Everything they'd need, gathered while it's still easy.
The will. The accounts. What you'd want if you couldn't say it yourself. The stories behind the things that matter. The Before Kit is where you put it, twenty minutes at a time, so the people you love are never left guessing.
Founding price. Instant download.
Shopping from the US? Get the USD version →
Get The Before KitA digital guide with planning sheets, templates, and tools.
Yours to keep, at your own pace.
If something happened tonight, would they know?
A few questions worth sitting with, just for a second.
- Where your will is, and whether there is one
- How to get into your phone
- Which bills would keep auto-paying, and which ones should stop
- Who'd take the dog for a walk this weekend, and every weekend after
- What you'd want done medically, if you couldn't say so yourself
- How to get into twenty years of photos
- What should happen to your Facebook page
- Who to call first
- Why your grandfather's watch was always meant for your niece
If you paused on even one of those, this is for you.
The hardest part isn't the funeral.
People often assume the hardest day is the day someone dies. It isn't. The hardest days are usually the ones that follow, and this is what families actually spend that week doing:
- Turning the house over looking for the will, because nobody knows if there is one.
- Locked out of the phone, which holds the two-factor codes for everything else.
- Twenty years of photos behind a password nobody has.
- Subscriptions billing for eleven months because no one knew they existed.
- An adult child guessing at whether their parent wanted a burial or a cremation, and carrying that guess for the rest of their life.
- Someone learning they're the executor at the funeral, from a lawyer, having never been asked.
It's the conversation where someone finally says, "I thought you knew." And someone else quietly answers, "I thought you did."
Those aren't legal problems. They're human ones. And every one of them is preventable.
Two very different weeks.
Here's what changes when the answers are already written down.
The real difference isn't the paperwork. It's a family that gets to connect and care for each other that week, instead of running an administrative scavenger hunt.
Planning isn't about preparing for death.
It's about continuing to care.
We spend our whole lives looking after the people we love. We make soup when they're sick. We leave notes on the counter. We text to make sure they got home. This is just one more way of doing that, written down instead of said out loud.
What's actually in it
Eight sections, matching the eight areas of the free Fare-Well Readiness Review.* If you've taken the review, you already know which folder to open first.
*The Readiness Review is a free, ten-minute assessment covering these same eight areas. Take it at fare-wellco.app.
- 01
The Paperwork
The legal spine: the documents that let your wishes count, whether they're current, and whether the people named in them have actually agreed.
- 02
Money and the Bills
Not your balances. Findability. What exists, where the doors are, and every subscription that would otherwise bill for a year.
- 03
Access
The master map, plus the honest five-item test: could your person find your will, your ID, your phone plan, this kit, and your lawyer, this week, without calling anyone?
- 04
Digital Life
Devices, accounts, photos, and what happens to your online presence. Includes the free legacy settings worth turning on today.
- 05
The People Who'd Step In
The first calls, in the order you'd want them made, and the messages you'd want passed along.
- 06
Who Depends on You
The people, the pets, and the business. The care plans a will never holds.
- 07
Care and Medical Wishes
Who speaks for you if you can't, and what you'd want them to say. So they're answering, not guessing.
- 08
Wishes, Values, and What's Left Behind
The part most checklists skip. Your gathering, your objects, and the stories that turn a thermos into your grandfather's thermos.
A dashboard that shows you where you stand.
Mark each piece Handled, Partly, or Not yet on the Where Things Stand worksheet, and the bars fill in on their own. No scores. No grades. No confetti. The same plain language as your Readiness Review, so you always know what's done and what's next.
This is the piece people pay a yearly subscription for elsewhere. Here it's one worksheet you own outright, and "Doesn't apply" is a real answer that never counts against you.
It tells you how, not just what.
This isn't a typical planner that hands you a blank grid and wishes you luck. It's more like having a trusted guide sitting beside you, walking you through one section at a time, telling you exactly what's worth adding and why it matters before you write a word.
