Planned Departure – Leave memories … not a mess

Planned Departure is all about planning well in life so that you leave memories and not a mess!

It is about starting the conversation and answering some important questions such as:

• Is your life plan ready?
• How do you want to plan for your family?
• Offer the best education?
• Or gift them happiness?
• Or hope things will eventually fall in place?
• Have you taken any financial advice?
• Do you have life insurance or critical illness cover?
• Or Do you have a Will in place?
• Have you started the important conversation?
• Such as where all your documents are?
• Or shared your secret recipe?
• Does your family know your assets and investments?
• Or your liabilities!
• Are they aware of important online accounts?
• Can your family find everything they need?
• Even when you are not around?
• Will you leave them CHAOS ? Or Mess?
• Or Will you leave them memories?
• Have you planned for everything? or anything?

Now you can!!

With Planned Departure,

• Organise scattered information in one place.
• Leave clear instructions.
• Put everything in order.
• Ensure everything is there even when you are not.

We can help you avoid the mess

So that you can focus on creating memories.
Planned Departure – Leave memories… not a mess!

Sign up now and start planning.

The digital vs physical issue – seen from a distance

During the dotcom boom in the late 90s, the period when digital technologies were beginning to make their mark, it would have been inconceivable that digital property should be included in estate-planning documents. Ten years on and still the issue of digital legacies would seem absurd.

It took the fairly recent media disclosures of the difficulties parents faced with trying to access the social media accounts of their deceased children to highlight the issue of who actually owned this content.

Today, digital estate planning is essential because virtually every part of our lives, personal and professional, is impacted by this digital era. Smartphones, tablets, laptops and other digital gadgets have become reflections of our personalities, our interests and our identities, to the point that, for many, they have become the very fabric of our being.

In the recent 2014 Digital Impact Survey conducted by the Apigee Institute (developer of the intelligent API platform for digital business acceleration) and Stanford University’s Mobile Innovation Group, figures demonstrated that rising numbers of smartphone owners are becoming increasingly dependent on their devices. More than 90 percent reported that having a smartphone has altered how they connect with friends, and many claim they could not maintain a relationship with someone significant or find new friends without their smartphone.

Perhaps that might be seen as a sad reflection of our society today, but the reality is that digital is not going to decline any time soon and that we need to be taking a much more proactive view of the digital assets we’re accumulating.

Estate planning and administration practitioners should be discussing with their clients what they want to happen to their digital estate in the event they become permanently incapacitated or die. We hear a lot about parents’ anguish at not being able to access their children’s social media accounts after their death, but what if these children didn’t want their accounts exposed? What if they wanted them permanently erased when they die? It is vitally important that these wishes are included in any digital estate plan.

Digital property includes all digital assets such as music, films and photos, usernames and passwords, websites, Frequent Flyer Miles; anything that is stored digitally, also digital accounts (online banking, social media, online subscriptions etc) and digital hardware (smartphones, tablets, laptops etc).

Equally, there may also be different types of digital assets and digital devices – those personally owned and those owned by an online service provider and licensed under a terms-of-service-type agreement.

And herein lies a conundrum. Digital property may not necessarily comply with the same legal characteristics as physical property.

Take, for example the viability of the copyright regime; one area that has been considerably challenged by the advent of the Internet and digital technologies. The registration of domain names is a good case in point. The creation of the Internet has generated a new type of property with similar characteristics to trademark rights, but without inherent ties to the trademark law of any individual country. Since Cyberspace has no physical boundaries, defining rights in this new, valuable property presents a number of questions, including those relating to transferability, conditions for ownership (such as payment of registration fees), duration of ownership rights and forfeiture if there is abandonment.

Then there is the case of physical property – media such as books and music for example – that are generally protected by the first sale doctrine. Digital media, on the other hand, is universally governed by an EULA (end user license agreement). The purchase of such assets universally requires creating an account with the content provider, an account also governed by an EULA. As such, the first sale doctrine does not apply to digital media.

Whilst there continues to be considerable discussion internationally on this topic, there has been no formal legislative recognition of digital property in estate planning or estate administration, apart from some states in the US.

That said, there are clear definitions of what constitutes digital property and they are broad enough to cover the field for estate planning and administration purposes. A carefully drafted inventory, along with the rights of access and clear instructions for inheritance, will allow the digital estate to come into the legal possession and/or control of an executor or administrator, in the absence of a law or agreement to the contrary.

