The test, in one sentence
Could a specific named person, starting from where they live, obtain the household's key information within a day, without asking you? If the answer is no, the records are not reachable, however well organised they are.
Almost every household fails this the first time, and almost every household can pass it after one evening. It is unusual for a planning question to have that shape, which is why it is worth doing before anything more complicated.
Why distance turns this into a real problem
In a compact city, failing the test costs an afternoon. Somebody drives over, lets themselves in, and looks. Across a large state, the same failure costs a day of travel and frequently an overnight stay, and it is undertaken by somebody who is already dealing with something else.
The house is not always available
The situations in which these records matter are disproportionately the situations in which nobody can readily get into the house. That is an uncomfortable observation and it is the single strongest argument against keeping the only copy there.
The person who knows is not always available
Most households have one person who knows where things are. The plan that depends on them is a plan that works in every scenario except the ones it exists for.
What actually needs to be reachable
Much less than people assume. The instinct is to make a complete archive, which is why the job never gets done. What is needed is an index rather than a library.
- What exists: one line per arrangement, account or policy, with who it is with.
- Where each thing lives, described so that somebody unfamiliar could follow it.
- Who to contact first, and who they should contact next.
- Anything already arranged or already paid for, which is the item most likely to be duplicated by accident.
- The date the page was last checked.
That is a page. It contains no account numbers, no passwords and nothing that would be damaging if it were read by the wrong person, which is precisely what makes it safe to leave in more than one place.
The fuller version of what belongs in a household's own records, as opposed to what belongs on the index, is set out in organising important financial information.
An index is safer than an archive
Households hesitate over this because they picture handing somebody a folder containing everything, and reasonably decide against it.
The page described above is the opposite of that. It says what exists and where, and it gives away nothing that could be used. It is closer to a map than to a key, and a map can be left with several people without anybody losing sleep.
Where to keep it
Three places, and the reasoning behind each is different.
- One at home, where it is used and updated.
- One with a person, not a place. Somebody who is not in the same building and preferably not in the same town.
- One somewhere retrievable without a key, which for most households now means somewhere digital that a second person can already open.
Testing it properly
A test that consists of asking somebody whether they could find it is not a test. The useful version takes ten minutes and produces a real answer.
The ten minute version
- Pick the person who would actually be doing this.
- Ask them, without preparing them, to tell you where the household's records are.
- Ask them to open the copy they should have access to, now, on their own device.
- Ask them who they would call first.
- Write down which of those four they could not do, because that is your whole list of work.
Most households discover one or two failures rather than four, and the failures are usually small: a copy that was never sent, an access that was never granted, a name that was never said out loud.
How often this goes stale
Faster than people expect, because the things it points at move. An account is closed, a document is moved during a tidy up, a person changes their number. None of that is visible from the page itself, which is why the page carries a date.
Once a year is enough, and it takes about fifteen minutes when nothing has changed. Households that skip it for five years find they are not updating a page, they are rebuilding one, which is a different and much less appealing job.
What an unreachable record costs
It is worth being concrete, because the abstract version of this reads as tidiness and it is not. The costs are specific and they compound.
- A journey that exists solely so that somebody can be in a building and open a drawer.
- Something arranged twice because nobody could establish whether it had been arranged once.
- Weeks of delay while a search is conducted through statements and post, which is how most families reconstruct a position they could have been handed.
- A decision made on an assumption, because the fact was in the house and the answer was needed today.
The third of those is the most common and the most avoidable. Families routinely spend a month establishing what a page could have told them in a minute, and they do it during the month they have least capacity for it.
The two failure modes, and they are opposites
Too little
Nothing written, everything in one person's head. This is the common one, and it is not carelessness. It is what happens when a household has never had a reason to externalise something that works perfectly well internally.
Too much
A complete archive nobody maintains and nobody can navigate. This is the rarer one and it is the more frustrating, because effort was spent. A folder of everything is a search problem rather than a solution to one, and it goes stale faster than a page because there is more of it to go stale.
The useful position is between them, and it is much closer to the small end than people expect. A page that is right beats a folder that is comprehensive, because the page will still be right next year.
Mistakes that make records unreachable
- Keeping the only copy in the house, which is the most common by a wide margin.
- Making it comprehensive, which makes it unmaintainable, which makes it wrong.
- Telling somebody it exists without telling them where or how to open it.
- Storing it somewhere that requires a password only one person has.
- Assuming a relative who visits often knows the house, when they have never opened a drawer in it.
Why this belongs with everything else
Almost every other planning question assumes this one has been answered. Deciding what a household needs, or who is named on what, or what somebody should do first, all depend on somebody being able to find out what is currently true. Where family is spread across states, that is the same problem approached from the other end, which is why naming beneficiaries when family is out of state and planning when the closest relative is a flight away both end up here.
What to do if you cannot face the whole thing
A reasonable position, and there is a version of this that takes ten minutes and delivers most of the value.
Write four lines on one page: who to call first, where the documents are, what has already been arranged, and today's date. Send it to one person who does not live with you. That is a complete, if minimal, version of everything above, and it is a great deal better than the comprehensive version that never gets written.
The full exercise can follow whenever it suits. What matters is that the household stops being in the position where the answer to all four questions exists only in one person's head.
Frequently asked questions
What should not go on a page like this?
Account numbers, passwords, and anything that would let somebody act rather than find. The page is an index, and keeping it to that is what makes it safe to leave in several places.
Question 1Is a safe deposit box a good place for the only copy?
It is a good place for documents and a poor place for the index, because access to it is frequently the thing that is difficult in the moment. Keep the index somewhere that needs no permission to open.
Question 2Who should hold the second copy?
Somebody who is not in the same building, ideally not in the same town, and who knows they hold it. A copy the holder does not know they have is not a copy.
Question 3How much detail is enough?
Enough that a person who has never been in your house could find the actual document. In practice that is a sentence per item rather than a description, and the test is whether somebody else can follow it, not whether you can.
Question 4Does it need to be on paper?
It needs to be reachable, which usually means both. Paper survives a lost password and a digital copy survives a house nobody can enter, and the two failure modes are different enough that one of each is sensible.
Question 5A reasonable next step
Run the ten minute test on one person this week. Whatever it turns up is the entire job, and it is usually smaller than expected. The wider context for planning here is funeral cost planning for Nevada families.
