By Katie Momo
- A Money Map helps your family find all your money once you pass (so nothing gets lost)
- This is the guide I wish I had when I put my Money Map together
- Get your Money Map template to easily create your own!
Grab your free template
Log into your Google Drive, then click the button below to save a copy to your Drive.
Call me a meticulous planner (or *anxious*), but I’ve been wondering:
What happens to my money after I die???
How do I make sure it gets to the right place?!
And these are good questions…
As of 2022, the Bank of Canada has 1.8 BILLION sitting in inactive accounts
And this number keeps growing each year 😱
With online bank accounts, crypto wallets, and online payment processors the amount of ‘lost money’ is expected to accelerate.
To make sure my money doesn’t end up there, I created a “money map” that shows exactly where I’ve squirreled everything away!
Here, I’ll walk you through what I did…
What I put in our Money Map
The point of this is to organize our finances so one of us knows what to look for, and where to find the information.
It basically includes anything with monetary value.
The big things it covers:
Accounts: Where to find our banking and investment accounts, and stuff related to my business
Assets: Investments, real estate, vehicles
Insurance and pensions: Personal and workplace insurance and pensions
You might want to add a section for liabilities, and anything else that feels important for you to include. Whatever fits your money situation!
Think about who this is for
There are a few scenarios I had in mind:
- Something happens to me. Does my partner have everything they need?
- Something happens to my partner. Do I have everything I need?
- Something happens to both of us. Does our executor have what they need?
Since our executor is a family member, they know a bunch of stuff already so we didn’t include the basics.
Also, I didn’t create this to deal with other kinds of emergencies - like if we need to make a home insurance claim because of fire, flooding, hail, or the like.
That’s good to have, and something I plan to do in the future. But that won’t contain sensitive information and would just be for us, so it doesn’t need the next-level security I want for this.
Choose where to keep it
You’ll probably want to have both paper and digital copies.
Paper
We’ll keep one version, and give copies to our parents to keep in the safe.
Digital
This was the biggest stressor for me. Obviously we want to create this on a computer, but we also want to keep it safe. Howwww?
I figured the best way is to keep it on an encrypted platform. Thankfully there are tons to choose from now.
Encryption platforms to check out
Do your own research to find one that suits your needs. Here are some ideas to get started:
We went with Proton Drive. Here’s why:
✅ It’s free up to 3 GB (and with a few simple steps you can get up to 5 GB free), which is more than enough for what we need for this.
✅ It has documents built-in, so I can easily create and update our Money Map on the platform directly.
✅ We got an extra layer of security by enabling 2-factor authentication.
No matter what system you choose, here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Make sure it’s accessible only to you. You don’t want Big Data getting their hands on your info.
You might see these terms, and they are important:
- "End-to-end encryption" - This gives maximum privacy and security, because only you and the people with access can reach your information.
- "Zero-knowledge encryption" - Even the platform cannot access or decrypt the data.
- Make it easy to update. It’s a pain if you have to download and re-upload your file every time you need to make a change.
- Have a recovery plan. In case you get locked out, make sure there’s an option for backup recovery (this might be something you need to activate once you’ve created your account)
Put it all together
This doesn’t need to be super intense.
Being vague is a good thing in this case. If someone happens to get your Money Map, ideally they shouldn’t have enough information to trace it back to you directly.
For example, the person who will handle our estate is a family member. They know our address, they don’t need it. So under real estate I just listed “our house” so they know it’s the only real estate we own.
Here’s what a Money Map can look like:
Accounts
Example:
I put together a chart with our accounts which includes:
- The institution where it’s at
- Account number
- What the account is used for
- The type of account it is
- Any notes that could be helpful
Assets
Example:
The easiest section of all!
I also included screenshots of our investment portfolio in folders that show how many shares we have of each fund.
Insurance and pensions
Example:
Depending on your setup, you might want to include:
- Company pensions
- Life insurance
- House insurance
- Vehicle insurance
Your Money Map is ready!
Woohoo! Now you can share it with Your Person who will be looking after everything.
(Of course, this should be someone you trust completely - here’s a good outline of things to think about and how to approach the conversation.)
I feel a million times lighter having this done. It was weighing on my mind for far too long, and it was actually really simple to put together once I decided to do it.
And it’ll be even easier for you with this guide and template 👏
Log into your Google Drive, then click the button below to save a copy to your Drive.
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