Keith's Odyssey to Planet Fitness: Some might think this scary

Friday, February 27, 2026

Some might think this scary

Nothing is going to leap out and scream boo. There are no gory photos. Nothing broken. Just a topic people don't like to talk about.

Our wills (the last testament kind of will, not the amount of determination we have) were written long ago. In the sense of leaving everything to the spouse, they're still valid. But then the surviving spouse has a problem, in that everyone else mentioned in it is dead. Doing a new one becomes a priority. Plus, what happens if we both die at the same time, perhaps in a regrettable incident of road carnage on the local highways. After all, even at our advanced age, driving is the most dangerous thing we do and is thus the most likely cause of death.

But then we got to thinking. So one of us dies, and let's pretend it's me. Essentially all the bills are paid through my bank account, which at this very moment Linda couldn't get into even if you put a gun to her head. Oops. There are other ways to pay those bills, just much less convenient. But does she know all of them? (Yes, we know Linda knows ALL, but it's easy to overlook something small that comes up once a year.)

I switched us from the regulated rate to a plan a while ago, and once I got into the account was shocked to discover that not a single piece of contact information they had for us was current, other than the address to which a paper bill was sent. The phone number was Linda's office number from several decades ago. Our home number had been incorrectly entered. The email address was out dated. I had to actually call them, and read off a bunch of numbers from the current bill before they updated all the info and reset the password.

So we've started making a list. Just started, and good Lord, so many things already. However did our lives get this complicated? Still, we will persevere. Ask yourself, does your spouse, or your child/children know how to take whatever actions are needed to cope with all this stuff, and probably more? That might be something important like paying the electricity bill, or something small like closing the library card in an orderly way.

The worst case scenario is that we're both found barely alive in car wreckage. Who do the police call? How do they find our medical records? Who feeds Celina? During my training rides and runs I wore a road ID bracelet with emergency contact info, but all that info is outdated. I'm pretty sure my phone has an in case of emergency number, but what if the phone is destroyed?

The idea is to gather all the info about our life into a reference manual, print it in a reasonable sized font for old and stressed eyeballs, then put it somewhere safe but handy, with a back up copy somewhere safe off site.

All the info, like:

EMERGENCY CONTACTS

Keith Cartmell

Linda Mulligan

Kelly McKinnon (Linda's sister)

Executor ??? (Yes, we really should update our wills.)

HEALTH CARE

Dr (Keith)

Dr (Linda)

BANKS/INVESTMENTS/PENSION

TD Canada Trust account for paying bills

Royal Bank

LAPP

IPC Michelle Kilty Financial Advisor (who is awesome!)

IPC investment account

Tax accountant (paying a tax account started back in the 90's for me, and is probably the best value money I spend in a year in terms of reducing stress.)

CRA (Keith)

CRA (Linda)

UTILITIES/OTHER MONTHLY/YEARLY BILLS

Enmax

Direct Energy

Telus (Keith) Mobility and Home

Telus (Linda)

House and car insurance are through xxxxx

House Account xxxxxxxx policy xxxxxxx renews Jan 28

Car Account xxxxxxx policy xxxxxxx renews Jan 28

Nucleus auto withdrawal monthly through credit card

Blue Cross

Clearview (furnace servicing) monthly withdrawal through credit card

COMPUTER STUFF/SOCIAL MEDIA/MISC

Laptop login

Airport WiFi via laptop

iMac (email computer)

Mac.com

iPhone (Keith)

Android (Linda)

Nucleus

Adobe (Lightroom) (which leads to a big question, what to do with the very many photos? I'm not now famous, but then neither was Vivian Maier during her lifetime.)

Blurb Bookwright (app on laptop)

Facebook

Instagram

Google

ParkPlus

MGAA

Credit monitor (Keith)

Amazon

Library (Keith)

Library (Linda)

Linktree

And all that was just the first pass, off the top of my head. I'm pretty sure there's more. Then there's going through to document account login information, or instructions for whatever. I've already noticed that some things are harder to figure out on the fly, and I tell myself that it's the world becoming more complex and bad interface design. I tell myself that often. Sometimes there's swearing.

On a somewhat related topic, I learned that there's such a thing as a fire and water resistant bag, similar to a fire safe, but portable, in the sense of a go bag. The putting documents or a computer disc into a baggie and putting that in the freezer isn't really a thing. I don't really expect to have the emergency services people bang on the door in the middle of the night to tell us we have x minutes to evacuate, but then again, there's lots of people in various communities that have had that exact thing happen. I can sit here right now, and think wallet, phone, passport, medication, cat. Would I remember the phone charger in a rush?

I've already put a reminder in my Reminders app to review this yearly. The hardest part will be to update the electronic copy whenever a password changes. I've already learned that when I create a new password, I need to write it out in plain text, then copy it into the browser. There are several times where I've got back into something via a forgot your password process, and then just as I was about to log out realized I'd already forgotten the new password.

And yes, I know there are password manager apps. I am not I trust them, and haven't really looked into how they work. Perhaps I should. I know that list isn't complete, and so many passwords, and they shouldn't be repeated. I've taken to using pass phrases. As an example which I have not used is, "Thefirst!Chronicleonmydeskis*March2018". A password check site says that would take centuries to crack. Good enough for me. Then again, the most common way for thieves to get into an account is to persuade people to log into them while they watch with a keystroke logger.

I recently described the adventures around a hard drive failure. How would the non-tech person in your house deal with that if the household tech support person isn't available? There's lots of stories about the new widow coping with the world after her husband who took care of everything died. We split things up a bit better than that, but I've no real idea where all Linda has accounts set up, and for what. I mean, world domination and all, there's lots to keep track of.

Yes, I know. You read all this, and said to yourself, "Yeah, I really should do that." Then you're going to browse Facebook and get some breakfast as you finish your coffee, then get on with whatever else is planned for your busy day, and cope with whatever barges into your life. Then tomorrow is a whole new day. And it doesn't happen, buried under the many things that are happening. Just don't say nobody ever told you.

No special reason for this photo, just because.