Master Information Document

[fidgiegirl]

Interesting approaches, everyone. Thank you so much.

@Jonathan, very interesting point about the will. I never would have known that. It is another item on our new year financial clean-up list.

@flowers, wow! That's a lot of work. But you have also raised the first reason, for me, to scan photos and put them on a disc. If your house were to burn down and that disc were in a safe deposit box, you'd be covered.

[SoSimple]

I have tried and tried and tried to get my parents (well, actually my dad) to write all this information down so in the 3 days I'd have as bereavement leave to take care of everything I'd be able to at least make a decent start rather then spending those three days plowing through the Leaning Tower(s) of Paper that my dad calls Important Paperwork. Important Paperwork includes articles he cut out from the London Times some 15 years ago with the intention of scanning it and saving it somewhere for posterity's sake. Yeah. Right. Meanwhile, could you get me a list of your accounts please???

We have all account info on two encrypted thumb drives (just in case one goes bad). We also keep a list of the 1001 passwords/login info you need for the various accounts. We were considering moving it to an online backup solution as an encrypted zip file, but DH is leery of the security (FWIW, I consider this safer than our current solution, but DH disagrees . . .)

[flowerseverywhere]

Interesting approaches, everyone. Thank you so much.

@Jonathan, very interesting point about the will. I never would have known that. It is another item on our new year financial clean-up list.

@flowers, wow! That's a lot of work. But you have also raised the first reason, for me, to scan photos and put them on a disc. If your house were to burn down and that disc were in a safe deposit box, you'd be covered.

With the will and other legal documents Jonathan is 100% right- you need to make sure that you follow the laws about documents. It cost less than $400 to have everything done- I imagine it could cost more depending on the complexity. Once you have children it becomes very important (ie guardians) and once your kids marry and have children these documents need to be revisited. But it doesn't do any good if your kids have no idea what attorney you used and where these documents are.

Actually it wasn't a lot of work. After Katrina when people said they were most upset about losing photos that got us into action. We got a nice scanner and put a pile of photos next to it and just scanned them in a half hour or hour at a time. I had my childhood photos and we got DH's and within a few months did them all.
The house inventory only took a few hours to do.

I think what might help is to figure out the most likely scenario that will happen and tackle that first. Could you replace the contents of your purse or wallet easily? If your house burned or was robbed would you even know what was in it? Many people live in areas that could be evacuated or have extreme damage due to hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, floods, wildfires etc. We have train tracks less than a mile from our house and three nuclear power plants less than 25 miles away- I can't imagine anyone is free from the modern day hazards of life. It gives us great peace of mind to know that we have done all we can to make it as easy as possible to deal with such scenarios as easily as possible.

[jp1]

Another thing I did recently was go through and make a spreadsheet listing all the phone numbers in my cell phone. I don't store people's numbers anywhere else so it would be a real pain to recreate, and some of the numbers would just be lost if my phone died or got lost or whatever.

As for an inventory of our home belongings I actually just went around with the video camera one day and room by room video'd stuff while describing it (ie, 14 dress shirts and 7 dress pants in bedroom closet. Bedroom furniture set, purchased for $1500 from Bob's discount. Etc.). It's imperfect, but would be a good start and at least jog our memories if the building ever burns down and we need to file an insurance claim.

As others have done, my next big project along these lines is photo scanning. We have several shoe boxes of photos going back to when we were both kids and like others have mentioned, I'd hate to lose them. Dad threw out all the slides from my childhood, thinking no one cared, and I'm still bummed.

[reader99]

In my case all of that information is either in the portable file thingy or my wallet. Since my potential executor is an experienced adult, I don't feel a need to put it all on one page anywhere. He'll figure it out.

[reader99]

Actually, reading it more closely it sounds downright dangerous to disseminate to so many peoiple. Why? it will only be needed in the event of your death or unconsciousness, in which case the only one who needs it is your POA or executor, who can go in your house and GET it when needed. Not have it lying around a bunch of other people's houses.

[Jonathan]

Your phone may be able to export a .vcf file which you can then import into a word processor or text editor of some sort to manage. As long as you can get the file off the phone somehow (upload to somewhere or USB to your computer), you're good to go.

[Float On]

I have one (master list) but it is really out of date and I seriously need to get that updated within the next couple of months. I take care of everything business wise and my husband has no clue as far as passwords and in 20 years has never once visited our safe-deposit box. I have a copy of my parents master list and they have a copy of mine so I need to suggest to them that its time for an update as well.