Tell me your secrets! Bare your soul. Reveal all there is to know about you.
How would you react to such an invitation?
Would you view it as a chance to share? Somebody showing an interest? An opportunity? A threat?
Perhaps you may be unmasked as a mild-mannered accountant by day, crime-fighting superhero by night. Or maybe the big reveal would be that you really are the most boring person on the planet.
Not willing to share? Then you must be hiding something! Creepy predilections. Unsavoury peccadillos. Cheating on your spouse? Evading taxes? Selling state secrets? Watching (gasp) reality television?
Tell me the login details to your work payroll system. Your internet banking passwords. Your PIN numbers.
How would you react now? Still willing to share?
Is your fear the violating of terms and conditions you signed up to when you joined, or that you will feel violated in turn? An embarrassment of riches revealed, or perhaps a more embarrassing absence of riches exposed. Living larger, or more modestly, than your earnings appear to allow.
Share your email password with me. Give me access to your social media. Your dating app profiles.
Does your current partner know you are still in touch with your high school sweetheart? Are your industry peers aware of your anonymous YouTube channel? What would your boss say if they knew about the content of your satirical newsletter?
Tell me your secrets!
Personal information
At some point, our journey is over and our adventures come to an end. This outcome is certain, one of the few constants in life. The unknown is simply a question of timing and style.
Of course, by that point, we are beyond caring. Depending on our preferred comforting fairy story, our minds may be otherwise occupied. Burning in the fiery depths of eternal damnation. Fighting and feasting in Valhalla. Partying with 72 virgins in paradise. Reunited with long-departed loved ones. Or perhaps reincarnated as something reflecting our karmic account balance, the next Dalai Lama or a lowly dung beetle.
Shortly after our demise, another inevitability is that a flock of vultures will start circling our estate. Friends and family. Colleagues and charities. Creditors and the tax authorities.
Greed in their eyes. Grasping hands. Snouts in the trough. All seeking an unearned windfall.
A noble, or just naïve, executor steps up to assume the role of an Indiana Jones-like treasure hunter. Following cryptic clues and incomplete accounts to seek out long lost riches, in the face of overwhelming odds. All the while fending off demons and monsters. Protecting the spoils until they can be safely distributed to their rightful owners.
The role is gruelling. Relentless. Thankless. A nightmare journey through a bureaucratic maze that could only have been designed by an evil cartoon bad guy, with a wicked sense of humour, who was having a really bad day.
In real life, that treasure hunter role involves slightly fewer car chases and gun battles than the movies, though there will still be poison darts and boulders hurled in their general direction. Plenty of scope for bribery, backstabbing, and betrayal. Families are complicated.
Back in the olden days, executors combed through mountains of paperwork. Cheque stubs. Letters. Passbooks. Receipts. Statements. Making phone calls and personal pleas at bank branches. Throwing themselves upon the mercy and common sense of bank tellers and administrators.
Today the job has become infinitely harder, as we have traded our analogue existence for a digital paperless one. Each part of the puzzle locked away behind usernames, passwords, and multi-factor authentication.
Identity fraud and data protection rules throw up all manner of barriers and roadblocks to discovering the very existence of holdings, let alone their content and value.
Consider how you access a humble bank account.
Unlock your phone using facial recognition. Fingerprints. A secret code that you have probably never written down.
Open a banking app. Supply a login. A password. Likely an impossible to remember one, known only to a password vault, locked away behind yet another layer of authentication.
Supply a two-factor magic number. Delivered via SMS message, authenticator app, or hardware key.
Now multiply all of those hoops you just jumped through by the number of accounts you hold.
Our intrepid Indiana Jones may be adept at retrieving ancient artefacts armed with little more than a satchel, whip, ever-present Fedora hat, and their wits. But for modern-day artefacts, he’d be screwed without your phone and access to your email account where all the password reset messages get delivered.
Next, consider how much harder it would be to discover, track down, and access those more obscure stores of wealth you have scattered across the ether.
Store credit and gift card balances.
Peer-to-peer lending accounts.
Kickstarter campaign investments.
Unregulated crypto exchange accounts, and hardware wallets squirrelled away in safe deposit boxes.
