Everything you need to organize — from healthcare directives to letters for the people you love. Free, guided, and private.
Most of us move through life with a quiet awareness that we should probably get our affairs in order — and then keep putting it off. Nearly 2 in 3 Americans have no end-of-life plan at all. Not because they don’t care, but because the task feels enormous, emotionally charged, or simply hard to start. The truth is, a thoughtful plan isn’t about dwelling on mortality. It’s about clarity: knowing that the people you love won’t be left scrambling through paperwork during the hardest days of their lives. This checklist walks through every category worth addressing — healthcare decisions, legal documents, financial records, digital accounts, and the personal messages that no legal form can capture. You don’t have to do it all today. Start with one section. The act of beginning is what matters.
Healthcare directives are legal documents that communicate your medical wishes when you can no longer speak for yourself. They come into effect during incapacitation — whether from illness, injury, or the end stages of life — and they spare your family from having to guess what you would have wanted during an already devastating time.
There are two main documents to know about. An advance directive (also called a living will) spells out your preferences for specific medical treatments: whether you want life-sustaining measures, mechanical ventilation, feeding tubes, or resuscitation if your condition becomes terminal. A healthcare proxy (or medical power of attorney) goes further — it designates a specific person to make medical decisions on your behalf. These two documents work together: the living will states your wishes, and the healthcare proxy names the person empowered to interpret and carry them out.
Anyone over 18 should have these documents. You don’t need to be elderly or ill. Accidents happen. Sudden illness happens. Having your directives in place means your family has clear guidance, and your designated proxy has legal authority to act on your behalf without delay. Talk to your proxy before you finalize anything — make sure they understand your values and are willing to serve in this role.
A will is the legal document that determines what happens to your assets, your home, and — critically — who cares for your children after you’re gone. Dying without one means the state decides these things according to default laws, which may not reflect your wishes at all. Your estranged cousin could receive assets you intended for a close friend. Courts, not you, appoint a guardian for your children.
Even a modest estate benefits from a will. It names an executor — the person responsible for administering your estate, paying outstanding debts, and distributing your assets according to your instructions. It’s worth choosing someone organized and trustworthy, and confirming they’re willing to take on the role. If you have minor children, the guardian designation is the most important decision in the entire document. Choose someone whose values and capacity for caregiving align with what you’d want for your kids.
Beyond the will itself, review your beneficiary designations on retirement accounts, life insurance policies, and any transfer-on-death accounts. These designations pass assets directly to named individuals outside of probate — which means they override whatever your will says. An outdated beneficiary designation (an ex-spouse, a deceased parent) can create exactly the outcome you were trying to prevent. Review them every few years and after any major life change.
GoodOrder walks you through each of these categories step by step. Free, private, takes about 20 minutes.
Start Your Free Plan →When someone dies, the people closest to them are often the least capable of making logistical decisions quickly. Grief is not a state that lends itself to tracking down phone numbers, recalling whether you preferred burial or cremation, or knowing whether there’s a family plot somewhere. Documenting your contacts and final wishes in advance is one of the most practical gifts you can leave behind.
Start with a clear list of emergency contacts — not just immediate family, but the people who should be notified promptly: close friends, a pastor or religious leader, a trusted advisor, a boss or business partner. Include current phone numbers and your relationship to each person. Keep this list somewhere accessible and tell at least one person where it is.
For funeral and memorial preferences, be as specific as you’re comfortable being. Burial or cremation? A religious service or a secular gathering? A graveside ceremony or a celebration of life at a place that meant something to you? Specific readings, music, or people you’d want to speak? The more you’ve recorded, the less your family has to decide while they’re grieving. These instructions aren’t binding legal documents — they’re guidance — but they carry enormous practical and emotional weight.
Our step-by-step guide covers burial vs. cremation, cost breakdowns, what to include in your funeral wishes, and how to plan a service.
