Important Papers In Safe Hands

With natural calamities striking without warning, we should by now know how to prepare for these eventualities. I’m referring to calamities such as earthquake, hurricane or the like. But how about protecting our important records or documents?

My husband and I have a big enough size safety deposit box in the vault of our nearby bank. Important documents (original and copies, whichever is applicable) are stored there. That also includes the most cherished copies of the DVD of our weddings as well as the CD’s of all the pictures taken during the weddings (note: yes, we got married twice).

It just dawned on me a couple of months ago to create another file of the same documents and entrust them to a person who has legal responsibility and can act in our behalf should the unthinkable happen. During en emergency, that person can also open the files or send them back to us if the information is needed.

These documents are:

• copies of driver’s license, passport, birth and marriage certificate
• copies of credit/debit cards
• a statement issued within the past year from each of our bank accounts and brokerage accounts
• house deed and photo of our home
• copies of insurance policies
• tax returns for the past three years
• keys and location of our safe deposit box
• financial adviser, executors and trustees names and contact information
• trusts, wills, as well as power of attorney
• list of assets and liabilities
• list of user ID and passwords on all online financial accounts

The reason why I thought about this is that, the safe deposit box is at our nearby bank and if there are natural calamities, the same would be inaccessible. With the documents elsewhere, away from the area where we live, I can have access to them. Our trusted individual is living in Las Vegas. I think that is far enough, right?  One caveat though, if you have to do the same, ensure that the person you are handing these documents to is trustworthy.

Oh my, now that I mentioned Las Vegas, I can’t help but think of the awesome Vegas strip. It’s been years since we last visited Las Vegas. I wonder if we need to bring an updated las vegas strip map when we visit. I’m sure new developments sprouted since.