Even though the owners of digital property may have a written Will regarding their physical assets, the two property forms should be kept separate. Given the formality attendant to the execution of nonholographic Wills and the often rapidly changing nature and ownership of digital assets, Wills can be an awkward vehicle for digital property.

Furthermore, it remains unclear whether service providers will respect the terms of Wills to transfer ownership of digital assets.

A record with the Will (instead of in the Will) of where the digital inventory (including usernames and passwords) is being held is the best option.

The management of digital property is not difficult and there is a growing number of dedicated professionals who can help and support law firms with this process. The starting point is the realisation that digital property certainly has value and that is should be protected accordingly.

The Autobituary

In the past, when a loved one died a funeral service would be held followed by a burial service at the local cemetery. Family and close friends would attend both services and each year some would gather round the gravesite in remembrance. The numbers, however, would get less and less as the years passed.

Mourning practices not only vary from culture to culture but also person to person. Where there is no burial service, for example following a cremation, the mourning process is generally much shorter. With the advent of the digital era, however, a new platform is emerging for people to pay their respects.

With the increasing use of social media networks, family and friends will be able to keep the remembrance of the loved ones they have lost going in perpetuity. Facebook will now memorialise a deceased person’s account and other digital media companies are providing similar services.

And with this a new trend is emerging and is attracting a rapidly growing number of followers: Writing your own obituary in the living years.

For as long as they have been in existence newspapers have contained an obituary section that was generally edited by a staff journalist. In the majority of cases, those appearing in this section were celebrities, politicians and other well-known people.

Today, people are beginning to write their own obituaries and having these posted up online when they die. They are compiling their ‘autobituaries’ (as they have been coined) to ensure that the final words on their life are not only accurate, but also express the thanks and thoughts they want to leave behind.

One autobituary that was sent to us recently by a member struck a real chord with us. He wrote, in part, that he supported the notion that people should be able to view his body after he has died in order to pay their respects. He continued: “Unfortunately, there will be no viewing because my wife adamantly refuses my request to prop me up on the sofa with a bottle of Single Malt in my hand so I would appear to my friends in death as I did in life.”

Some of the obituaries we have received are coming from people who are terminally ill and, for them, it is an important part of coming to terms with that fact. They want to ensure they have the final say online about themselves and are remembered in the way they want to be remembered.

For us here at Planned Departure, many of these self-penned obituaries have inspired us to live our lives more fully and not to miss a moment of it.

If you would like to write your own obituary, please create an account on Planned Departure today.

Types of Wills … Let’s Break it down

Over the next few blogs we will endeavour to shed some light on the different types of Will options available in a bid to help you decide which works best for you.
A good place to start is with couples Wills, of which there are three different types, all quite similar to each other. Joint Wills, Mutual Wills and Mirror Wills

A Joint Will is a single document that two people or more agree to draw up which generally relates to sharing their property in a particular way.

This kind of Will is particularly common amongst married couples.
These Wills are normally identical or very similar and give common benefits. They tend to dictate that the surviving spouse should inherit all their property if they die first and vice versa. After the death of the second spouse, the property is shared as specified in the document. The law treats a Joint Will as being two or more separate Wills.

Mutual Wills on the other hand occur where two or more testators make separate Wills or make a joint Will and in doing so agree to confer on each other reciprocal benefits or agree to confer benefits on the same beneficiaries.

These kind of Wills have four basic requirements and a strict standard for enforceability:

1.      The agreement must be made in a particular form.
2.      The agreement must be contractual in effect.
3.      The agreement must be intended to be irrevocable.
4.      The surviving party must have intended the will to reflect the agreement.

A Mutual Will creates a binding agreement between the two parties which prevents the survivor from changing their Will and disposing of the estate in a different way. Mutual Wills are preferred by couples in a second marriage with children from a previous relationship or marriage.

Mirror Wills are exactly that, they “mirror” each other. The terms generally are similar and complementary. This is a legal document that allows a couple (married, civil partners or unmarried) to write down their wishes for when they pass away.

In all three cases these types of Wills are convenient and cost effective and they ensure that spouses are well taken care of if one dies and that the estate is passed to his children at death.

 

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To Will or not to Will?

(DIY)Do-it-yourself may work in various aspects of our lives like plastering your living room or cleaning the dust out of your laptop.
Here are some interesting figures about Wills, DIY wills and the general attitude from the public towards them.

