The “Safe” Place

The Office Called Home – Part 6

Where are your important docs?  Do you have your important documents in a “safe” place?

Defining important documents.
Let’s define important documents.  Here are a few items we’ve defined as “safe” worthy:

• Birth certificates.  I wanted to say if you have children you need a place to keep their important records like their birth certificate.  As I think about it, you need a place to store yours. These documents aren’t something you just want to have laying around so that anyone can see them.
• Auto titles.  Fortunately, we have a couple of auto titles.  That means we own a car and once you have this document it’s like having a treasure.
• Deeds, jewelry appraisals, home appraisals and passports.  You need a place where you can safely keep these documents.
• Divorce filings and marriage certificates.  While I hate it for anyone who’s gone through a divorce, those documents are important and need to be stored as securely as possible.  On the flip-side, marriage certificates are important documents that you never want to misplace.

Speaking of storing important documents like marriage certificates, (don’t tell her) but my sister will at times bring her documents to me so that I can scan them and keep them. Truth be told, because I am my mom’s child, she knows I will keep them “safe”.  

As one who’s had the honor of performing a number of wedding ceremonies, one of the practices we’ve put in place is to request two official copies of the certificates.  This way we can keep and store a copy because just as this ceremony is important to the couple, it’s very important to Pamela and me, and we want to maintain its importance by keeping the marriage certificates “safe”.

Our safe has restrictions.
You better believe it; our “safe” has restrictions.  Not everyone can go in our “safe”. For certain private reasons, this safe is off limits to family members until I’m dead.  That’s the rule, you can’t look in this until I’m dead.

This created a problem once…we had left our Alabama tickets at home and needed someone to meet us with them.  These valuable items (smiley) are kept in the safe. We had to then figure out which of our children (who were home with us then) could I trust to go into the safe without being too nosy.  What a time we had talking about this incident for years to come. The point is the safe has rules and not everyone needs access to your most important of documents.

The gift of a safe
One of the gifts Pamela and I give to our (children), close adult family members when they’re married or on their own, is a safe.  We remind them that they need a place for their important information and we start them out with their 1st safe.

Today is Friday!
If you’re looking for a good housewarming gift, purchase a safe.  Everyone could use a place to store their important information. Your action item for the day is to go get a safe if you don’t have one.  Lock your important documents away, store them, and let someone you trust know where and how to gain access. This is your important information for your life, your business; what are your doing with yours?

Why don’t you share this with a friend?  I’d really appreciate it. Thanks for visiting kerryaclark.com.

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