Your digital life: accounts, devices and who could get into them

Are you ready if your laptop crashes?

Think about what lives on your devices and in your accounts. Family photos. Email going back years. Banking apps, bills, subscriptions, the cloud folder where the scanned documents went. A growing share of life now has no paper copy at all.

That makes digital life one of the newest parts of being ready, and one of the least organized. Not because anyone is careless, but because it grew up so quickly.

Start with an account map

An account map is not a password list. It is a list of which accounts exist, so that you, or someone helping you, knows what is out there. The categories tend to look like this:

• The keys to everything. Your main email account and your phone number, which reset almost everything else.
• Money. Online banking, payment apps, investment platforms.
• Bills and subscriptions. Utilities, streaming, software, memberships.
• Memories. Photo libraries, cloud storage, social media.
• Work and side projects. Domains, stores, client tools.

Do you know which email address each important account is tied to? Which phone number receives the security codes?

Devices

Phones, laptops, tablets, a family computer, maybe a smart speaker or two. For each one, a couple of questions come up:

• Is what is on it backed up anywhere, and where?
• If it were lost or broken, what would be hard to get back?
• Could anyone else get into it if they needed to?

Device makers and account providers each explain their own backup and recovery options in their help pages, and those change often enough that the official pages are the place to check.

Who could get in, and who should not

Security and access pull in opposite directions. Strong passwords and two-step sign-in keep strangers out. They also keep out a partner or family member who might one day need to help. How to balance that is a personal choice.

Some people use a password manager and share emergency access with one trusted person. Some keep sealed instructions with their other important papers. Some major platforms offer settings that let you name someone to manage or receive an account after your death; each platform's help pages explain what it offers. An attorney can explain how digital accounts fit with any estate documents in your state.

The quiet subscriptions

Every account map turns up a few surprises: the app trial that became a subscription, the cloud storage plan for a phone you no longer own. Bank and card statements are the quickest way to find them. Anything that bills you is an account.

Photos and memories

For many households, the most precious digital things are not accounts at all. They are photos and videos. Where do yours live: on a phone, in a cloud library, on an old laptop in a cupboard? Is there more than one copy? Would anyone else in the family know how to reach them?

A little at a time

Nobody maps their whole digital life in an afternoon. Starting with the main email account, the phone and the money apps covers the heart of it.

The LIFE ADMIN READY page gathers the everyday records people most often go looking for, and ESTATE READY covers the information someone else might one day need. The Readyness Check also has a short section on digital life.