The information encoded in your DNA determines your unique biological characteristics, such as sex, eye color, age and Social Security number.

— Dave Barry —

If only it was so easy to have our Important Information encoded in our DNA. But it's not, so we need to have ways of organizing it.

First, we will look at how to organize the information, then we will look at what qualifies as important and how to handle it.

Organizing Important Information

Importance Level 1: Some information is important enough that you must keep the originals and keep them safe, which we will call Importance Level 1. For this information you should have a safe deposit box at the bank or a fireproof safe in your home. For convenience sake, it would be handy to also keep a scanned or hard copy around for reference, so you don't always have to be running to your safe deposit box.

Importance Level 2: The next level of important items comes from documents that may be reasonable to obtain if lost (like bank statements, copies of insurance, etc.). These can be kept in files and/or scanned for computer access.

Importance Level 3: This would be for information that is easily recreated, but should be kept handy. This would be emergency resources, and credit card info. These can be kept in a word processing document and printed out on an easily accessible sheet.

What Qualifies as Important

1. Health Records.
   Level 2.
2. Mortgage Records.
   Level 1.
3. Birth, Marriage, Divorce, and Death Certificates.
   Level 1.
4. Insurance Records.
   Level 2.
5. Financial and Tax Records.
   Level 2.
6. Passports and IDs.
   Level 1.
7. Stock and Securities Certificates.
   Level 1.
8. Contracts.
   Level 1 or 2.
9. Resource Information (such as emergency and home phone numbers, credit card info, etc.).
   Level 3.

— Shelly —