WHAT'S INSIDE

Nine sections, one binder.

The homepage shows the binder by time, what your family needs in the first 72 hours, the first month, the first year. This is the same binder, walked through by category. The order you'd build it in, with concrete examples for each section.

01 First Calls
02 Household
03 Money & Accounts
04 Insurance
05 Documents
06 Devices & Access
07 Bills & Subscriptions
08 Care Routines
09 A Letter for Them

First Calls

The first page anyone reaches for, because the first hour is mostly phone calls. Not a directory of everyone you know. A short, ordered list of who to ring first, who to ring after hours, and who will simply come over. Names beside numbers, with a sentence next to each one so the person reading isn't guessing how this contact fits into your life. The order matters. You are writing for someone who has just put down the phone and needs to pick it back up again.

The first call: the person who should hear it before anyone else
The doctor's after-hours line, and the practice that has the records
The friend who will come over without being asked
A neighbour, and what they're willing to do

Household

A short orientation to the house, written for someone who may not have been there in years. The address as the post office knows it. Who lives here, including the cat. Where the spare key is and who else has one. The alarm code and the trick with the back door. The neighbour who will let a delivery in. Small things, but the kind of small things that turn the first week from a series of locked doors into a series of solved ones.

The address, exactly as it appears on a piece of mail
Everyone who lives here, four-legged ones included
Where the spare key lives, and the neighbour who has the other one
The alarm code, and what to do if it goes off at 3am

Money & Accounts

Not balances and not logins. References. The names of the banks, the last four of each account, the brokerage the retirement money sits in, and the credit union nobody quite remembers you joined. Where the safe deposit box is and which bank holds the key. Account numbers belong on this page only as identifiers, never as a way in. The point isn't to hand someone the money. The point is so they know where the money is, and which institution to call on Monday morning.

The bank names: checking, savings, the credit union from college
The brokerage the retirement accounts sit in, and the advisor's name
Where the safe deposit box is, and which bank holds the key
A reference to where the tax returns from the last three years are kept

Insurance

The four policies most households have, and the people who actually answer the phone for each one. Life, home, auto, health, each with a policy number, a carrier, and the agent or broker who knows your file. If there's a small umbrella policy nobody ever talks about, it goes here too. This page exists because at the moment someone needs to call the insurance company, they shouldn't also have to figure out which insurance company. A line and a number is enough.

Life: carrier, policy number, the agent who placed it
Home: carrier, policy number, the broker who handles renewals
Auto: carrier, policy number, claim line for after hours
Health: plan name, member ID, the number on the back of the card

Documents

Where the originals live, not the copies, not the scans, the actual paper. The will and the name of the lawyer who drafted it. The deeds, the titles, the marriage and birth certificates. The folder you keep tax returns in. If anything is in a fire safe, this is where you say so, and where you say where the key is. The instinct to write “various places” is the instinct this page is here to overrule. Specifics, with locations.

Where the will is, and the lawyer who drafted it
The deeds and titles: the originals, not the copies in Dropbox
Birth certificates, marriage certificate, passports
The fire safe, and where the key to the fire safe lives

Devices & Access

The One Seal

Where the laptop is. Where the phone is. The three sealed envelopes.

The hardest page, and the one this product was really built for. Where the laptop is. Where the iPad lives. Which phone has the codes that everything else routes through. And the three sealed envelopes, the phone passcode, the primary email, the password manager master, each addressed to a specific named person and only readable by them.

Most of the binder is information. This page is also a small set of instructions, sealed on your device, given to people you trust by name. Not a vault. A handoff.

Where the laptop and the iPad live, day to day
The phone, model, where it's usually charging, who else can unlock it
The three sealed envelopes: phone, primary email, password manager
The person each envelope is addressed to, by name

Bills & Subscriptions

A short ledger of what goes out every month, and a quiet opinion on each one. The mortgage or rent, of course. The utilities. The streaming services that quietly compound. The gym nobody's been to. For each line: keep it on, switch it to autopay from a different account, or cancel it after the next billing cycle. Survivors describe the second month as the month the small subscriptions surface. This page is so the second month is a short afternoon, not a six-week archaeology dig.

Mortgage or rent: who it goes to, on what day, from which account
Utilities: gas, electric, water, internet, the one with the awkward login
Streaming and software: what to keep, what to cancel after one cycle
Memberships: gym, club, that magazine that keeps renewing

Care Routines

The page nobody wants to write, because writing it means imagining a Tuesday afternoon you're not there for. Who picks the kids up from school. The pediatrician, and the dentist, and the after-hours number that actually works. The pet's vet, allergies, medications, the brand of food that doesn't upset their stomach. The babysitter who already has a key. Anyone who reads this page is going to be tired and a little frightened. Write it for that reader. Plain sentences, real names.

Who picks the kids up, on which days, with what permission
The pediatrician, the dentist, and the after-hours line
The pet's vet, allergies, the brand of food that doesn't upset their stomach
The babysitter who already has a key, and how to reach her

A Letter for Them

The only page that isn't an inventory. A short letter, or a few of them, in your own words. To your spouse. To each of the kids. To whichever friend has done the work of being there for years. Not instructions, not logistics. The things you would actually want them to know on the morning they open this binder. People often start the rest of the binder so they can earn the right to write this page. That's fine. The page waits patiently. It is the reason the other eight exist.

A note to the person who will be holding everything together
A letter for each of the children, sealed and dated
A short paragraph for the friend who has done the quiet work
Anything you want to leave in your own words, however brief

This isn't a will, isn't a safe-deposit box, isn't a lawyer. It's the binder that makes the rest of those things findable.

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