Getting your affairs in order before death: a complete checklist

You've meant to get to this for a while now. You know it matters. You're just not sure where the list actually begins.

Getting your affairs in order before death means gathering the documents, accounts, wishes, and personal messages your family would need to find if you were no longer here to point the way. A complete checklist covers several areas, including (but not limited to) personal details, financial accounts, insurance and benefits, medical information, property, your digital life, final wishes, and personal messages. You don't have to finish it in one sitting. You just have to start somewhere on the list.

What follows is that list, kept to just eight on purpose. These are the areas that apply to almost everyone. (A more comprehensive planner adds others, like a business or fuller letters and messages, but not everyone needs those.) Read through it to see what's involved, check off what you've already handled, and note the gaps. The work is more straightforward than the phrase makes it sound. The hard part was always just knowing where to begin.

How do you actually use this checklist?

Treat it as a map, not a test. Print it, or keep it open on your phone, and work down it one area at a time. One area a weekend is a comfortable pace. Check off what's already handled, mark what isn't, and you'll have your to-do list without having to invent it.

You don't need to understand estate planning to start. You just need to know what to gather and where to put it. If you want the deeper picture, what each area covers and why it matters, our end-of-life planning guide is the long-form companion to this list. This post is the do-it version.

The complete checklist: eight areas to get in order.

Work down the list at your own pace. One area a weekend is a reasonable rhythm.

1. Personal details and key contacts. Your full legal name, date of birth, and Social Security or Social Insurance Number. Where your will lives and who drafted it. Your Power of Attorney for finances and for health. Emergency contacts, next of kin, and the people whose advice you trust: your lawyer, accountant, and financial advisor. This is the first thing anyone will look for, so keep it current. Refresh it once a year.
2. Financial accounts. Bank accounts, investment and retirement accounts (including the one from a job three roles ago), debts and loans, credit cards, online payment accounts, and any cryptocurrency. Document not just that each account exists, but how to access it. A statement isn't a login.
3. Insurance and benefits. Life, health, home, and auto policies. Employer or pension benefits. And the beneficiary designations on every account that has them. They override what your will says about the same money. The most overlooked item here is a beneficiary named in an earlier chapter of your life and never updated.
4. Medical information. Your physicians and specialists, current medications and dosages, conditions and allergies, and your advance care directives, plus a plain-language conversation with the person you've named. Forms capture preferences; the conversation is what makes the hardest decisions easier on the person who has to make them.
5. Property and assets. Real estate and mortgages, vehicles, valuables, storage units, and safety deposit boxes, including where the key is (a small and recurring problem). Note the things with meaning, not only the things with a price tag. The locket and the dish set deserve a line too.
6. Your digital life. Email accounts, social media and what you'd want done with each, subscriptions to cancel (there are more than you think), cloud storage for photos, and your password manager and how to open it. This is the most overlooked area and, increasingly, the most important. Most people who've organized everything else still don't have this written down anywhere.
7. Final wishes. Burial or cremation, a service or neither, a funeral home preference, obituary notes, and anything already pre-arranged and pre-paid, with the location of those papers. These are the details that let the people you love honor you the way you would have. Without them, they guess.
8. Personal messages. The words you'd want your spouse, your children, your closest friends to have. The values you want passed on. The belongings you'd want specific people to receive. This is the most emotionally important area on the list, and the one most often left undone, because unlike a policy or a deed, it's the one thing no one can reconstruct once you're gone. It doesn't have to be long. A few honest lines, a letter, or a note tucked somewhere they'll find it. What matters is that you leave something.

That's the whole map. If you'd rather see it on two printable pages you can fill in by hand, the free checklist puts all eight areas in one place.

Where should you start if you've been putting it off?

Start with the one area no one could reconstruct without you: your personal messages. Then personal details and key contacts, the first thing your family will reach for. Everything else leaves some kind of paper trail, so it can wait a week. The first move isn't finishing; it's putting one thing where it can be found.

Can you do this for someone you love, or give it as a gift?

Often the person thinking about this checklist isn't the one whose affairs need ordering. It's a daughter who's noticed her mother hasn't written any of it down, and doesn't know how to start the conversation.

A guided planner can be the way in. Instead of asking your mother to face a blank notebook, you give her something that asks the questions for her, in the right order, with room to answer at her own pace. It's a practical gift that does quiet work, and a gentler entry than "we need to talk about your will." If that's the version of this you're in, our piece on gifts for aging parents starts with the gift rather than the guide.

How getting organized fits a more intentional, edited life.

 

There's a quieter way to see this work. Getting your affairs in order isn't a grim, separate chore. It's part of the same instinct behind sorting the closet, thinning the bookshelf, and deciding what stays.

You may have come across Swedish death cleaning. If you haven't, it's the quiet practice of sorting and thinning your belongings now, so the people you love aren't left to do it later. It handles the things; this checklist handles the documents. Two halves of one calm: an edited life, where what matters is findable and what doesn't has been let go. If the clutter is the part that overwhelms you, our take on Swedish death cleaning is a gentler place to start, and the documents follow naturally once the things are sorted.

The Intentional Maven helps women organize life's most important details, with planners and companions for end-of-life planning, legacy, gratitude, and intentional living.

When you're ready to move from the checklist to the actual work, there are two ways in. The Gracious Goodbye Essentials is the simplified version: ten guided sections covering the practical areas almost everyone needs, with prompts that ask the right questions in the right order, space for a few reflections and messages, and a place to keep key documents together. The Gracious Goodbye is the comprehensive one, for when there's more to hold: a business to account for, or a dedicated section for the fuller letters and parting messages this post calls most important. Both are guided, not blank pages waiting for you to figure out what goes where. And if you'd rather just see the map first, the free checklist is two pages and a place to begin. For the full walk-through of every area, the end-of-life planning guide is the deeper companion to this list.

Common questions about getting your affairs in order.

How do I get my affairs in order before death?

Work through the eight areas above and start with the one your family would need first if something happened tomorrow. For most people, that's personal messages and personal details. You don't do it all at once. One area a weekend is plenty.

Can I do this on paper, or does it need to be digital?

Either works. What matters is that you'll keep it up and that your people can find it. Some prefer a written planner they can hold and shelve; others want a digital file they can update from a phone. Pick the format you'll actually come back to, not the one that sounds most efficient.

Do I need a lawyer for any of this?

Not for most of it. Getting your affairs in order is mostly gathering and recording what already exists: accounts, wishes, contacts, messages. A lawyer matters for the will itself and for a complex estate, but the rest of the checklist is yours to do at the kitchen table.

What's the fastest way to make a dent this weekend?

Pick one area and finish it rather than touching all eight. Personal details and key contacts is the quickest win: names, numbers, and where the will lives. And it's the first thing anyone will look for.

I've started before and stalled. How do I keep going?

Lower the bar. The goal isn't every line filled; it's that the people you love would know what to do. Finish one area, leave the rest, and come back next weekend. A half-done checklist someone can find beats a perfect one that never got started.

Related reading:

• What to give your aging parents (when they don't need more stuff). For the version of this conversation that starts with a gift rather than a guide.
• What is Swedish death cleaning, really? A gentler take on a heavy phrase. For the version of this conversation that starts with the things, not the documents.