More blessed, even when you are no more !

 Some decades back, when one of my young relative died under tragic unnatural circumstances, his family was at the crossroads on many counts. As is with untimely death of young ones, neither the departed nor the survivors were prepared for it and being in the nineties, digital preservatives were unheard of. After months of the incident, people managed to stumble upon the fact that he was having a fixed deposit in a not so popular bank, which had matured by then. While the search continued, people were wondering how many more are yet to be unearthed or go unfounded. 

In the days of electronic and digital trails, such unknown terrains and hiccups could easily be avoided, but the question is how many are going the extra mile to avoid this is or are they deliberately keeping things close to their chest until. . . . . .  .

 Late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs reported to have said " I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself -If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today "....?

Setting sentiments and emotions aside, is it worthwhile to think about what will happen If I die now?

• Will my family be able to find out my investments, the persons to whom I have lent money, to whom I owe money, my email profile, my internet banking password, my credit and debit card access details...?
• Will my family know where important documents like bank deposit receipts, locker keys, property documents are located?
• Will my family miss the next due date of medical insurance renewal and other critical  dates?
• In case of accidents, where I am unable to chip in, will my family be able to find out details of my Mediclaim card and policies, for admission to treatment ?
• In case of death, will there be peaceful disbursal of property through a documented Will?
• Who are my bankers, whether all my investments are having proper nominations?

Some points to ponder. . .  . 

In case of untoward demise, mostly, survivors will be at a loss of words and actions, initially from the bereavement and then from the absence of information.

Apart from the loss of near and dear ones, nowadays, people are also at a loss, when their vital information as above are stolen or compromised. With the advent of computers, laptops and mobile phones, peoples' dependency on these equipments have risen multifold that many are even groping for the contact number of their closest family members. Right from bank passwords to date of birth and all other identification parameters are safely stored inside any of these and if anyone of these is hacked, it will be a child's play for the hacker to make merry with not only the financials but also the personal profile details of the victim.

Also, when a computer crashes, most of the valuable documents and other such important information are gone with it and many find it difficult to get any of these, which have been stored for decades. Recently, a friend of mine was lamenting that all the documents so carefully saved ever since he started his official life in the eighties are gone with one crash of the hard disk of his desktop !

To obviate these, to ensure that I have all my required information in an easily reachable manner, to ensure that nothing is gone when my laptop crashes or when my phone is hacked, I have been creating my own primitive methods of safekeeping all these. Towards this, I first ensure that:

• I dont keep any sensitive data like passwords stored in my phone, so that even if I lose my phone or it gets stolen, all that I lose is the depreciated value of that instrument with an added burden of buying a new one!
• I have ensured that I have an anti virus software in stalled in my laptop, which is being updated periodically and also the system is cleaned up with the same frequency.
• Despite having a robust anti virus software which is being used in the prudent way that I know of, I ensure that I dont store any such sensitive data on my laptop, so that even if there an intrusion into my system through a malware etc., my loss will be nothing to lament about.
• I meet the requirement of having all the data when I work on the computer, but still not stored on the hard disk, by storing my immediate needs in a pen drive and keep plugging it whenever required.

Despite all these measures, how to ensure that the private information is available even when the devices are not in work? For this I created my own customized document and all vital information are placed in it a hard copy of which is kept in safe custody known only to those who matter.

After months of slog, when the document took shape I found that to be really helpful and was wondering why this should not be shared with all others too and so a customized template was created.

When the update on this creation was announced my social media page, I was surprised to receive so much requests to share that and the feedback from  about its utility was very encouraging.

In my opinion, it is a very essential document that one must have in the privacy and reach of the close relatives and so I am willing to share the template to whomsoever desires to have one.

To those who are interested to have this template, a simple request email to me at : mail2kapali@gmail.com would do and I will be replying with the template at the earliest.

I sincerely hope that it helps others too, as it did for me, and as is with every work suggestions will help to improve and any feedback will be a source of encouragement to think and create more .

I recall reading the book "Who Will Cry When I Die" by Robin Sharma. This template, I feel is an attempt for those people, not only to cry but also to desist from scolding the departed for want of critical information. 

Cheers !