A free tool from the One Plan books

One day your family will be in your kitchen at eleven at night, trying to work out which bank has the mortgage.

They'll be doing it while grieving. That's the part people forget — grief is not a state in which anyone does their best administrative work.

Time to fill in the page on the right: about nine minutes. Time your family spends reconstructing the same information without it: forty hours to nine months, plus one argument that never fully heals.

Rodson Cardoso · Author of three books nobody wants to need

Free · No account · Nothing stored on our side

The One Page

If your family only ever reads one page, let it be this one. Twelve answers that unlock everything else.

Example Filled in for you, so you can see the shape of it.

0 of 12 answered

Confirm the link we email you and the page arrives as a printable PDF, followed by roughly one useful email a month about getting this sorted. Leave whenever you like — every email has a one-click unsubscribe.

Four things never to write on this page

Never full passwords. Write where the password manager is and who holds the master key. That's it.
Never full account numbers. The institution and the last four digits are enough to prove the account exists.
Never PINs, security codes, or the answers to security questions.
Never a Social Security number — yours or anyone else's.

Pointers only. Nothing on this page should be enough to move money. Everything on it should be enough to find it.

The three books

One page is a start. These are the rest of it.

Three workbooks for the three sides of the same problem: the planning you do now, the admin somebody does after, and the story that disappears if nobody writes it down.

The Planner

I'm Dead. Here's the Plan.

For you · Fill it in over a few evenings

Thirteen chapters covering who to call, where the documents are, which accounts exist, what the boiler does in February, and who gets the ugly lamp your daughter secretly loves. Plus medical wishes, the pets, the passwords problem, and letters to leave behind.

"It is a joke, and it is also completely serious, and those two things are not in conflict."

The Workbook

Someone Died. Here's What You Do.

For them · The first year, step by step

Every call to make and every office to notify, in order, with a place to write down what you've already done. Death certificates, Social Security, probate in plain English, the locked phone, the subscriptions still charging a dead person — and which debts actually follow.

"Almost nothing is as urgent as it feels right now. Take that seriously."

The Journal

I'm Not Dead Yet. Here's the Story.

For the one who won't talk about it

201 small questions instead of one impossible one. The house they grew up in, every job they ever had, the trouble they got into, what they changed their mind about. Answerable in four sentences while the coffee goes cold. No flowers on the cover.

"One day the person who knew what happened in 1968 is not available for follow-up questions."

Before you go

Take the one page with you.

It's free, it takes about nine minutes, and it is the single most useful thing you can hand your family. Fill it in above, or leave your address and we'll send the blank printable version to do at the kitchen table.

Click the confirmation link and the PDF arrives. Then one useful email a month. One-click unsubscribe, always.

Not a will.
Not legal advice.

These are organizers, not legal documents. None of them is a will, a trust, a power of attorney, or an advance directive, and filling one in does not create a legally binding instruction. Wishes written in these pages are guidance for the people who love you — where a book and a legal document disagree, the legal document wins, every time.

Laws differ by state and they change. Consult a licensed attorney for estate matters, a licensed financial professional for money matters, and your physician for medical directives. Written for the United States.

Reasonable questions

Before you type anything in

Where does what I typed on The One Page go?

Nowhere. It stays in your own browser so you can come back to it, and it is never sent to us. The only thing that leaves this page is your email address, and only if you ask for the printable copy.

Is this morbid?

Less than you'd think. People report the opposite — it's the not-knowing that sits on the chest. An afternoon with a pen is the cheapest anxiety treatment available.

My parent won't talk about any of this.

Then don't start with the death one. Start with the life-story journal — it asks about the green Impala with the hole in the floor, not about funerals. Leave it somewhere it will be picked up and mention once that you'd like to read it one day. Do not hover. That's the whole strategy and it works far better than enthusiasm.

Where should I keep the filled-in planner?

Somewhere findable, and not somewhere clever. A labeled file drawer, a bookshelf at eye level, a fireproof box at home. Not a safe-deposit box — in many places it's sealed at death and reopening it takes a court order, which is a striking way to lock the instructions inside the problem they were meant to solve.

What if I never finish it?

A partly finished planner is worth infinitely more than a perfect one you never started. Fill in one page. Any page.