Picture trends made possible with Digitization…

In the past, when all we had was film photography, we had to be very selective of the kind of pictures we wanted to take. I’m sure there wouldn’t be half as many ‘selfies’ ‘photo bombs’ or ‘duck pouts’ as there are today. Images have a strong emotional factor, and emotions have a powerful pull on us as human beings.

It wasn’t that long ago that taking a photo involved substantial decision making. With a mere 24 or 36 shots on each roll, the expense limited us from wildly shooting away. Not to mention the actual insertion of the roll, the fact that one ray of sunlight would ruin the film. Then of course there was the cost of developing the film and the time it took to do so.

Now with digital cameras and technology there’s relatively no cost at all and it is immediate – don’t get me started on Polaroid cameras!

Our next evolution came rapidly too. Who would have thought, 15 years ago, that we would be taking quality photos using our phones?

As a matter of fact the digital camera was invented almost 40 years  ago,by an engineer at Eastman Kodak named Steve Sasson. The camera weighed 8 pound and recorded 0.01 megapixel black and white photos to a cassette tape. To images were stored as data on the cassette and played back by displaying the images on a television set. It probably seemed like science fiction back then!

Regardless of which era our photos record and which form they come in they will always be memories which we treasure. They capture time and give our future generations a glimpse of moments we wanted to capture. Whether in black and white, sepia or overexposed, they are very precious.

So the question is, if you misplaced your phone, your computer crashed or your house burned down would you lose all your photos? With our current ease for taking photos we have accumulated a huge visual memory bank which needs to be protected and managed.

Chances are you probably have more than one electronic gadget; mobile phone, computer, tablet, digital camera etc and on all these gadgets you have digital images stored.

It is easier to manage if all your pictures are stored in one place but how do we do that?

The first step…

If you haven’t done this already you can make it easier by setting your camera to the correct date and time. This allows your pictures to automatically be categorised which helps in organising your pictures.

Finding all your pictures…

It’s a good practice to go through all your stored images and delete the ones that are not needed. In fact delete them as soon as you have taken photos you don’t want to keep.

Use the right names and appropriate tags for your various folders. Example image:  20141012_093416 will be hard to place in a folder without viewing the actual image compared to image: Bella’s first school day.

Geo-tagging photos as they’re taken can also be a useful tool for helping to organise your digital pictures in advance.

Import all you pictures to one device, most likely a PC and create various albums based on the tags and names you chose.

Back up all your images onto an external drive but if you want to be safeguarded the ideal back up is via CD’s or DVD’s or in a cloud. Also,protect your images from hackers and identity thieves, switch off automatic backups on your phone or other device and add a watermark to your images.

And remember to protect your photos carefully – the recent picture hacking scandal from iCloud accounts is still fresh in our memories Apple iCloud leak and serves as a cautionary tale that sensitive photos are best stored in encrypted digital vaults.

If you found this post informative please like or share.

 

An interesing Infographic on Life Insurance Cover

The purchase of life insurance based on whether it’s for a business or family requires careful consideration. It is important to understand how the insurance premiums work. If you are likely to die in the near future you’ll have to pay more but the insurers look at certain factors which could affect your premium. These include your lifestyle, age, medical history and job.

Here’s an infographic to help visualize our last post.

You need to Measure your Digital Assets

Five years ago, Jeremiah Owyang, a strategist with Forrester, left the company for pastures new. While this in itself was not unusual, Owyang’s departure turned out to be quite a loss for Forrester, much more so than it would have been say three years previously, when social media had not yet quite exploded and less so then than it would be now in 2014.

Because when Owyang left Forrester he took with him his digital identity.

The long tail effect of his personal blog alone was already massive as he had worked as a very thorough and systematic aggregator. Forrester, like most major companies back in 2009 had not yet measured the serious impact of such a departure.

Fast forward to 2014 and many organisations, particularly early stage startups and SMEs, are still taking their digital footprint for granted. There is a gaping void when it comes to companies properly securing and managing the succession planning side of their digital assets.

From a corporate perspective, the sudden loss of digital information goes beyond financial loss, it can also create an intangible loss of goodwill with customers, particularly if documented knowledge and insights are wiped out and sensitive trade information is revealed.

When Owyang left Forrester he did so in an organised manner. But imagine if the founder of a thriving business was suddenly cut down in his or her prime. All digital information is more likely than not going to disappear with them. From basic access information such as passwords and usernames through to vital documents, all locked in the cyber world and totally irretrievable.

