• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Ask Liz Weston

Get smart with your money

  • About
  • Liz’s Books
  • Speaking
  • Disclosure
  • Contact

emergency preparedness

Q&A: Hard copies, thumb drives and the cloud: How to handle vital records when it’s time to flee

February 4, 2025 By Liz Weston

Dear Liz: We are assembling our important document to-go box with the typical things advised should we need to evacuate, such as birth and marriage certificates, passports, insurance documents, mortgage statements, etc. Many of the documents can be accessed online, so I wondered about pay-off statements from old loans and mortgages. Is it important to take copies of those? Also, what about grant deeds from previous properties that we no longer own?

Answer: In a disaster, you’ll need information to help you establish your identity and document what you currently own. Focus on safeguarding the most important paperwork and figure you can recreate the rest if necessary.

Start with documents that would be time-consuming or a hassle to replace, such as passports, birth and marriage certificates, immigration records, military records, vehicle titles, home inventories, appraisals, home plans or blueprints, recent tax returns and wills or other estate planning documents. The originals should be stored in a water- and fireproof place, such as a home safe or other secure location.

Consider storing copies of these documents, along with photos of your driver’s license and vehicle registration, on an encrypted thumb drive in your go bag or in a secure cloud-based storage service (Everplans is one option.) You could put physical copies in your evacuation bag, but much of the information could be helpful to an identity thief if stolen so you’ll have to weigh convenience against security.

Insurance policies are usually accessible online, but you may want to include your insurance companies’ contact information and policy numbers.

Also consider digitizing any family photos that aren’t already stored in the cloud. You may not have time to grab albums, and disaster victims often lament not having copied irreplaceable photos.

Filed Under: Emergency Preparedness, Legal Matters, Q&A Tagged With: disaster, disaster kit, emergency kit, emergency preparedness, go bag, to-go bag

Q&A: Loose change and the ‘Big One’

October 27, 2014 By Liz Weston

Dear Liz: In your column about saving loose change, another reason to keep a couple of coffee cans full of coins is for when we have the “Big One.” ATMs and banks and stores that rely on computers will be down, but loose change and small bills will be spendable.

Answer: Every disaster preparedness kit — which every home should have — should include some cash for emergency spending. But the cash should be in the form of bills, not change, which will add unnecessary weight to your kit if you have to evacuate. A few hundred dollars in bills are easily carried — not so the 20 or 30 pounds of change that make up an equivalent amount of spendable money.

Filed Under: Banking, Q&A, The Basics Tagged With: emergency preparedness, loose change, q&a

Are you ready?

March 18, 2014 By Liz Weston

Christchurch Earthquake - Avonside House CollapsesThe earthquake that rattled us out of bed Monday morning also served as a reminder: it’s time to check the emergency supplies. And it occurred to me that preparing for emergencies has a lot in common with preparing for retirement. Consider:

Most people are woefully unprepared. Not just “under-prepared” but not even being in the same room as prepared. When it comes to retirement savings, one-third of workers have less than $1,000 set aside and 60% have less than $25,000, according to the most recent survey by Employee Benefit Research Institute and Greenwald and Associates.

The solution: Use your imagination. Emergency preparedness experts recommend thinking, in detail, about how you would feed, shelter and tend to the hygiene needs of your family if you were without power, water or a roof for three days. Walking yourself through those days will get you motivated to make your life easier should something happen. A similar exercise can jumpstart your retirement planning: Go to the Social Security estimator, see what you’re scheduled to get at retirement, and imagine trying to live on that.

Many people are overwhelmed. The list of emergency supplies you’re supposed to keep in your home, car and office can be pretty daunting, especially if you’re on a budget. Likewise, the amounts of money people are supposed to save for retirement can seem unrealistically large.

The solution: Start small. Anything you scrape together will help. Getting a kit together can start with some canned goods and a few gallons of water stored in a plastic tote. Getting your retirement together can start with a 1% contribution to a 401(k) or an automatic transfer to an IRA. Build from there, as you can.

You can’t “set it and forget it.” Once you’ve assembled them, disaster supplies have to be regularly checked to see what’s expired or wandered off. (Somebody may have pilfered the batteries in an “emergency” for a game console, for example.) Likewise, once you start saving for retirement, you need to check in to make sure your investments are properly allocated and regularly rebalanced. Changes in your life or your plans can necessitate changes in your retirement savings, as well.

The solution: Put it on your calendar. Schedule checkups at least once a year.

By the way, you can find lists of emergency supplies at the Red Cross and FEMA’s Ready.gov sites. Or check out this great graphic from the LA Times, which shows how you can store what you need in a clean plastic trash can.