Every sheet opens with a plain-English explanation, and a greyed-out example row so you can see the expected format instead of staring at an empty grid. It's the kind of thing you finish with a cup of tea in one hand and a square of chocolate in the other, twenty minutes at a time, in your own order.
It never asks you for a password.
Twenty years ago, families searched filing cabinets. Now they search for a passcode. Your phone has quietly become the control centre of your life: your bank, your photos, your bills, the people you love. Most planning templates ask you to type all of that into a spreadsheet, logins included. That's the single most dangerous thing a planning product can do. Documents get copied, synced, emailed, and backed up in places you'll never see.
The Before Kit asks a different question: where does access live? The name of your password manager. A sealed envelope in the fire safe. A printed emergency kit. The sheets are built so the answer is always a location, never a secret, and the guide walks you through setting up one real front door your person can actually reach.
It's the difference between a plan that helps your family and a plan that's a liability sitting in your cloud drive.
Also included
There are things no legal document can hold. The story behind your wedding ring. The recipe everyone asks you to make. The letter you've been meaning to write. The Before Kit makes room for those too, not just the paperwork.
The Final Folder
The one folder built for someone else's hands, including the first-hours letter you write now and they open later.
A no-stress will guide
How to get a real will done, without drama or a second mortgage.
Digital legacy checklist
The free legacy settings at Apple, Google, and Facebook, and how to switch them on.
The Digital Vault
Free tools for sending letters, photos, and videos into the future, easily, and at no extra cost.
Letter and legacy prompts
For the milestone messages, the values, and the things you'd hate to leave unsaid.
Afterloss checklist
For the other side of this kit: a steady list for the person walking the first weeks after a death.
You're planning for a day when the subscription's stopped, or the binder's out of date.
Estate-planning apps charge yearly for a vault that disappears when the company folds or the card expires. Binders from the bookstore go out of date the moment you switch banks, and once a page gets scribbled over enough times, a family stops trusting what it says. Paper doesn't survive everything either: a binder isn't fireproof, and it isn't floodproof.
The Before Kit is different. It's files you own, not a login you rent. They open in Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, or your usual spreadsheet program, they work offline, and they'll still open in thirty years. Change a bank in ten seconds. Search it instead of flipping pages. Print any sheet for a binder if you still want one, and the copy behind it stays true.
This is for you if
- You've been meaning to sort this out for years.
- You'd rather your family inherit clarity than a scavenger hunt.
- You want to work at your own pace, privately, without a salesperson.
- You're in Canada. This version's built around RRSPs, provinces, and CAD. Shopping from the US? Get the USD version →
This isn't for you if
- You want a legal will. This organizes your plan, it doesn't replace a lawyer, and it tells you plainly when to call one.
- You want someone else to do it for you. That's my one-to-one support, and it costs more than $49.
- You want an app with a login. On purpose, this isn't that.
There's no perfect week for this.
There's only this one.
Not when things settle down. Not right after the holidays. Not once retirement finally slows the calendar. Most families don't get the version where there's finally enough time. They get the version where someone starts searching. Twenty minutes today is worth more than the perfect week you're waiting for.
What you're really giving them is permission to grieve instead of investigate. To remember instead of search.
Founding price, while it lasts. One payment, yours forever.
Shopping from the US? Get the USD version →
- 18 branded planning sheets across 8 sections
- Where Things Stand worksheet
- The Before Kit Guide
- The Final Folder and the first-hours letter
- Six bonus guides and writing tools
- Download it, or use the Google Sheets version
- Free updates for life
Instant download. Works on Mac, Windows, and in Google Drive.
If you open it, work through a section, and it hasn't made a real difference to how prepared you feel, email me within 30 days and I'll refund you. No form to fill out.
Questions people ask
How long does this take?
Nobody finishes it in a weekend, and nobody needs to. It's built for twenty minutes at a time: one sheet, one cup of tea, one sitting. Half-finished still helps enormously, because a gap you've named is a plan.
What software do I need?
None, really. The sheets open in Google Sheets or Apple Numbers, and there's a ready-made Google Drive version if you'd rather work online, with a one-page walkthrough for copying it into your own Drive. Your usual spreadsheet program works fine too.