Non-fungible tokens, digital assets of dubious value that few can explain, and fewer could track down.
Where would the executor look? Where would they even begin?
What trail of breadcrumbs have you left for those who follow in your footsteps?
How have you balanced out the trade-off between the risks of security vulnerabilities and identity theft today, versus providing access to your nearest and dearest in the event of your untimely death? Disablement? Or incapacity?
Tell me your secrets!
Expectation of privacy
How many of those same logins and passwords have you already shared with your partner? Your adult children? Those same people who will be the executor of your estate, or trusted with a lasting power of attorney later in life?
If not the account details themselves, how about information on where to find the secret decoder ring or skeleton key to all your financial affairs? Perhaps the location of an aptly named “death folder” is one of the clues left for Indiana Jones in your legal will.
You do have a death folder, don’t you?
Diligently keep it up to date every time you open a new account or reset a password?
You don’t? Oh dear! (Me either).
If you haven’t left a trail of breadcrumbs, ask yourself why not?
Is it a question of trust? A longing for privacy? Or just old fashioned laziness and apathy? Be honest.
Tell me your secrets!
Overshare?
At a dinner recently, a drunk colleague whipped out his phone and proudly showed off a tracking app.
It plotted on a map exactly where he, his long-suffering wife, and the individual members of his tribe of teenage children all were. In real-time. Dinner. Home. Football practice. Locations unexplained.
He boasted that his wife monitored his approach home from work, so she could have dinner on the table as he walked through the door each evening. The assembled crowd made appropriately impressed ooh and ahh noises. Marvelled at the wonders of modern technology and the selfless generosity of his “tradwife”, some obscure niche internet subculture I had not previously heard of.
I must confess that I found it all a little bit creepy.
Cast your mind back to all the mischief and misadventure you enjoyed back in high school.
How much of what you got up to then would you have been happy having your parents and siblings knowing about? Bunking off school. Hanging out with friends instead of doing homework. Pursuing a new love interest. Sneaking out at night. Getting drunk or stoned or laid or tattooed at deserted suburban playgrounds or random house parties. Far from the watchful eyes of responsible adults.
Those hard-won “learning by doing” experiences taught us more about independence, self-reliance, lateral thinking, and applied problem-solving than any number of theoretical parental lectures. Dealing with the arrests, car accidents, drug overdoses, teenage pregnancies, and lifelong buyer’s remorse from getting those tattoos.
A trial by fire introduction to the accountable adult world. One that equipped those participants who survived with the skills required to navigate life’s challenges.
How much of what you get up to today might similarly get you in trouble with your loved ones?
Perhaps mostly innocent things. A cheeky pint after work. Dawdling home via the scenic route. That sneaky commuting detour via the shopping centre, rather than heading straight home.
Perhaps less innocent things. Visiting a betting shop. A mistress. Or a toy boy. Choose your own adventure.
Would I want my family to track my every move? Would I want to know everything they got up to?
I wasn’t sure that I did.
Not because I have some dark secret to hide. It was more the principle of the thing that troubled me.
Tell me your secrets!
Under the radar
Apple’s latest billion-dollar consumer electronics product line is the AirTag. Coin sized tokens that can be attached to bikes, cars, keyrings, school bags, suitcases, or wallets. Allowing the owner to monitor in real-time the whereabouts of the item being tracked. And by extension, the person carrying it.
The use cases are many and varied. Find your lost luggage in an airport. Help police locate and possibly recover stolen items. Keep a watchful eye on the movements of loved ones, much to the delight of overprotective parents, insecure employers, and stalkers everywhere.
The fact that these items have sold so well reinforces the cliché that it is human nature to select convenience over privacy when offered the choice.
My lady wife was an early adopter of AirTags. Purchasing a handful shortly after their release.
One was attached to my younger son’s school bag. Another to my elder son’s keyring.
The explanation was innocent enough: “just in case”.
Helping to find lost keys or bags during the mad rush to get everyone out the door each weekday morning, when the absence of misplaced items is discovered with monotonous regularity.
There was just one problem. It wasn’t true.
By default, the AirTag emits a chirping sound when the owner polls for its location.
