Digital Legacy: What I Sorted Out in My 60s, With One Handwritten Notebook

Have you heard the term digital legacy?

It means the things left on the internet after a person dies.

• Email
• Social media
• Photos and videos
• Online banks and securities accounts
• Electronic money
• Blogs
• Subscriptions
• Cloud storage
• Crypto assets
• Passwords and IDs

You may be thinking, that is something anyone can look up. That is true.

But I think a lot of people never actually do it. I was one of them.

This is the story of how I started wondering, in my 60s, what happens to all of this when I die, and how I began sorting it out while writing my blog.

Let me put the conclusion first.

It might be better to put the passwords in one handwritten notebook, and tell the family only where that notebook is.

That is what I did. Here is why that was enough, in my case.

Why I started sorting this out in my 60s

My oldest son knows that I write a blog. He reads it.

Thinking about that, something crossed my mind.

What happens to this blog after I die?

What about the contract I pay the server fee on? The login password for the blog? The email address? The online bank?

Once it started to bother me, it did not stop.

Right now I am the only one who knows all of it. But if something happened to me tomorrow, my family could not open a single thing.

I realized this was a serious matter. That is what got me started.

Item 1: Email accounts (I had five)

When I counted them, I had five email addresses.

• Gmail x 2 (one private, one for the blog)
• iCloud (for the Apple ID)
• Docomo (the one that comes with the phone contract)
• Outlook (for the Microsoft account)

I surprised myself. That many.

Email is the ID for almost every service. If that is lost, nothing can be reissued. Not the bank, not the social media, not the blog.

So the email addresses and their passwords were the first thing I sorted out.

Item 2: Social media (only Facebook, and the posts are already deleted)

The only social media I use is Facebook. And I have already deleted every post on it.

I thought, it would feel strange to have only my posts sitting there after I am dead. So I deleted all of them at once.

The account itself is still there. But it is empty inside. I think that is fine.

I do not use X, formerly Twitter, or Instagram, or LINE. Simple, and I am glad about it.

Item 3: Photos (spread across two computers)

My photos are split between two places.

• The Photos app on the MacBook (synced automatically from the phone)
• The Documents folder on the Windows computer

I hardly ever shoot video.

This one I have not finished sorting. They matter as memories, but there are far too many, and I do not know who would even look at them.

Honestly, I have given up on this part. The family can pick out what they want to keep.

Item 4: Bank and securities accounts (three)

• SBI Sumishin Net Bank
• SBI Securities (where I buy stocks, with a sweep account)
• Rakuten Securities (the account only)

This is the part that matters most to the family. It would be a real problem if the money could not be moved.

The account numbers, the login IDs and the passwords are all written in the handwritten notebook I will describe later.

Item 5: Electronic money (only PayPay)

The only cashless payment I use is PayPay. The balance sits somewhere between a few thousand and a few tens of thousands of yen.

That is written in the notebook too, just in case. So the balance does not end up floating in the air after I die.

Item 6: Blogs (I run three)

In my case, this was the hardest part.

I run three blogs.

The server, the domains, the WordPress login details, the email addresses tied to them. I am the only one who knows any of it.

My oldest son reads the blog. But I have not handed him the admin rights.

When I die, I want the family to be able to decide whether to keep the blogs or close them. So at least the login details have to reach them.

Item 7: Subscriptions (the money keeps going out every month)

I had five subscriptions.

• Claude Code (I use it to write this blog)
• Rakko Keyword (for SEO)
• The server for WordPress (ConoHa Wing)
• YouTube Premium
• Liberal Arts University, or Libe Dai, a money education service in Japan that I pay for

The frightening thing about subscriptions is that after I die, the money keeps being taken until somebody cancels them.

The family looks at the card statement, thinks, what is this one, and has to look each one up and cancel it. That is a heavy load to leave behind.

So I wrote out the list of subscriptions in the notebook.

Item 8: Cloud storage (I was using it without knowing)

To be honest, I did not really understand what cloud storage was.

But when I looked into it, I found I was using both iCloud and Google Drive without knowing. The photos on the phone go up to iCloud automatically. And if a person uses Gmail, the Google account comes with 15 GB of free storage. That 15 GB is shared by Gmail, Google Drive and Google Photos, so mail attachments and backed up photos all eat into the same 15 GB.

I think this is a common thing for people in their 60s. You believe you are not using it, and you are using it.

Here too, as long as the family has the Apple ID and the Google account, with the IDs and passwords, they can get in later.

Crypto assets (I do not have any)

I do not hold any crypto assets, or virtual currency.

For anyone who does hold it, this is the biggest trap of all. If the password is lost, the asset is gone forever.

For anyone holding it, keeping a record of it somewhere might be better.

My answer: a handwritten password notebook, and my oldest son knows where it is

This is my answer.

I made one handwritten notebook.

In it I wrote all of this:

• The email addresses and their passwords
• The IDs and passwords for the bank and securities accounts
• The PayPay ID
• The blog login details
• The list of subscriptions
• The Apple ID and the Google account

And I told my oldest son only one thing: where that notebook is.

“When I die, the notebook is in the drawer, in the spot I told you. Look at that and you will know everything.”

That is all of it.

There are password manager apps out there, and digital estate cleanup services, but for a man in his 60s like me, the handwritten notebook is the easiest thing to understand. And for the family too. Open it and anyone can read it.

What matters is telling the family where the notebook is.

That said, I might change this later.

I am thinking about moving to a password manager app like 1Password, which is one of the ones introduced at Liberal Arts University. One master password, and it manages every ID and password.

A handwritten notebook gets annoying to add to as it grows, and mistakes creep into the writing. With 1Password it records everything automatically, and the family only needs to be told the one master password.

For now I am running it by hand, but at some point I intend to move over.

The physical things I am leaving behind (old coins, a guitar, high dividend stocks)

Outside of the digital, I have also decided what I want to leave to my son.

• The sheets of old coins (the ones I collected long ago)
• The guitar (my hobby)
• The high dividend stocks (the dividends keep rising, so they should remain as an asset)

It is not quite as strong as saying, these are the things I must leave behind. It is more that I have told him, take them if you want them.

In short: one notebook, made while you are still well

Sorting out a digital legacy does not have to be complicated.

All I did was this:

1. I got one handwritten notebook
2. I wrote in every ID and password for the email, the bank, the social media, the blogs and the subscriptions
3. I told one family member, someone I trust, where the notebook is

With that, even if something happens to me tomorrow, the family will manage.

No password manager app needed. No digital estate service needed. One notebook, and sharing where it is. That is all.

As long as a person thinks, I do not have to do it myself, I can look it up when the time comes, nobody ever does it. I was the same.

On the day it started to bother me, I went out and bought one notebook. That was the beginning of the sorting.

Doing it while you are still well might be better. Once something happens, it is too late.

Related: the paperwork after my parent died

On this blog I have also written about the time my parent died. Thinking about my own death brings back the memory of that paperwork very clearly.

When My Parent Died, I Had No Idea Where to Start