I've been thinking about something that honestly keeps me up at night, and I need to share it with you. Our parents' generation has houses with deeds stored at the bank, stock portfolios managed by Fidelity, and photo albums sitting in basement boxes. Meanwhile, we have 47 different subscription services, 80,000 photos floating in the cloud, and cryptocurrency hidden in apps our parents literally can't pronounce.

Guess which generation actually needs digital estate planning more? (Spoiler: it's us, and it's not even close.)

One generation built wealth that's physical and centralized. We built lives that are digital and scattered across the entire internet.

Compare this to our parents: about 20 online accounts total, maybe 2 streaming subscriptions, 1 financial portal, around 2,000 digital photos, email and Facebook, and possibly a PayPal account. The difference is absolutely staggering.

That's $6,000 per year of value that just disappears when you die.

Here's the brutal truth: when you die without digital death planning, your family will lose access to thousands of dollars in digital assets, tens of thousands of precious memories, and years of creative work. Subscription services will keep charging your credit card forever, social media accounts will become haunting reminders with no one able to memorialize them properly.

Digital death planning isn't optional for our generation—it's essential. Start by auditing your digital life: list your accounts, document your assets, identify what's valuable versus what can disappear. Set up a system for your most important digital assets to be transferred to people you trust.

Our parents could rely on physical documents and traditional wills. We need digital death planning that actually understands our digital-first lives and protects what we've built online.

JP, Luca, CJ, 8, and Summer

## The Great Generational Digital Divide