Which was problematic for my elder son. His high school has outlawed mobile phones. Should they be seen or heard, they are confiscated and the student receives an automatic after school detention.
To get the phone back, a parent is required to attend in person during school hours to apologise and beg for its return.
During that first day, the AirTag on his key ring chirped not once but on a half dozen different occasions. His teachers hulked. His phone was confiscated. His school day extended.
On the second day, he attempted to muffle the AirTag in his pencil case. Wrapped up in his coat. Shoved down the bottom of his bag. Chirp. Chirp. Chirp. Detention.
On the third day, he took the AirTag off and hid it in his sock drawer at home.
No detention at school this time, but the rocket he received upon returning home registered an 11 on the Richter Scale.
A settings change was found to halt the chirping. Alas, the spying was an issue not so easily resolved.
In the weeks that followed he was repeatedly busted doing the things that teenagers are supposed to do. Stopping off at a friend’s place on the way home. Going for a sneaky McDonalds. Seeking extra help on the sly from a teacher after school, when he didn’t understand a concept explained during class.
My son resented the invasion of his privacy. The constant intrusion, and lack of trust it represented.
He faced a tough choice. A grown-up choice.
Submit.
Rebel.
Or learn to lie. Becoming a person with secrets. With something to hide.
Tell me your secrets
Where do you stand on sharing versus privacy?
Is it secretive to not share everything with your nearest and dearest?
Or is it reasonable to desire a semblance of privacy? Sharing some things, but not everything.
Does not sharing everything automatically mean you have something to hide?
Where do you draw the line? Does your spouse have access to all your logins and accounts?
Tell me your secrets!
Aussie HIFIRE 25 October 2021
My spouse doesn’t have access to all my accounts, but she knows where all of them are and the approximate account balances. Similarly the backup executor on my will has the same details of who the various investments, bank accounts, insurances etc are with so that if the worst were to happen it’s hopefully relatively easy to get the estate sorted out rather than having to try to figure out where everything was held.
I would suggest that you may want to do this as an electronic document rather than a paper one, or do both. It doesn’t happen very often, but if your house burns down with you and your written list of all your accounts, well there is no more list. Similarly when it comes to your will and other estate planning documents, it’s best not to keep them at home in a lot of cases.
{in·deed·a·bly} 26 October 2021 — Post author
Thanks Aussie HIFIRE.
Hopefully you and your spouse have settled on an arrangement that works for both of you.
You make a good point about the fragility of paper, fire or flood or theft are not its friend. Having a copy of a will on file with your lawyer is a common fallback option. Won’t get updated often, but hopefully contains the trail of breadcrumbs to the up to date electronic document you mention.
FI-FireFighter 26 October 2021
I started a ‘when I’m not here’ folder to help my wife and or kids.
Your post prompted me to revisit it.
It’s mostly complete with the relevant info they would need to find the accounts and insurance details etc but it’s already out of date. A lot can change in a year!
Also it doesn’t have any of the passwords, so I need a separate document for those.
I think I will complete these, keep them electronic and update them monthly when I do my budgets and spreadsheet. It won’t be difficult if I do it monthly.
I have LPA for my elderly parents and they want to make me executor for their estate. I have been going through reams of paperwork with them to get my head around their affairs.
It’s been quite difficult, stressful, surprising and disappointing ( finding out they had been scammed??), but I did manage to stop it quickly.
And they were there for me to ask questions.
If I had been doing this without them it would have been incredibly difficult, almost impossible to do fully and accurately.
Good post bud ?
{in·deed·a·bly} 26 October 2021 — Post author
Thanks FI-FireFighter.
The passwords was a tricky one for me also. Where to leave the list of one-time backdoor codes to open the password safe, which in turn provides access to the account credentials. It needs to be discoverable by an executor, but not a burglar. Findable by next of kin in an emergency, but hidden from someone with malicious intent.
One day somebody will come up with a viable solution, will be a billion dollar idea. It is actually one of the few sensible uses for blockchain, an immutable tamper proof (in theory) record with clear ownership and authentication controls.
Well done for staring down the demons of your own mortality and putting together the folder, then remembering to maintain it. Kudos also for stepping up to help out your parents, is great you are getting in front of it while they are still able to be asked.
