Making an Emergency Binder

Learn how to make an Emergency Binder, complete with a checklist of what to include.  Know where all your important documents are in an emergency with an Emergency Binder.

With all of the tornadoes, fires, floods and other natural disasters occurring lately, I thought it might be a good idea to talk about how you can prepare your family documents in the case that you have to evacuate quickly. Dan and I have decided to make an emergency binder for the “just in case.”

In this binder, we’ve included birth certificates and social security cards for all the members of our family. Passports. Account numbers for our mortgages, utilities, bank accounts, credit cards, etc. Titles for our vehicles. Information on our insurance: medical, vehicle, and homeowners. A copy of our will. Basically any piece of important information is stored in clear plastic sheet protectors in the binder.

If an emergency happened, we would simply grab the binder and go, and we would have all the important documents that we might need in the aftermath. 

Where should I store my emergency binder?

Because of the important nature of the documents enclosed, we recommend that you store your emergency binder in a safe, safety deposit box, or another secure area.  Obviously, these are documents that you wouldn’t want someone else getting hold of, so keep them somewhere protected.

We’ve gotten lots of comments about how, by keeping all of the documents in one place, we’re opening ourselves up for trouble.  I personally feel that keeping them all in the emergency binder– which always stays in our safe– is so much more protected than having these documents stored haphazardly around the house.

If you don’t feel comfortable having an emergency binder, that’s totally fine.  Just make sure you know where your important documents are at, in case there ever is an emergency that causes you to evacuate your home suddenly.

Making an emergency binder served another purpose for us. As we compiled our binder, we talked about different accounts and our finances. Because I’m the one who takes care of paying bills, transferring money, and such, I wanted to make sure that if something happened to me, Dan would know what he needed to do, and where to find the documents he might need. 

He now has a much better idea of what accounts we have, and the fact that he knows where all the information is if he needs it makes me feel better.  I pray Dan never has to deal with that, but if he does, this emergency binder (and having a will) will make things so much easier for him!

Not just documents.  Include pictures!

Another thing I do to prepare for emergencies is to make a back up file of pictures and documents every 6 months. I actually burn 2 DVDs at that time, and those go in the binder as well. When it comes down to it, if my house were to burn, the pictures would probably be the thing I would be most sad to lose. (Now that cloud picture storage is common, that is a great way to keep your pictures safe.)

How do I get my free, downloadable Emergency Binder Checklist?

This part’s so easy!  To download your free emergency binder checklist, simply click on the picture below, and print it out.  The checklist won’t have a watermark across it, don’t worry!

Do you have a way of storing important information and keepsakes in case of emergency? What are some of the items you feel are important to include?

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