Are you Prepared?

I heard about a lady that had her wallet stolen the other day. Not only did she have thousands of dollars charged to her credit cards but she lost old photographs in the wallet that can never be replaced.  What can you do to protect yourself?  First, get digital scans of any old photographs that you want to preserve. In this digital age, this should not be a problem. Copy those photographs to a cloud storage such as Google, Dropbox or Flickr. If you decide you don't want to rely on other servers, copy them to a disk and store them in a safe deposit box with your important documents. In case of fire or a computer crash, it would be best not to keep it at home.

Now, take everything out of your wallet and take inventory!  Most of us could not come up with everything in their wallet or purse. Write down the 1-800 # for your card in case of loss or theft. Don't include the card number!  Make copies of any important business cards or other information you want to keep or is irreplaceable.  You can store this information through a cloud storage or there is a website that is designed specifically to store this information called Wallet Garden. Again, I would think twice about leaving it on your computer or a thumb drive stored at your home. If you lost your wallet or purse due to a house fire, it would be so much easier to get your information online which would give you access any time or a safe deposit box would work as well but not as quick to gain access which would be important for a theft.

Donna Freedman wrote about being mugged and the steps she had to take after her wallet was stolen.  Stop by "Get Rich Slowly" to read about the steps she took after the fact and her other suggestions for being prepared for the worse case situation.  ☺