Read our complete funeral planning guide →A generation ago, end-of-life planning had no digital component. Today, most of us have a sprawling presence online — email accounts, social media profiles, cloud storage full of photos, financial accounts accessible only through apps, and possibly cryptocurrency worth real money. None of this has a natural legal heir. Without instructions, your family faces locked accounts, platform bureaucracies, and the prospect of losing irreplaceable files.
Start by taking inventory. What accounts exist, and what should happen to each one? Some platforms — Facebook, for example — allow you to designate a legacy contact who can memorialize or delete your account. Google has an Inactive Account Manager. For email, consider whether a family member should have access for a period to retrieve important correspondence, or whether deletion is preferable. The key is making the decision now and writing it down, rather than leaving your executor to navigate each platform’s unique process under time pressure.
Password access is a separate, important consideration. You don’t need to write down every password (and probably shouldn’t, for security reasons). But document the location of your password manager, or provide a single master access method to a trusted person. Without this, family members may be locked out of accounts that contain financial records, correspondence, or precious personal files.
Even when a family knows someone’s general financial picture, settling an estate requires knowing the specifics: account numbers, institution names, the location of policy documents, the names of financial advisors. Without this information, the executor faces a lengthy investigation into assets that may be scattered across multiple institutions — a process that can take months and occasionally results in accounts going unclaimed entirely.
Create a clear, organized record of your financial life. This doesn’t mean leaving passwords or account numbers in an unsecured document — it means creating a map that tells your executor where to look. Which bank holds your checking account? Where are your retirement accounts held? Do you have a brokerage account, a 529 plan for your children’s education, a pension from a former employer? All of these need to be findable.
Life insurance is particularly important to document clearly. Policies that aren’t claimed don’t pay out automatically — someone has to file. Record your insurer’s name, the policy number, and who the beneficiaries are. Do the same for any annuities or other financial products that have specific claims processes. And don’t forget the liabilities side: your mortgage, car loans, credit cards, and any other recurring obligations will need to be addressed by your estate. A complete picture includes both assets and debts.
GoodOrder breaks it down into simple questions you can answer at your own pace. No legal jargon, no pressure.
Start Your Free Plan →Every other section of this checklist is about logistics — making sure the right people have the right authority and the right information. This section is different. A letter to someone you love isn’t a legal instrument. It can’t be contested in court or filed with a government agency. But in the years after someone is gone, a personal letter is often the thing the family holds most tightly.
These letters don’t have to be long or polished. They can say the things that felt too intense to say out loud — I’m proud of the person you’ve become. I see how hard you’ve worked. I want you to know you were loved in ways I didn’t always show. They can offer advice without the awkwardness of delivering it face to face. They can address future moments you won’t be present for: a child’s graduation, a wedding, a difficult decision they might face years from now. Many people find that the act of writing these letters changes how they feel about the whole process of planning — it stops feeling like paperwork and starts feeling like a final conversation.
Consider a letter for each person who matters most, and don’t limit yourself to immediate family. A letter to a close friend, a sibling, a mentor you want to thank — all of it counts. If writing isn’t natural, a recorded video or voice memo works just as well. The format matters far less than the fact of it existing. Future generations will encounter your words at moments when they need them most, long after you’re gone.
There’s nothing morbid about end-of-life planning. Done right, it’s one of the most loving things you can do for the people in your life — an act of clarity and care that costs you about 20 minutes today and spares your family enormous difficulty later. The six categories in this checklist cover everything that matters: who makes decisions for you, what happens to what you’ve built, who takes care of the people who depend on you, and the words you want to leave behind. You don’t have to complete everything at once. Start with a single section — healthcare directives, or a letter to someone you love — and build from there. What matters is that you begin. Your family will carry your thoughtfulness forward long after you’re gone.
Join thousands of families who have organized their end-of-life decisions with GoodOrder. It’s free, takes about 20 minutes, and your family will thank you.
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