Is this a will?
No, and it's honest about that throughout. It's the organizing system that sits alongside your legal documents. Where a lawyer is the right answer, the kit says so and tells you what to bring them.
Is there a US version?
Yes. This page is the Canadian version, priced in CAD with Canadian terms (SIN, RRSP, province). There's a separate US version priced in USD with US terms (SSN, 401(k), state). Get the US version →
Is it safe to put all this in one place?
That's exactly why it never asks for passwords. It records where access lives, not the secrets themselves, and the guide has a full page on keeping the kit safe. Follow those three rules and this is far safer than the sticky notes and memory most families run on now.
What if I already started planning?
Then start with the Where Things Stand worksheet. Mark what's already handled, and you'll see in about ten minutes exactly which two or three things are still missing. Most people are further along than they think in one area and further behind in another. What you're really adding is a system: one place that ties every part of the plan together, so the right people have the right access at the right time.
Can I share it with my family?
The kit is licensed for your own household. What you're meant to share is the finished result: tell the person who'd step in that it exists and where it lives. That conversation is part of the kit.
What exactly is this, and what isn't it?
The Before Kit is an organizing system, not professional advice. It isn't a will, an advance directive, or legal, financial, tax, or medical guidance, and filling it in doesn't replace any of those. Where something needs a lawyer, an accountant, or your care team, the kit says so plainly and tells you what to bring them. What it is: a considered structure, built by an educator who spent years working out how adults actually learn complicated things without drowning in them. Every sheet is sequenced, worded, and paced so that a task most people put off for decades becomes something you can do twenty minutes at a time, in any order, without needing anyone's permission to start.
You've spent your whole life taking care of the ones you love.
This is one more way to do it.
Every sheet you fill in is a decision someone you love won't have to make in the dark, on the hardest week of their life. You don't have to finish it today. You just have to start.
Leave clarity, not chaos. And a little of yourself, lovingly edited.
Everything they'd need, gathered while it's still easy.
The will. The accounts. What you'd want if you couldn't say it yourself. The stories behind the things that matter. The Before Kit is where you put it, twenty minutes at a time, so the people you love are never left guessing.
Founding price. Instant download.
Shopping from the US? Get the USD version →
Get The Before KitA digital guide with planning sheets, templates, and tools.
Yours to keep, at your own pace.
If something happened tonight, would they know?
A few questions worth sitting with, just for a second.
- Where your will is, and whether there is one
- How to get into your phone
- Which bills would keep auto-paying, and which ones should stop
- Who'd take the dog for a walk this weekend, and every weekend after
- What you'd want done medically, if you couldn't say so yourself
- How to get into twenty years of photos
- What should happen to your Facebook page
- Who to call first
- Why your grandfather's watch was always meant for your niece
If you paused on even one of those, this is for you.
The hardest part isn't the funeral.
People often assume the hardest day is the day someone dies. It isn't. The hardest days are usually the ones that follow, and this is what families actually spend that week doing:
- Turning the house over looking for the will, because nobody knows if there is one.
- Locked out of the phone, which holds the two-factor codes for everything else.
- Twenty years of photos behind a password nobody has.
- Subscriptions billing for eleven months because no one knew they existed.
- An adult child guessing at whether their parent wanted a burial or a cremation, and carrying that guess for the rest of their life.
- Someone learning they're the executor at the funeral, from a lawyer, having never been asked.
It's the conversation where someone finally says, "I thought you knew." And someone else quietly answers, "I thought you did."
Those aren't legal problems. They're human ones. And every one of them is preventable.
Two very different weeks.
Here's what changes when the answers are already written down.
The real difference isn't the paperwork. It's a family that gets to connect and care for each other that week, instead of running an administrative scavenger hunt.
Planning isn't about preparing for death.
It's about continuing to care.
We spend our whole lives looking after the people we love. We make soup when they're sick. We leave notes on the counter. We text to make sure they got home. This is just one more way of doing that, written down instead of said out loud.
