Don’t lose your money! Create a Money Map

By Katie Momo

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• 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!

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Grab your free template

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Log into your Google Drive, then click the button below to save a copy to your Drive.

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Get your template!

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Call me a meticulous planner (or *anxious*), but I’ve been wondering:

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What happens to my money after I die???

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How do I make sure it gets to the right place?!

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And these are good questions…

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As of 2022, the Bank of Canada has 1.8 BILLION sitting in inactive accounts

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And this number keeps growing each year 😱

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With online bank accounts, crypto wallets, and online payment processors the amount of ‘lost money’ is expected to accelerate.

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To make sure my money doesn’t end up there, I created a “money map” that shows exactly where I’ve squirreled everything away!

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Here, I’ll walk you through what I did…

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What I put in our Money Map

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The point of this is to organize our finances so one of us knows what to look for, and where to find the information.

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It basically includes anything with monetary value.

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The big things it covers:

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- Accounts: Where to find our banking and investment accounts, and stuff related to my business

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- Assets: Investments, real estate, vehicles

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- Insurance and pensions: Personal and workplace insurance and pensions

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You might want to add a section for liabilities, and anything else that feels important for you to include. Whatever fits your money situation!

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Think about who this is for

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There are a few scenarios I had in mind:

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• Something happens to me. Does my partner have everything they need?

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• Something happens to my partner. Do I have everything I need?

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• Something happens to both of us. Does our executor have what they need?

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Since our executor is a family member, they know a bunch of stuff already so we didn’t include the basics.

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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.

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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.

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Choose where to keep it

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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. 

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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?

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I figured the best way is to keep it on an encrypted platform. Thankfully there are tons to choose from now.

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Encryption platforms to check out

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Do your own research to find one that suits your needs. Here are some ideas to get started:

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• Tresorit
• Sync
• Proton Drive
• Spideroak One

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We went with Proton Drive. Here’s why:

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✅ 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:

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• 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.

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• 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)

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Put it all together

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This doesn’t need to be super intense.

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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.

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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.

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Here’s what a Money Map can look like:

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Accounts

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Example:

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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

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Assets

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Example:

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The easiest section of all!

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I also included screenshots of our investment portfolio in folders that show how many shares we have of each fund.

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Insurance and pensions

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Example:

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Depending on your setup, you might want to include:

• Company pensions
• Life insurance
• House insurance
• Vehicle insurance

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Your Money Map is ready!

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Woohoo! Now you can share it with Your Person who will be looking after everything.

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(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.)

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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.

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And it’ll be even easier for you with this guide and template 👏

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Log into your Google Drive, then click the button below to save a copy to your Drive.

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Get your template!

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