Many of my friends are professional musicians, as is my saxophonist grandfather.

It is a hard life. For everyone except the first, it means barely surviving, in exchange for opportunities to do what they truly love: opportunities that diminish year after year.

However, musicians inhabit the same world as us, and that means they have all kinds of digital connections.

In fact, they are more likely to use mobile banking than most, so they can deposit their gig checks instantly. They pay their impatient bandmates through PayPal or Venmo.

The same goes for social networks … Facebook and Twitter have become the most important means of advertising upcoming shows.

But since life is tough, and many musicians tend to be … shall we say, too funny and irresponsible … they often die relatively young.

They rarely leave clear instructions on posthumous access to their bank accounts, social media profiles, and other digital assets. That is why, on more than one occasion, your survivors can wait months, even years, to access those assets. The Facebook pages of several deceased musicians that I know are still active because no one can log into them.

The same thing can happen to you … and probably will, unless you take steps to prevent it.

Today’s digital world

In today’s digital world, most of our financial transactions and communications take place online. That world expects us to have email, credit cards, online photos, websites, and social media profiles.

Trying to avoid all of that by sticking to outdated things like checks and deposit slips is like insisting on keeping an old car … eventually, there will be no parts or services available to keep you going.

But each of these digital assets is password protected. Increasingly, too, these passwords are embedded in multi-factor authentication systems, which require access to another device, such as a smartphone, with its own password, to confirm the master password in question.

What if you die or are disabled and no one else knows those passwords, personal identification numbers (PINs), access codes, and login IDs?

Unless you’ve taken steps to secure your “digital heritage,” the answer to that question is: a long period of “digital legalization.”

Tame the digital wild west

There are no federal laws regulating access to and inheritance of digital property.

Only 29 states have established laws to protect digital assets and provide a deceased person’s family with rights and procedures to access and manage those assets after death. Even then, the procedures can be complex, lengthy, and expensive.

That means it’s up to you to avoid digital succession by securing your digital assets in advance. That is how:

1. Take an inventory of your digital assets: Make a list of all your digital accounts, including login IDs and passwords. Include everything from bank and brokerage accounts to social media, subscriptions, and online shopping sites. A password manager like Dashlane (my current pick) comes in handy here, as it does it for you.
2. Create an online vault: You can use a password manager to store all of this information, but there are likely some digital assets that need to be registered separately. That’s why many secure online storage companies provide special tools to protect passwords, identifying or login information, and other sensitive data. I currently use SecureSafe, a Swiss cloud storage company with excellent encryption protocols.
3. Create a digital estate plan: This provides clear and specific statements of intent about who will get access to what information and covers all your accounts and digital assets, past, present and future. You can and should include this in your will, but you can also take the simple step of giving your login information to your password manager and / or the digital password vault to a “trustee” such as a spouse, sibling, or attorney. SecureSafe issues a “data inheritance” letter that you can give to the trustee explaining how to access your digital assets with a special code.
4. Be selective with your trustees: You may not want to give every trustee access to everything. For example, you can have one person manage less sensitive assets, such as social media, online shopping, and subscription assets, and another person manage your financial accounts.

An asset is anything of value that gives you an advantage. Your estate plan surely provides for your financial and real estate assets.

Your digital assets are as valuable as any other … and if you haven’t yet created a digital wealth plan, now is the time to do so.