This is why planning for the protection of all digital assets is now becoming a key imperative in all business and financial planning, and something which small businesses in particular need to give careful consideration to. Individuals and business owners alike must take greater responsibility in safeguarding and ensuring proper succession planning for their virtual data.

Different businesses will have their own unique digital footprints and assets, from customer data and crucial passwords to patents, presentations, white papers, and financial spreadsheets, so there is no one formula that fits all requirements. However, taking an inventory of all digital assets is the first step towards managing the issue at hand. This involves everything from where the assets are located, how they are accessed to who can access them. Creating a chain of trusted verifiers and ensuring all this information is contained in one place should the need arise is one of the best strategies.

Regardless of whether the digital assets can be measured as a tangible value or as a consequence of loss, the fact of the matter is that digital property is multi-faceted and needs to be stored and managed as carefully as traditional assets.

Where once companies were concerned with their carbon footprint, the new focus now needs to be on ensuring carefully regulated and documented digital footprint-planning.

 

To Tweet or not to Tweet and life without Facebook

No one would deny that social media has created the biggest social shift since the industrial revolution. The two biggest game-changers to date have been Facebook and Twitter both of which started life in slightly different versions to their now well-known platforms.

Facebook, which was launched in February 2004 and developed by 23 year old Mark Zuckerberg, was not a totally original concept. Prior to Facebook there was Facesmash which was started in 2000, and centred on the concept of a game based on pictures. The way it worked was simple. Compare two students’ pictures side by side and pick who was hot or not. A bit shallow but a trend many recent apps still adhere to, think tinder, lovoo and badoo. Facebook came on the scene, and the rest as they say, is history!

According to Statisticbrain the total number of monthly active Facebook users are 1,310,000,000. In 2008 Facebook had 100 million users and as of March 2013 had 1.11 Billion. Facebook filed for a $5 billion IPO on February 1st 2012 and valued the company at $104 billion.

Twitter on the other hand started life as an SMS mobile phone-based platform but over the years it grew into a web platform. It was co-founded by web developer Jack Dorsey and three other founders; Evan Williams, Biz Stone and Noah Glass. Created in March 2006, it launched in July 2006.

The main ideology behind Twitter was to create a platform of communication for businesses but again as it grew it evolved to something for the general public, businesses and individuals.

It allows users to send and read 140 character messages (tweets) which can include sentences, links to websites, mentions (tagging fellow users) videos, pictures and hashtags.

Registered users can post, favourite and re-tweet tweets but unregistered people can only read them.

According to Statisticbrain, there are a 645,750,000 total number of active registered Twitter users and 9,100 tweets are tweeted every second.

These figures alone clearly demonstrate that both Facebook and Twitter have become important digital assets to those who own accounts. Something which I had not really given much thought to until recently when I accidentally changed my personal profile to a fan page. I instantly thought I had lost everything. Let me elaborate.

I have been a member of Facebook since 2008. I have uploaded pictures, shared and been tagged in various pictures and posts since then. Without realising it Facebook had become an online archive and album for me. Pictures of the birth of my god-children, nephews, nieces, graduation and concerts are all on there. But I never valued them as much as I should till I thought I had lost them for good. Thankfully Facebook support team came to my rescue and restored the page from a fan page to a profile again and that is when I realised, how in the blink of an eye all those memories could have vanished. I had not stored them on an online drive or a drive at home because in my head I thought my Facebook account would always be there.

It certainly made me realise the value of properly storing all these memories.
Most of online storage facilities are free such as Dropbox and iCloud. Depending on the space or bytes you require, you might decide to buy more space on these drives.

All your relevant information regarding your Facebook; passwords, security questions and your pictures can all be saved in your E-vault. It also serves as a backup system for relevant information stored. For example, if your computer crashed and your documents are saved on an external drive you wouldn’t panic or if your Facebook account got deleted all those pictures wouldn’t vanish for good.Some of these storage facilities such as Planned Departure go a step further in terms of their clients delegating beneficiaries who can have access to this information in case something happened and you could no longer access or manage your account.

Storing those memories may be something you only think about doing when you have lost them, as Donald Rumsfeld said ‘Think ahead, don’t let day-to-day operations drive out planning.’ If you found this interesting and insightful please share it or leave a comment.

