The average person holds more than 150 digital accounts. Many of these are valuable financial assets, such as a bank, investment, and insurance accounts, that are part of your estate and require attention after you die. As a result, digital asset management is rapidly becoming an essential component of estate planning.
Keeping track of your digital assets is crucial, but it takes time. It can take weeks, months, or even years for your loved ones to search your online accounts if you don’t keep track of them. A digital vault is one answer to this problem.
What is a Digital Vault?
A digital vault is a safe online location where you may store and manage your digital assets and logins and share access with individuals you trust. The following are some of your digital assets:
- Usernames and passwords for internet accounts (including online banking, brokerage, and cryptocurrency accounts)
- Accounts on social media and email
- Photographs, films, music, and papers are examples of digital files.
- Credit card points and frequent flier miles
Are digital vaults safe?
All four systems are similar in terms of security, relying on bank-level protection to protect customer data. Two-factor authentication is included and 256-bit AES encryption, which is one of the most secure encryption technologies available. This also implies that none of the data you store in your account may be seen or accessed by any platform. If you use one of the below-mentioned platforms, you can rest assured that your sensitive personal data is safeguarded by today’s most advanced digital security methods.
Digital Vaults
“A full archive of everything your loved ones will require should something happen to you,” Everplans says of its vault. Their digital vault is divided into nine categories, including “Financial,” “Digital,” “Legal,” “Health,” “Home and Property,” and others. So you can safely store end-of-life documents, account logins, funeral requests, and more in your digital vault and share this information with the people you care about.
Pros:
- When items in your vault are ready to expire, you’ll get a notification.
Everplans is the only company that offers this peace-of-mind function. You can save important documents and IDs in your vault (such as your driver’s license or insurance policies), and Everplans will remind you when it’s time to renew them.
- A 60-day free trial is available.
Everplans provides a free 60-day vault trial with no credit card necessary. It has the longest free trial of any of the platforms we looked at, giving you plenty of time to figure out if Everplans is appropriate.
- Fill in payment details for digital accounts and subscriptions.
You can enter payment information when you add an entry for a digital account you own — for example, a subscription service like Netflix. This covers how frequently you’re invoiced for the service, how much it costs, and how you pay. You can also leave instructions for what should happen to the account when you die (for example, if you want it closed or transferred to someone else).
Cons:
- There is no option to manage your passwords.
Everplans allows you to save digital account login and password information more than some other sites provide. However, once saved in Everplans’ system, that information isn’t linked to any password manager, so you’ll have to manually enter and update your login credentials. Keeping up with this could require a lot of time and work.
- Prompts for sharing that are repeated.
When you add a new item to your Everplans, you’ll be asked who you want to share it with. This is a minor annoyance, but it could become tedious if you’re entering a lot of data in one sitting and want to grant rights to each section at the end.
GoodTrust is a digital legacy platform that allows you to preserve vital documents and online account information for easy retrieval by your family after you die away. Compared to some of the other platforms we looked at, GoodTrust takes a more “hands-on” approach to end-of-life planning. In addition, GoodTrust’s VIP package allows them to close some accounts after you die, so your loved ones don’t have to.
Pros:
- A wide range of sharing choices for complete privacy and control.
GoodTrust has the most configurable options for sharing access with other users of all the platforms we looked at. On an item-by-item basis, you can share access to your online accounts and documents. You can also pick whether you want to share access with someone right away or wait until you pass away before giving them access.
- 3. Fill in payment details for digital accounts and subscriptions.
You can enter payment information when you add an entry for a digital account you own — for example, a subscription service like Netflix. This covers how frequently you’re invoiced for the service, how much it costs, and how you pay. You can also leave instructions for what should happen to the account when you die (for example, if you want it closed or transferred to someone else).
Cons:
- There is no option for month-to-month billing.
GoodTrust only offers yearly subscriptions, so you’ll have to sign up for a $69 annual plan to get all of the platform’s features. There is an unpaid version, but it only enables you to save a few online logins and documents, making it less useful if you want to keep track of all your digital assets and accounts in one spot.
- There are some navigational concerns.
Overall, the GoodTrust website is easy to navigate. However, there are times when numerous prompts lead to the same page, which we initially found perplexing. Furthermore, GoodTrust’s cool blue color scheme and plain wording may be too direct for certain individuals who are more private or uncomfortable discussing death.
My Life & Wishes (ML&W) is a digital vault service that allows users to securely store and manage all of their estate-planning paperwork. In addition, they can provide authorized users, such as family members, access and update information from anywhere.
Pros:
- Flexible pricing alternatives.
If you wish to try out a digital vault service before committing to yearly charges, ML&W allows you to do so. You can try out the platform for free for 30 days without a credit card. After that, you can pay $7.95 a month on a pay-as-you-go basis or sign up for the $79 annual plan.
- There are a variety of sharing and authorization choices.
You can give anyone you trust access to your ML&W account. These users are not required to pay for an ML&W account in order to view your information. In addition, you have complete control over which areas of your profile your trusted contacts have access to. For example, you may wish to give your children complete access to all of your information while restricting your lawyer’s access to the documents under your “Financial” section.
Cons:
- Permissions aren’t as granular as they are on other platforms.
ML&W isn’t the most versatile platform we tested for user permissions, despite its sharing possibilities. For example, you can only share by topic (for example, ‘Personal,’ ‘Financial,’ or ‘Family’). Furthermore, because all website logins are saved in one place, you won’t be able to grant access to users on an account-by-account basis. You can either give them access to all of your logins or none.
- It is not as user-friendly as other platforms.
Unless you click into each subsection, you won’t be able to see what prompts you still need to fill out. Unfortunately, there’s also no way to get rid of prompts that don’t apply, so you can find yourself working around empty areas to get the information you need.
Easeenet is a password manager and legacy-planning service that allows you to securely save and access websites, usernames, passwords, documents, and other vital data. You can fill out a legacy worksheet with vital information about your end-of-life intentions. You can designate a legacy contact who will have access to your Easeenet account after you pass away.
Pros:
- For end-of-life planning, use the Legacy Worksheet.
A simple legacy spreadsheet from Easeenet is divided into four sections: personal, financial, health, and end-of-life. Your responses are saved in your Easeenet vault, which your authorized users can access after you die away.
- Options for a 14-day free trial and monthly payments.
You can try out Easeenet’s platform for two weeks before committing to a plan. After that, it costs $5.95 per month or $59.50 per year to use the site. They also have a free version of their password organizer that can store up to five different websites.
Cons:
- Doesn’t have as many functions as other password managers.
Easeenet lacks features that other password managers do, such as a password generator and individual password sharing. They also have a 1 GB document storage limit when other platforms provide limitless document storage.
Conclusion
A digital vault is only as good as the data you store. If you decide to join one, all of the platforms we looked at advised filling out your information (even if it took multiple sessions) and regularly keeping it up to date.