What's actually in it
Eight sections, matching the eight areas of the free Fare-Well Readiness Review.* If you've taken the review, you already know which folder to open first.
*The Readiness Review is a free, ten-minute assessment covering these same eight areas. Take it at fare-wellco.app.
- 01
The Paperwork
The legal spine: the documents that let your wishes count, whether they're current, and whether the people named in them have actually agreed.
- 02
Money and the Bills
Not your balances. Findability. What exists, where the doors are, and every subscription that would otherwise bill for a year.
- 03
Access
The master map, plus the honest five-item test: could your person find your will, your ID, your phone plan, this kit, and your lawyer, this week, without calling anyone?
- 04
Digital Life
Devices, accounts, photos, and what happens to your online presence. Includes the free legacy settings worth turning on today.
- 05
The People Who'd Step In
The first calls, in the order you'd want them made, and the messages you'd want passed along.
- 06
Who Depends on You
The people, the pets, and the business. The care plans a will never holds.
- 07
Care and Medical Wishes
Who speaks for you if you can't, and what you'd want them to say. So they're answering, not guessing.
- 08
Wishes, Values, and What's Left Behind
The part most checklists skip. Your gathering, your objects, and the stories that turn a thermos into your grandfather's thermos.
A dashboard that shows you where you stand.
Mark each piece Handled, Partly, or Not yet on the Where Things Stand worksheet, and the bars fill in on their own. No scores. No grades. No confetti. The same plain language as your Readiness Review, so you always know what's done and what's next.
This is the piece people pay a yearly subscription for elsewhere. Here it's one worksheet you own outright, and "Doesn't apply" is a real answer that never counts against you.
It tells you how, not just what.
This isn't a typical planner that hands you a blank grid and wishes you luck. It's more like having a trusted guide sitting beside you, walking you through one section at a time, telling you exactly what's worth adding and why it matters before you write a word.
Every sheet opens with a plain-English explanation, and a greyed-out example row so you can see the expected format instead of staring at an empty grid. It's the kind of thing you finish with a cup of tea in one hand and a square of chocolate in the other, twenty minutes at a time, in your own order.
It never asks you for a password.
Twenty years ago, families searched filing cabinets. Now they search for a passcode. Your phone has quietly become the control centre of your life: your bank, your photos, your bills, the people you love. Most planning templates ask you to type all of that into a spreadsheet, logins included. That's the single most dangerous thing a planning product can do. Documents get copied, synced, emailed, and backed up in places you'll never see.
The Before Kit asks a different question: where does access live? The name of your password manager. A sealed envelope in the fire safe. A printed emergency kit. The sheets are built so the answer is always a location, never a secret, and the guide walks you through setting up one real front door your person can actually reach.
It's the difference between a plan that helps your family and a plan that's a liability sitting in your cloud drive.
Also included
There are things no legal document can hold. The story behind your wedding ring. The recipe everyone asks you to make. The letter you've been meaning to write. The Before Kit makes room for those too, not just the paperwork.
The Final Folder
The one folder built for someone else's hands, including the first-hours letter you write now and they open later.
A no-stress will guide
How to get a real will done, without drama or a second mortgage.
Digital legacy checklist
The free legacy settings at Apple, Google, and Facebook, and how to switch them on.
The Digital Vault
Free tools for sending letters, photos, and videos into the future, easily, and at no extra cost.
Letter and legacy prompts
For the milestone messages, the values, and the things you'd hate to leave unsaid.
Afterloss checklist
For the other side of this kit: a steady list for the person walking the first weeks after a death.
You're planning for a day when the subscription's stopped, or the binder's out of date.
Estate-planning apps charge yearly for a vault that disappears when the company folds or the card expires. Binders from the bookstore go out of date the moment you switch banks, and once a page gets scribbled over enough times, a family stops trusting what it says. Paper doesn't survive everything either: a binder isn't fireproof, and it isn't floodproof.
