What Matters Most by Chanel Reynolds

Author:Chanel Reynolds
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-02-11T05:00:00+00:00

1. Essentials

For every minute spent organizing, an hour is earned.

—ANONYMOUS

According to a 2016 Intel Security survey, the average person has twenty-seven (27!) separate online logins, and 37 percent of people forget a password at least once a week. Keeping track of your email, banking, and online subscription accounts is already hard enough to manage. Now imagine that your partner needs to gain access to them—or even just one of them. Without any help, password-guessing can be a needle in a haystack. A very irritating haystack on fire that makes you want to scream and throw things.

Like the time I called the hospital a few months after José’s death to get an estimate of his medical bills. The woman in the billing department told me she could not give out the information to me, even though I claimed to be his wife, because the paperwork noted his status as single and not married. I suggested that I send her the marriage certificate and the death certificate to clear things up.

She laughed and asked, “Who on earth would you need to send a death certificate for?”

“The death certificate for my dead husband who died in your hospital? That death certificate?” I replied.

She squeaked out a few horrified apologies with “Oh, my heavens” and “Oh, dear” and suggested she get her manager to help me immediately.

“Yes, thank you,” I said. “Why don’t you go do that.”

It’s not her fault. She just answered the phone. Don’t yell. Don’t yell. Don’t yell. Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. It’s not her fault.

You’ll save yourself (or your family) hours of misery and stress by compiling essential information, such as important contacts and all of your banking, credit card, social media, and other online account details and log-in information. Thanks to our computers auto-filling many log-ins, you likely take these bits of information for granted every day, but without them your daily life would come grinding to a halt. Take it from me. It is a punishing task to call credit companies and government offices saying over and over again, “My husband died and I’m trying to get access to the folder where our baby pictures are stored.” Also, the company you have an account with may not be legally required, or even permitted, to grant access to your family, depending on your state’s laws and/or company policy. The digital world has made life easier (or at least more convenient and entertaining), but if you have a PayPal/Venmo/Bitcoin account that nobody else knows about, it could just drift away (with your money in it) if you don’t keep track of it.

Getting organized around happy things seems easier, so try telling yourself that this is not a chore but part of the anticipation of something fun, like shopping for a present or planning a vacation. When I was pregnant, we had a phone tree, a food-delivery schedule, a (lengthy and overwritten) birth plan in place, and all of our medical and insurance info in a tidy little binder.

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