The unpleasant but necessary business of planning for your death

Death comes with an awful lot of admin, says Merryn Somerset Webb. And if you don’t plan it right, it can come with an awful lot of expense, too. Here’s how to smooth your passage – in financial term, at least.

People at a funeral © Getty Images

There's a lot more to death planning than a funeral
(Image credit: People at a funeral © Getty Images)

Are you ready for death? It's a miserable question, but one that might be worth thinking about because, like pretty much everything these days, it comes with an awful lot of admin, and if you don't get this done right, the possibility of an awful lot of expense.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.