My wife once asked me where our homeowner's insurance policy was. I said "the filing cabinet." She asked which folder. I said "the one with the stuff in it." She did not find that helpful.

That moment stuck with me, because I realized something uncomfortable: if anything happened to me, she'd be grieving and simultaneously digging through a junk drawer, a filing cabinet with no logic to it, three email accounts, and a shoebox of papers from 2011. That's not a legacy. That's a scavenger hunt nobody wants to play.

So I spent a Saturday afternoon creating legacy records. Not a fancy legal project. Not something that required a lawyer or a financial planner. Just me, a cup of coffee, and the decision to get my stuff together so my family wouldn't have to guess. Here's exactly how I did it, and how you can do the same.

Start with the messy drawer (seriously)

Don't open a spreadsheet. Don't buy a binder system from Amazon. Start by walking through your house and pulling together every piece of paper, card, document, and sticky note that might matter.

Here's what I grabbed on my first pass:

The folder in the filing cabinet (the one with the stuff in it)
A stack of mail I'd been meaning to sort
Insurance cards from my wallet
The folder my mortgage lender gave me at closing
A fireproof box from the closet that I hadn't opened in years
A few documents I'd saved as photos on my phone

I dumped it all on the dining room table. It looked like a mess, and that's fine. You can't organize what you haven't gathered. The whole point of creating legacy records is to pull things out of the dark corners and put them somewhere your family can find them.

Most people's important information lives in at least four or five different places. Drawers, email inboxes, apps, filing cabinets, wallets, glove compartments. Your first job is just to round it all up. If you want a more detailed list of what to look for, this guide to the top documents to leave for your family is a good starting point.

Sort it into piles that actually make sense

Once everything is on the table, you need categories. Not fancy ones. Just groups that would make sense to someone who isn't you.

Here's what worked for me:

Money stuff. Bank accounts, investment accounts, retirement accounts, pension information, debts, credit cards. Anything with a dollar sign attached to it. Include account numbers and where to find login information. You don't need to write down passwords on paper, but you do need to tell someone where your password manager is and how to get into it.

Legal stuff. Will, power of attorney, healthcare directive, trust documents if you have them. If you don't have a will yet, write that down too. At least your family will know it doesn't exist and they aren't searching for one.

Insurance stuff. Life insurance, health insurance, homeowner's or renter's, auto, any umbrella policies. Include the policy numbers and the phone number to call for claims.

Property stuff. Deeds, titles, vehicle registrations, storage unit information, anything you own that has a paper trail.

Digital stuff. Email accounts, social media accounts, subscriptions, cloud storage, anything that lives online. This one surprised me the most. I had more than forty online accounts that someone would eventually need to deal with.

Personal stuff. This is the pile people forget about. Birth certificates, marriage certificate, Social Security cards, passport locations, military records if applicable. Also any notes about burial wishes, funeral preferences, or organ donation.

You don't need all of these to be perfect on day one. The goal is to get them sorted so someone other than you could sit down and understand what's what.

Write it down like you're explaining it to a friend

Here's where most guides lose people. They tell you to "create a comprehensive document" and leave it at that. What does that even mean?

Here's what I actually did. I opened a Google Doc and wrote each category as a heading. Under each one, I wrote plain sentences. Not bullet points with account numbers and nothing else. Actual sentences, like I was explaining things to my wife over dinner.

For example, under the money section I wrote something like: "Our main checking account is at Chase, account ending in 4521. The debit card is the blue one in my wallet. I also have a savings account there that I set up for the emergency fund. The login is in my password manager under 'Chase Banking.'"

That's it. No jargon. No abbreviations only I understand. Just clear, honest explanations of where things are and how to get to them.

The personal pile got a different treatment. I wrote a short note about things I cared about. Where I wanted to be buried. That I don't want a fancy funeral. That the kids should get the guitars. Small things, but things that would take a weight off my family's shoulders if they already knew.

If you want to think about this from the security angle, here's why storing this information securely matters so much.

Make copies, because one copy isn't enough

This is the step people skip, and it's the one that matters most after a fire, a flood, or a lost laptop.

You need at least two copies of your legacy records. One physical, one digital. Ideally three if you count a backup.

For the physical copy, I printed my document and put it in a binder. Nothing fancy. Just a three-ring binder with tabs for each category. I put the original legal documents (will, deeds, insurance policies) in the same binder, in clear sheet protectors. The whole thing lives in our fireproof safe.

For the digital copy, I saved the document in a shared cloud folder that my wife has access to. I also scanned every important paper document and saved those scans in the same folder.

If you're wondering whether physical or digital matters more, this post breaks down exactly why you need both. The short answer is that each one protects you from a different kind of disaster.

One more thing on copies: don't just make them and forget about them. Set a calendar reminder once a year to go through the binder, update anything that's changed, and make sure your digital copies are current. A record from three years ago with the wrong insurance policy number is worse than no record at all, because it sends your family on a wild goose chase.

Tell someone where it is

You can create the most organized set of legacy records in the world, and it won't matter if nobody knows they exist.

This was the hardest part for me. Not the organizing. The conversation.

I sat down with my wife and told her about the binder. Where it is. What's in it. How to get into the cloud folder. I also told my brother, because if something happened to both of us, somebody else needs to know the plan exists.

You don't have to share every detail with every person. But at least one or two people in your life need to know three things:

That you've created these records
Where to find them
Who else knows about them

That's the whole chain of trust. If you've done good legacy planning, but nobody knows where to look, you've basically hidden the treasure map inside the treasure chest.

Some people feel awkward about this conversation. I get it. Talking about what happens after you die isn't most people's idea of a fun evening. But I'll tell you this: when I told my wife about the binder, she didn't get sad. She got relieved. She said, "Thank you. I was worried about this and didn't know how to bring it up."

That's the thing about creating legacy records. It feels like a morbid project when you're thinking about it, and it feels like a gift when you actually do it.

Keep it alive

Your legacy records aren't a one-time project. They're a living document. Every time you open a new bank account, change insurance providers, buy or sell a car, or update your will, your records need to reflect that.

I keep a running note on my phone called "binder updates." Whenever something changes, I jot it down there. Then, when I do my annual review, I have a list of everything that needs updating instead of trying to remember what changed over the past year.

Here are some things that trigger an update:

New or closed financial accounts
Changed passwords or password manager setup
Updated beneficiaries on insurance or retirement accounts
A new will or changes to your estate plan
Moved to a new house or bought/sold property
Changes in medical information or healthcare wishes

It takes me about thirty minutes once a year. That's it. Half an hour to keep the whole thing current.

This is the easiest hard thing you'll ever do

Let me be honest. The hardest part of this project is deciding to start. Once you sit down and begin pulling things together, it moves fast. Most people can get a solid first draft done in two to three hours. Not perfect. Not complete. But done enough that your family would be in dramatically better shape than they'd be without it.

You don't have to do it all at once, either. Start with the money pile and the legal pile, since those are the most time-sensitive things your family would need. Then add the rest over the next few weekends.

The whole point is this: you're turning a future crisis into a Saturday afternoon project. Your family won't have to scramble through drawers and email accounts during the worst week of their lives. They'll open a binder, or a shared folder, and find everything they need. Written in your words. Organized by you. Because you cared enough to do it.

If you want a head start, When I Die Files gives you a simple place to put it all together. No complicated systems or legal forms. Just a straightforward way to make sure the people you love aren't left guessing.