Managing Life's Milestones With Technology

Using technology to plan a funeral will become even more prevalent as baby boomers demand nontraditional send-offs, according to Sue Kruskopf.

In 2008, Kruskopf and Nancy Bush created the site My Wonderful Life to help individuals plan their own funerals.

After setting up a free account, customers fill out a “book,” answering questions ranging from how you want your remains to be handled to favorite songs to distribution of possessions. You can choose up to six “angels” to carry out your wishes. The site sends your angels an e-mail with a link to your instructions.

“What really makes it unique is that when your loved one passes away, you click on a link and get a summary of every single thing that person wanted,” Kruskopf says. “You know how much of a gift that is for people to not have to guess?”

Kruskopf says My Wonderful Life has about 10,000 registered members. Along with easing the emotional burden, My Wonderful Life can also help with financial matters.

“There’s a section where you can let people know where all your stuff is,” Kruskopf says. “Letting people know where their important documents and possessions are and who you want them to go to.”

Kruskopf says she’s hoping to ease even more of the financial burden with future updates to the site.

“A lot of our members want to prepay for their funeral, but they don’t want to go through the traditional channels, so we’re looking at some options,” she says. “If you came down to the fact that the loved ones can print out a summary and then, by the way, it’s already paid for, how awesome would that be? Talk about taking a huge burden off of the survivors.”