Why choose an SME over an MNC as a career choice

An SME (Small to Medium Enterprise) are often smaller companies or businesses compared to MNCs (Multi National Corp). MNCs are corporations that have facilities and assets in at least one country other than its home country.

As fresh graduates we often debate with ourselves which would be a better career opportunity as a first job. A Multinational corporation (MNC) or a Small to Medium Enterprise (SME)?

I have a few weeks to go before I graduate from Kingston’s MA in creative writing and publishing programme. I decided to look for a job before completion to reduce the job search burden and process. I read about a job role with a start-up company called Planned Departure. Initially I had not thought about working in a SME. It was all about the big companies for me, after all those were the ones I had heard of while growing up and had read about mostly but I decided to apply.

I was hired as the Social Media Marketing Executive of the company which was amazing.

When I started my job, I realised MNCs have their perks. A good and steady income, a well-established name and brand, security in the workplace, a good amount of people to share your workload, the opportunity to learn from experts who have been working in the field for years and many more.

But working with a start-up is different and better. Here’s why…

Before I begin, let me just say one of my major fears as I started this job was that it might fail or cease to exist in a few months or years. I thought again and realised, nothing is guaranteed in life. Even with MNCs something could happen that could completely change their dynamics and make them cease to exist too – so why not give this a go.

In a start-up everything is new. There is so much you can learn and there is so much room to grow.

As I started my new role, I quickly realised there was a lot to learn. In a few weeks I was responsible for most of the social media channels. I quickly learnt and adjusted to my tasks. With each task I learnt something new. Instead of having a specific role like you normally would in an MNC, I was able to give myself the chance to explore different departments in the company. The freedom to work and learn as I worked was amazing.

At work it’s not just a company but I feel like I am part of a family which I know I could never feel at an MNC.

The employers take time and actually listen to you and guide you through various tasks.

Efforts and skills are recognized easily and appreciated which helps in boosting your confidence and making you proud of your hard work done.

It provides amazing one-on-one learning sessions with the founders and the rest of the team. This enhances the skills and knowledge you already have, preparing you for a bigger role in an MNC. I personally think we should learn to walk before running. If you can survive and succeed in a start-up company or SME, you can succeed anywhere else.

I have learnt a lot that can help me in future for my own business I set up.

With MNCs mostly there’s no personal relationships established which often means no loyalty. With an SME over months and years of working so closely, you build a relationship which often results in the company being loyal to you (sometimes) when it grows bigger and eventually becomes an MNC.

These are a few reasons why I personally prefer SMEs to MNCs. They both have their advantages and disadvantages but it depends on what you personally want to achieve in life that helps influence your decision on which to choose after school. Your goals, aims, income expectations, work – life balance, etc.

It helps in gaining experience so SMEs often tend to give you more than MNCs. This prepares you for starting your own business or joining an MNC for a higher role.

Plan your career, think about where you want to be in 5 years and let that motivate and inspire you.

Make a decision today that your future self will be proud of. Do your research, speak to people and gather as much information as you can, to help you in making an informed decision.

BTW, two more people from Kingston joined Planned Departure with me. This is what they have to say about it –

 Ismail Pervez – Corporate Sales & Operations Executive

“Being a strong believer in only working for a top organisation during my university life,  my choice of decision between an SME or MNC was very stressful as I had 3 job offers, two from well established companies and 1 start-up. But looking at different aspects and aspirations, I made the decision to work in an SME because of an opportunity to turn that organisation into an MNC and the challenge it will bring upon myself to succeed and learn as on the contrary, the established company will train me and follow directions and rules where I would be restricted and not have flexibility to experience other areas or have an involvement for the company growth.  I would recommend each student to carefully choose their workplace, according to the expected outcomes they want to achieve”.

 Nam Nguyen – Marketing Executive

Having worked for both MNCs and SMEs have given me the opportunity to experience what is it like to work in a small and big organisations. Both of them have their advantages and disadvantages. In a MNC you earn prestige, confidence and connections that can give you a big push for future job applications.

But in terms of learning and skills, SMEs are the preferred ones by me. While working at Planned Departure I have been able to get involved in many activities from the day-to-day running of the business. I have been able to touch on every aspect of the business from – Marketing, Sales, Operations, Lead Generation, Media Engagement and many more for just 3 months. This has given me confidence and knowledge to one day run my own SME.

I would suggest students to not be afraid to join SMEs if they have the chance, because sometimes not everything bigger is better.

Best of luck 🙂