What to do with online accounts after a death
Bill Solominsky on managing digital assets after a loss
Have you ever inherited a mountain of digital stuff after someone passed away? Logins you can't crack, subscriptions you never knew existed. It doesn’t seem hard until you’re the one dealing with it. Read on to get some tips to become the Reluctant Executor.
Yorba: It’s great to have the Reluctant Executor, Bill Solominsky with us today. Can you share more about where your business name came from?
Bill: Being an executor is a job that nobody wants to do, but nobody will turn down. If you're an executor. It means a few things and none of them are usually good.
It means you lost somebody that was close to you. It means that you need to now spend a lot of your time doing tedious, boring and stressful work. And it's also a job that you are likely not going to be paid for.
So nobody normally would want to take on a job with those types of descriptions. But you do it anyway.
Yorba: How did you end up in a career like this?
Bill: I started out as an engineer and a product marketer, so this type of career isn’t something that naturally flows from that.
I came into this role from a family situation. In the fall of 2020, my dad called me and told me he had gotten diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. That's usually not a good diagnosis for longevity.
So I visited my parents and took, took my laptop and opened up a blank spreadsheet and started asking them about the details of financial assets, real estate accounts, anything really that I could think of and anything that they offered to tell me as well.
My dad did end up living for another two years, and when we passed, I dusted off the spreadsheet, and it was helpful to remember some of the things I had recorded.
But it wasn't enough. And so I realized there was more that I needed to help my mom with afterward, so I created Reluctant Executor to help people in my position.
Yorba: Do you have any advice for people who wondering how to prepare their digital assets for after death?
Bill: Digital assets are only getting more complex.
When you walk into a house, or a room, you can see the physical things that need to be taken care of, where it’s a box full of old pictures or just a file case full of documents you need to go through.
Unfortunately, digital assets are all hidden.
You don't know if it's organized, and you don't know what you're actually dealing with until you start diving in.
A lot of times you don't even know where to start diving in.
One way to start is just by looking through a device— a laptop or cell phone—and seeing what kind of apps are on there, what stuff they access, emails, and photo albums.
Yorba: How do people get started if they don’t even have access to those devices?
Bill: I give my clients an estate map to help them understand where to start, but to actually use it, you’ll need to have access to a laptop, tablet, or cell phone. So it’s always a good idea to be transparent now and make sure you have the legal side of things taken care of first.
Yorba: That makes a lot of sense, but I’m curious how that plays into the ethical considerations. Beyond getting their passwords, what else should people consider?
Bill: The first thing to consider before going through a loved one’s files is whether you had explicit permission from the person to go through everything.
If they did not give you permission, you could run afoul of some of the privacy laws that exist out there.
The other thing to think about is what is your reaction going to be if you come across something that you can't get an answer for.
Remember, this person is gone, so you’ll want to think about that before you start digging in.
Yorba: That’s a huge consideration, but since a lot of people reading this might be younger, what advice do you have for them?
Bill: Start working with an estate lawyer now and get some of that stuff started early. Even though you might not need it for years, it will make things so much easier in the long run, especially as you add assets or grow a family.
You don’t want your family to be surprised with an annual subscription you forgot about, so if you handle those things now, it’ll be much easier for them later.
Then get a password manager if you don’t already have one.
If you’re working to help your parents, go over the estate map here and make sure you get explicit permission to handle their digital files after death
Yorba: I love this, and a lot of what you shared is actually what Yorba helps with. Can you share more about how you use Yorba for your work?
Bill: The idea of Yorba was fascinating to me. The whole process of looking through of trying to find digital accounts is very time-consuming.
Once you have access to the accounts, you have to manually scan through things like subscriptions for streaming services, news sites, etc. While it might be easy, it takes a lot of time to manually look through it or do a search.
With Yorba, I’m able to automate that and find the accounts so much faster. It was really exciting to me to be able to save that kind of time and then be able to get this report of all the accounts.
From there, I can just decide whether it’s something to keep or remove.
Being able to open up that screen and see an organized list of accounts is going to immediately reduce the stress.
Even if you don’t have 100% accuracy, even having 90% of that information is going to be a whole lot better than starting from 0.
Learn more about The Reluctant Executor here.
Support Bill by signing up for Yorba with his referral link.