The Before Kit is different. It's files you own, not a login you rent. They open in Google Sheets, Apple Numbers, or your usual spreadsheet program, they work offline, and they'll still open in thirty years. Change a bank in ten seconds. Search it instead of flipping pages. Print any sheet for a binder if you still want one, and the copy behind it stays true.
This is for you if
- You've been meaning to sort this out for years.
- You'd rather your family inherit clarity than a scavenger hunt.
- You want to work at your own pace, privately, without a salesperson.
- You're in Canada. This version's built around RRSPs, provinces, and CAD. Shopping from the US? Get the USD version →
This isn't for you if
- You want a legal will. This organizes your plan, it doesn't replace a lawyer, and it tells you plainly when to call one.
- You want someone else to do it for you. That's my one-to-one support, and it costs more than $49.
- You want an app with a login. On purpose, this isn't that.
There's no perfect week for this.
There's only this one.
Not when things settle down. Not right after the holidays. Not once retirement finally slows the calendar. Most families don't get the version where there's finally enough time. They get the version where someone starts searching. Twenty minutes today is worth more than the perfect week you're waiting for.
What you're really giving them is permission to grieve instead of investigate. To remember instead of search.
Founding price, while it lasts. One payment, yours forever.
Shopping from the US? Get the USD version →
- 18 branded planning sheets across 8 sections
- Where Things Stand worksheet
- The Before Kit Guide
- The Final Folder and the first-hours letter
- Six bonus guides and writing tools
- Download it, or use the Google Sheets version
- Free updates for life
Instant download. Works on Mac, Windows, and in Google Drive.
If you open it, work through a section, and it hasn't made a real difference to how prepared you feel, email me within 30 days and I'll refund you. No form to fill out.
Questions people ask
How long does this take?
Nobody finishes it in a weekend, and nobody needs to. It's built for twenty minutes at a time: one sheet, one cup of tea, one sitting. Half-finished still helps enormously, because a gap you've named is a plan.
What software do I need?
None, really. The sheets open in Google Sheets or Apple Numbers, and there's a ready-made Google Drive version if you'd rather work online, with a one-page walkthrough for copying it into your own Drive. Your usual spreadsheet program works fine too.
Is this a will?
No, and it's honest about that throughout. It's the organizing system that sits alongside your legal documents. Where a lawyer is the right answer, the kit says so and tells you what to bring them.
Is there a US version?
Yes. This page is the Canadian version, priced in CAD with Canadian terms (SIN, RRSP, province). There's a separate US version priced in USD with US terms (SSN, 401(k), state). Get the US version →
Is it safe to put all this in one place?
That's exactly why it never asks for passwords. It records where access lives, not the secrets themselves, and the guide has a full page on keeping the kit safe. Follow those three rules and this is far safer than the sticky notes and memory most families run on now.
What if I already started planning?
Then start with the Where Things Stand worksheet. Mark what's already handled, and you'll see in about ten minutes exactly which two or three things are still missing. Most people are further along than they think in one area and further behind in another. What you're really adding is a system: one place that ties every part of the plan together, so the right people have the right access at the right time.
Can I share it with my family?
The kit is licensed for your own household. What you're meant to share is the finished result: tell the person who'd step in that it exists and where it lives. That conversation is part of the kit.
What exactly is this, and what isn't it?
The Before Kit is an organizing system, not professional advice. It isn't a will, an advance directive, or legal, financial, tax, or medical guidance, and filling it in doesn't replace any of those. Where something needs a lawyer, an accountant, or your care team, the kit says so plainly and tells you what to bring them. What it is: a considered structure, built by an educator who spent years working out how adults actually learn complicated things without drowning in them. Every sheet is sequenced, worded, and paced so that a task most people put off for decades becomes something you can do twenty minutes at a time, in any order, without needing anyone's permission to start.
You've spent your whole life taking care of the ones you love.
This is one more way to do it.
Every sheet you fill in is a decision someone you love won't have to make in the dark, on the hardest week of their life. You don't have to finish it today. You just have to start.
Leave clarity, not chaos. And a little of yourself, lovingly edited.