If you’re interested, here are some of the supplies we keep around the house (as well as my notes about what I need to replace/get):

Outside in storage bins:

  • Water [need more; we have about half of the two gallons per person per day recommended]
  • Food (we have canned food + can opener, peanut butter, crackers, energy bars; I need to add more pet food now that we have a cat]
  • Cat and dog crates
  • Tent, cookstove, fuel
  • Shovel, hatchet, crowbar, hacksaw
  • Plastic sheeting (to replace windows), duct tape [need to get: staple gun]
  • Plastic goggles, hard hats (protection for clearing debris) [need to find: the work gloves that wandered off]
  • Gas shut off tool (we had an automatic shutoff installed, but I like to be sure)
  • Rope
  • Flashlight, lantern, batteries [looks like I moved the portable radio to some other site; now I just have to remember where]
  • Emergency toilet (bucket with a snap-on seat, garbage bags and kitty litter), toilet paper, wipes
  • Bleach, castille soap, towels
  • Mylar blankets & rain ponchos
  • Need: Fire extinguisher, hygiene kit [toothbrushes, floss, hairbrush]

Car kit:

  • Bottled water
  • Energy bars
  • First-aid kit
  • Sneakers, socks, extra sweaters and coats
  • Multi-tool (oooo I love my Leatherman)
  • Wipes
  • Wind-up/solar-powered flashlight/radio/cell phone charger
  • Regular blanket, mylar blankets & rain ponchos

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: emergency preparedness, natural disasters, Retirement, retirement planning

Thursday’s need-to-know money news

August 1, 2013 By Liz Weston

Detroit stationDebt collectors are spying on creditors through social media, what consumers can learn from Detroit, and is it time to become the boss?

Are Debt Collectors Stalking You Online?
That friend request you just accepted might not be someone interested in playing Candy Crush with you.

3 Personal Finance Lessons Learned From Detroit’s Bankruptcy

Control your debt before it takes control you.

6 Ways to Prepare for Unexpected Financial Events
Expecting the unexpected could be the thing that pulls you through.

5 Basic Money Errors Retirees Make
From giving away money to relatives, to not keeping a budget, these mistakes can tarnish your golden years.

Making the Jump to Self-Employment
Are you ready to become your own boss?

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: collections, debt, debt collectors, disasters, emergency preparedness, emergency savings, Retirement, self-employment

How much cash should you keep on hand?

May 20, 2013 By Liz Weston

Dear Liz: A few years ago I finished paying off my debt and now am in the very low-risk credit category. I have savings equal to about three months’ worth of bills and am working to get that to six months’ worth. I’m wondering, though, about an emergency that may require me to pay in cash (such as a major power outage that disables debit or credit card systems, or the more likely event that I forget the ATM or credit card at home). How much cash should a person have on hand? Is there a magic number?

Answer: There’s no magic number. You’ll have to weigh the likelihood you’ll need the green, and the consequences of not having it when you need it, against the risk of loss or theft.

Many people find it’s a good idea to tuck a spare $20 into their wallet for emergencies, and perhaps another $20 in their cars if they’re in the habit of forgetting their wallets or their plastic.

Cash for a disaster is another matter. Power could go out for a week or more, or you may need to evacuate and pay for transportation and shelter at a time when card processing systems are disabled. A few hundred bucks in cash probably would be the minimum prudent reserve you’d want to keep in a secure place in your home. You may decide that you need more.

Filed Under: Banking, Budgeting, Q&A, Saving Money, The Basics Tagged With: emergency fund, emergency preparedness, emergency savings

Are you ready?

October 25, 2012 By Liz Weston

A big storm is threatening the East Coast, and my buddy Elizabeth Razzi had some good advice yesterday for getting ready:

 “From my experience, most important prep includes doing ALL the laundry, making milk jugs of ice for the fridge, clearing leaves from drains and having a good supply of ground coffee for the French press.”

At the same time, Ann Carrns over at the New York Times’ Bucks blog was wondering about “Keeping Cash on Hand, Just in Case.” Carns asked whether it might be prudent to have a stash of green in case hackers took down an ATM network. Of course, the more likely scenario is that nature will be the culprit: hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, blackouts and other disasters can make getting cash tough.

I’ve kept a stash of cash handy ever since I lived in Alaska, land of extreme weather and earthquakes. Up there, I also learned to keep a two-week supply of food, water and fuel at home, to carry emergency supplies in my car and to always keep the car’s gas tank at least half full. (You can learn more about emergency preparedness at www.ready.gov, among other sites.) Our supplies include camp stoves for cooking, since both gas and electric lines can get disrupted. You can get single-burner camp stoves for about $20 and propane cylinders for around $5.

We’re so used to modern conveniences, from a ready supply of electricity to a steady supply of ATM cash, that it can be hard to imagine what we’d need to survive life for several days without them. If you’ve ever flipped on a light switch when you knew the power was out, you know what I mean—our brains really aren’t wired for disaster. But taking a few minutes to gather some supplies, check flashlight batteries and tuck away a little cash can make getting through any disruption, by nature or otherwise, a lot easier.

What emergency preparations have you made? What do you still need to do?

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: emergency preparedness, emergency savings

Primary Sidebar

Search

Copyright © 2025 · Ask Liz Weston 2.0 On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in