ideally, strengthen that security by placing the USB or hard drive in a home safe, locked box or bank safety deposit box. Keep in mind, at all times, how critical it is that no “bad actors” can acquire the entirety of your online account access information.
Printed Pages (static/prebuilt pages filled out electronically and printed, or pages printed and filled in by hand)
Again, in terms of security, never keep all of your online account information together. It would be highly insecure to ever have the website address, username and password housed together. So work out a way to not do that. Your more generic information could, of course, be printed out and more easily accessible because if found by “bad actors” it would not compromise your data or identity. But your more confidential information needs a greater security focus. If printing out logins of any type, again, ensure their security eg store in home safe, bank deposit box or the like.
End-of-Life Book
If considering buying an end-of-life book, you would seriously need to consider how confidential data is entered into that book. If you elected to write in all of your sensitive information, it would literally contain access to your complete life, in a single book, including online accounts etc, in such a detailed manner that it could be devastating if stolen. If using an end-of-life book, work out a way to not include all of your online account access information in the one place. You ideally need to split the data relevant to online accounts and store securely and separately.
6. Affordable
The price must be right. It must be affordable, but it also must be a quality planner with flexibility, ease of use, inbuilt security features, support etc.
7. Add Additional Information
In keeping with the flexibility we mentioned above, you also need a planner that allows for additional information to be easily recorded and saved with or within your actual planner. Sometimes you may have documents that you want to reference throughout your planner, which are then included with your end-of-life planner. Having an end-of-life planner that has considered inclusion of additional documents would be a great feature to have.
How a Handbook of Your Life Kit assists with your End-of-Life Planning
The type of end-of-life planners that we make available are a range of personal affairs management kits, based on traditional end-of-life planners, but with a new, updated approach. We offer comprehensive, documentation of your life – every day information, from your routines, family dynamics, children, responsibilities, online accounts, pets and more.
These planners are all about your daily life – the things that you take for granted – until you are absent and someone else needs to come in and take over management of your life.
Each kit is fully customisable, user-friendly and, more importantly, comes with 4 levels of data security, to maximise protection of your confidential information.
View our Handbook Features >>
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Handbook of Your Life – Giving Peace of Mind to You & Your Loves Ones, When it Matters the Most.