Boltt 2 November 2021
I am starting to get my papers in order – given POA to wife and one daughter.
My wife has little interest in finances (apart from spending) but I have ensured she know who we have accounts with, II, pensionx3, banks etc. There is also a list of with account number in the “box” with the will.
I had assumed the will POA, death certificate and account numbers would be sufficient for my executors to access the money – so I have not documented passwords anywhere. That seems unnecessary and risky.
Do they really need the passwords? (Genuine question)
Boltt
Ps I have build a prototype app in Adalo that holds documents and shares them on death to your nominated data inheritors. Happy to hear from investors….
{in·deed·a·bly} 2 November 2021 — Post author
Thanks Boltt. Sounds like you’re well organised there, well done.
Where I found phone access and passwords particularly useful when processing a deceased estate was the endless number of accounts and subscriptions we didn’t know about or hadn’t thought of. So not the primary current account or main couple of pensions. It was more things like the utility providers, toll road accounts, internet groceries, home insurers, and so on.
Being able to login and update payment details meant continuity of service. As opposed to utilities automatically being disconnected or accounts closed due to the named account holder having passed away. Reconnection invariably took days and involved the provider usually attempting to charge a fee (though most waived it when I pushed back, given the circumstances of the change).
Every organisation seemed to have different processes for dealing (or not) with a deceased estate. We had joint name bank or credit accounts frozen or closed. Others were happy to just update the account name to remove the decedent.
Today, I’d include directions to the master password for my password vault with my will. The rest of the details could then be found where I use and maintain them on a day to day basis.
Boltt 2 November 2021
I agree with sharing passwords for utilities and subscriptions – it just makes life simpler.
My father in law has dementia and we’ve moved him closer to us – it’s been a pita trying to cancel his memberships/subscriptions (mobile phone contracts that hadn’t been used for 5 years, AA membership even though he doesn’t drive etc). In the end it was much easier to just pretend to be him to cancel stuff. There was an inappropriate push back on cancellation when they “knew” they were were taking to an old man over 80!
I’ve also been thinking of splitting a master password into 3 for different people eg one person gets an upper caps string, person 2 gets the upper /lower caps rule, the third which characters to use – I’m possibly over thinking it, or have trust issues!
{in·deed·a·bly} 2 November 2021 — Post author
We followed a similar play book with impersonating. Pretty quickly figured the call centre operator didn’t care, so why make things complicated.
No judgement here, but there is something wrong if you would trust someone to make Do Not Resuscitate decisions for you but not trust them with your Netflix password! Families are complicated though, so go with what lets you sleep well at night.
weenie 26 October 2021
I feel for your son – if my sister proposes similar for my nephew, I will be on his side arguing against it.
Does your wife have a tag herself so you can keep track of her activities? ‘Just in case’?
I think everyone should have some sort of privacy, although I guess one person’s sense of privacy is different from another’s – some things do need to be shared but not everything.
I have a safety deposit box, where all my important docs are kept and had thought to keep all my account/password details in there but realised it would not be convenient to keep popping in, every time I changed my password or opened a new account!
A digital document is the way to go but like you say, where to store that?
{in·deed·a·bly} 26 October 2021 — Post author
Thanks weenie.
Lol! No. Like many woke culture warriors, hypocrisy abounds and there are definitely two sets of rules at play. “Do as I say, not as I do“.
That said, I don’t think any of the rest of us have any interest in tracking each other. We trust each other. We don’t feel the need to live in each other’s pockets. We generally do what we say we are going to do, and be where we say we are going to be. The rest is just living life and being flexible.
Agreed, it is a tough one for my son. I ran interference for him when he left the tracker at home, and he has benefited from watching how things played out when I refused to wear a tracker. It wasn’t pretty.
GentlemansFamilyFinances 31 October 2021
I loved this post because it is written by someone who has stood in both the pre surveillance age and today and knows the benefits of both but that it’s not the same for his kid’s generation.
{in·deed·a·bly} 1 November 2021 — Post author
Thanks GFF. I’m pretty sure you just found a polite way to call me old!
GentlemansFamilyFinances 1 November 2021
Haha – I’m not that much younger (and I’m embracing my own middle aged man mindset).