- Build the household document inventory1 hour 30 min
Start with a checklist the whole household shares. Use a spreadsheet or a printed table with five columns — Household member, Category, Document, Status (present / missing), and Location — and enter a row for every adult and child in the household. The six categories, with the documents that belong in each:
- Identity — driver’s license or state ID, passport, Social Security card, birth certificate
- Property — deed or lease, property-tax statement, mortgage statement
- Insurance — homeowners or renters, auto, health, and life policies, with the declarations page of each
- Medical — vaccination records, current medication list, advance directives
- Financial — bank, investment, and retirement account statements
- Family and legal — marriage and death certificates, will, power of attorney, custody papers
Now search the places a document actually lives: the file cabinet, any fire-safe or lockbox, the desk drawer, the glovebox, the safe-deposit box, and the online portals of your banks and insurers. Mark each row present or missing and note where you found it. Anything you have only as a scan, an emailed PDF, or a photocopy is copy-only — it is not the record itself. When the pass is done, keep this sheet: it is the gap list every later step works against, so save an editable copy and print one for the physical folder.
0/3 done