What to Gather Before You Start Your Life Planning Workbook

The hardest part of a workbook like this usually isn't any single question — it's staring at page one, unsure where to even start. A little bit of gathering beforehand turns that blank-page feeling into a checklist you can just work through, section by section.

None of this is required. If you don't have something on hand, you can always come back to it. But having a few things nearby makes the process faster and a lot less frustrating.

Contact information

Gather the names and phone numbers of the people your family would need to reach — your closest family members, your attorney or financial advisor if you have one, and anyone else who should be notified.

Where your documents live

• Your will or trust, if you have one, and where the original is kept
• Insurance policy statements — life, home, auto, health
• The names of the banks or financial institutions you use
• Any funeral pre-planning paperwork or cemetery plot deeds

You don't need account numbers memorized or paperwork organized in folders. Knowing where things are kept — a filing cabinet, a safe deposit box, a specific drawer — is exactly what this workbook is designed to record.

Fifteen quiet minutes

More than any document, the thing that helps most is a bit of uninterrupted time. Most people move through the workbook in short sessions rather than one long sitting — a Sunday afternoon here, twenty minutes before bed there. There's no deadline, and you can always pause and come back.

Nothing here needs to be exact, and nothing is required. Skip anything you don't have handy and fill it in later.

If typing everything out feels like the bigger barrier, the AI-Guided Edition walks through the same material as a conversation instead — you talk, it listens, and it fills the workbook for you as you go.