The date-night talk every couple needs: passwords, online accounts and more

, she was reading a book called “Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage,” about a woman disentangling the family finances after her husband of 20 years abruptly leaves her. While Adhikari had no concerns about her husband running off, the book did get her thinking about how little she knew of their monetary logistics.

If something happened to Sane, she wouldn’t know where to begin handling the digital subscriptions, bills and investments.“I was overwhelmed by the number of things I didn’t know,” she says.Adhikari told her husband she wanted to get up to speed. She jotted down questions: What accounts were the streaming services and athletic club membership paid out of? Who held their life and disability insurance policies? To whom did they make car payments? Where were all their passwords?Sane, an energy company executive, says he was happy to oblige.

He had seen the trouble his mother had gone through to access accounts after his father died a few years prior. (My colleague Veronica Dagher recently wrote about a woman who spent a year untangling her family finances following the death of her husband.)“The concept of dividing the responsibilities of the house and family makes sense, but knowing what’s happening is important,” he says.With her list of unknowns complete, Adhikari and her husband each brought their laptops to a coffee shop in January.

They spent an hour creating a shared master document in a Google drive, listing all of their accounts.There were things Adhikari added that Sane didn’t have, including access to the bank accounts she had set up for their kids, her disability insurance information and a health savings account from a prior employer. They double-checked that both of their names were on all accounts.They