If something happened to you this week, there are four questions your family would need answered quickly. If even one answer exists only in your head, the practical problem starts there.
This is not a full end-of-life checklist. It is a five-minute self-audit.
Who can get into your phone?
Your phone is not just a phone. It is often the quickest route to contacts, photographs, appointment details, account alerts and the two-factor authentication codes needed to reach everything else.
If nobody can get in, the problem spreads. A relative may know there is an insurance account but be unable to find the email connected with it. Family photographs may be sitting in a cloud account that nobody can reach.
The solution is not to write your passcode on a sticky note beside the device. Decide how secure access or recovery should work and make sure the right person knows where those instructions are.
Think about the ordinary things your phone now holds that used to live elsewhere: the number of the neighbour with a spare key, the email from the insurance provider, the photograph of an important document, the calendar entry for an appointment. If the device is the index to the rest of your life, somebody needs to know the recovery route even if they do not know the code itself.
Where is your will, physically, and who has seen it?
Knowing that you “have a will” is not the same as knowing where it is. Could somebody name the room, drawer, file box or professional contact where the document can be found?
A document nobody can find has, in practical terms, much the same immediate effect as no document at all. People still have to search, make calls and work out whether another version exists.
Do not hide important paperwork so successfully that it becomes a family puzzle.
The useful test is not whether you remember putting it somewhere safe. It is whether another person could find the current version without emptying cupboards, calling several relatives and wondering whether the copy they found is out of date. One clear location and one person who knows about it removes a surprising amount of uncertainty.
Who handles the money in the first month?
This question is not about inheritance. It is about ordinary household administration.
Which accounts pay the mortgage or rent, utilities, insurance, phone contracts and other regular bills? Which direct debits continue automatically? When nobody has a map of this, important bills may go unpaid while small recurring charges continue quietly in the background.
A useful record identifies which providers exist, what each account is used for and where the details are kept.
Picture the first four weeks rather than the whole estate. Rent or mortgage payments still have dates. Utilities still send bills. Insurance, memberships and subscriptions may still renew. A simple household map showing which provider handles what gives the person dealing with the practical side a starting point.
Who takes the pets, and have you actually asked them?
People often have a very clear answer to the first half of this question: “My sister would take the dog.” “Our friends would have the cats.” Then comes the second half: have you actually asked?
An assumed arrangement can fall apart at the worst possible moment. The person you have in mind may already have pets, live somewhere that does not allow animals, have a child with an allergy or simply be unable to take on the responsibility.
Ask the person. Then write down the answer. It is also useful to record the vet, feeding routine, medication and where the carrier, lead or other supplies are kept.
There is also a difference between somebody agreeing in principle and somebody knowing the routine. A useful handover includes the ordinary details that make the first few days easier: where the food is kept, which lead belongs to which dog, whether the cat hides when visitors arrive and who the usual vet is. Small details matter when the animal's normal person is suddenly absent.
If you answered yes to all four
There is one more question: are those answers written somewhere, or do you simply know them?
Knowing where the will is, which bills exist, how phone recovery works and who has agreed to take the pets is useful while you are available to explain it. It is less useful if nobody else knows that you know.
A short written record changes that. It does not need to contain every sensitive detail. It needs to act as a map: what exists, where it is, who has been told and where secure information can be found.
Then test the system from the other side. Imagine you are the person walking into your home with no ability to ask you a follow-up question. Could you identify the right phone instructions, find the current document, understand the household bills and confirm the pet arrangement from what is written? If not, the information is still dependent on your memory.
Four answers are enough to start
You do not need to complete every part of end-of-life planning in one sitting. These four questions are useful because each produces a clear yes or no.
If the answer is no, fix that one thing. Tell one person how phone recovery works. Write down where the will is. List the household accounts and regular bills. Ask the person you assume will take the pets. Four small actions are far more useful than a long plan that stays unwritten.
You can also spread the work across a week. Fix phone recovery today, document location tomorrow, household payments at the weekend and the pet conversation next time you see the person involved. The point of a self-audit is not to produce a perfect file in one sitting. It is to expose the next useful action clearly enough that you can actually do it.
General information, not legal advice. The rules about wills, executors and access to accounts differ from country to country, and in the US from state to state. They also change. Check what applies where you live before you act on any of this.