Digital Assets Are Property Too!

/ Worley Erhart-Graves Financial Advisors/

If you’re reading our blog about financial planning, you probably own financial assets. But the fact you are reading this blog post means you own digital assets as well. In fact, nowadays people of all ages tend to own digital assets, and most of us own quite an array of them. 

First, there’s all that hardware we collect: 

  •          Computers

  •          External hard drives

  •          Tablets

  •          Smart phones

  •          E-readers

  •          Digital cameras

Then, think about all those accounts we use: 

  •          Social media accounts such as Facebook™, 
             Twitter™, Pinterest™, on and on.

  •          Online banking accounts

  •          Transaction accounts (Amazon, eBay, PayPal)

  •          Email accounts

  •          Photo sharing accounts

  •          Domain names

Digital assets management, or DAM, consists of management tasks and decisions surrounding the cataloguing, storage, retrieval, and distribution of digital assets.

“The digitization of business assets has created a new challenge for the development of succession plans for small business owners,” writes Jamie P. Hopkins, J.D. in the Journal of Financial Planning.

But even if you don’t own a business or ever plan to, smart financial and estate planning need to  include how you want your digital assets handled, cautions Dennis Kennedy in Law Practice Today. 

Facebook™ has gotten into the game of planning for digital assets.  You’re now allowed to appoint a legacy contact for your account after you die. Or, you can set your Facebook account so that it’s permanently deleted when you die.

Here at Worley Erhart-Graves Financial Advisors, where our focus has always been on the accumulation and management of financial assets, we know how important it is to focus on managing all types of assets. 

It’s getting late. Do you know where all of your passwords and user names are? Let’s talk about that.

Content was prepared by a freelance journalist on behalf of Worley Erhart-Graves Financial Advisors