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Mom and dad always told you they had everything organized and not to worry. Now you sit, in their home office, which was really your younger sisters’ bedroom while you were kids but was converted to an office when she left for college. You see paperwork in various files.

You see a few stacks of bills on the desk. There are file cabinets with more paperwork and you say to yourself: “No problem, I can handle this.” After two hours of non stop shuffling you have found no less than three copies of their will, all drafted from different attorneys, another will that is dated just 3 months ago which looks like a draft with notes in the margins. Also, you find a statement about an insurance policy dated from two years ago that looks like it has a death benefit of six figures. You also find their checking account statement from the local bank that is current and has a large sum in it.

Have you found everything? How do you proceed from here? Who do you and your sister need to call first? “Maybe this won’t be as easy as you thought” you say to yourself as you take a break and reflect upon your parents. They were savers all their life. They were conservative and planned for the future. “Have I really found everything?” You seem to think so, but you’re just not sure.

Here’s the rest of the story they never told you.

They actually have 5 different insurance policies. They have investment accounts at two different investment firms and three other bank accounts including one out of state near where they normally vacation every year. You were right to wonder if you found everything.

You haven’t.

And there is more. They have two safe deposit boxes. You don’t know about either of them. In one is a coin collection. In the other are all their “important papers” like their marriage certificate, your fathers death certificate, the rest of the insurance policies, cash just in case of a rainy day, and two loan documents representing loans they made to family friends when times got tough a few years ago.

They never told you about the safety deposit boxes. They never told you where the safety deposit box keys are because they always put keys in the “key drawer” in the kitchen. You know the drawer I am writing about. It’s the drawer in the kitchen with all the other keys that used to work on various locks to various doors and various padlocks that have accumulated over the last 65 years. Don’t worry, you will eventually find these keys. One will be in the “key drawer” the other you will find 6 months from now when you are planning the estate sale. It is hidden in the back of your mothers top dresser drawer.

Did they mention what they have hidden in the basement in the ceiling rafters? Cash that you will never find and will stay where it is hidden for another 50 years through three other families who will live in your childhood home before it will be found by a construction worker hired by future family number three to remodel part of the basement into a rec room. Does this scenario sound far fetched? Does it sound too improbable to be true?

After working for 21 years with a professional investment advisor and financial planner at a major Wall Street investment firm I can tell you I have heard all of this – and more.

The good news is there is a solution to the above scenario that any family can employ, including yours, to save time, money, heartache and create peace of mind.

Step one is to help yourself and your parents too by becoming more organized. The most common question I hear regarding organizing the financial matters of a family is: “What’s important? And, how should I go about doing this?” The answer lies in knowing what you have and where it is located.

The following items need to be accounted for:

Bank account statements

Investment account statements

Life insurance policies – the contract

Life insurance policy statements

Annuity contracts

Annuity statements

Retirement account statements – IRA’s – 401k’s and the like

Corporate benefits such as pension information, group life insurance policies and group long term care policies Individual long term care policies

Most recent tax return

College Savings accounts for children or grand children such as educational IRA’s, Coverdale Savings accounts and state sponsored 529 plans

Other accounts for minors or family members with disabilities such as custodial accounts or special needs trusts Legal documents such as wills, trusts, marriage certificates, death certificates, divorce decrees, custody agreements, loan agreements, buy-sell agreements for businesses, medical powers of attorney, financial powers of attorney and entity formation documents for things such as LLC’s, S Corp’s, C Corp’s, Charitable trusts, and charitable private foundations and the requisite accompanying account statement if it applies

A list of valuable assets and where they are such as: coin collections, gun collections, jewelry, art, vehicles, boats, planes and family air looms.

A complete listing of all ownership documents and insurance coverage for vehicles mentioned above as well as any official appraisals and original receipts for collectibles.

A listing of each institution where safety deposit box is located including the address, hours of operation, contact person, phone number and email address. This applies to off sight self storage units as well.

A note as to where the safety deposit key is located. (They can be expensive and time consuming to replace).

A list of the complete contact information for each of the service providers the family deals with such as the CPA, the attorney, the insurance agents, the financial advisors, the bank representatives, the executor of the estate, the beneficiaries of any will, trust or insurance policy, and the funeral parlor where arrangements have been made to name only a few.

The second step is fairly easy once the “heavy lifting” of gathering all above mentioned information has been completed. Determine where and how to store this valuable family information. You can put it all in a file at home, a safe at home, or a safety deposit box . These are all traditional approaches. Or, you can look into the latest trend in data storage and secure this information through the use of online “virtual vaults” which have encrypted data storage capabilities. The goal with all this is to create peace of mind and the ability to efficiently and effectively access information when needed from anywhere in the world. Welcome to the age of cloud computing.

Step three is the most important step. Take action and complete this important job and review all of your gathered information once a year. In my experience, many families talk about gathering this critical information together and they either never do it, or only do it partially. Granted, there is nothing fun about going about the business of proactively organizing your financial affairs. However, once it is done and once you get in the habit of reviewing it for accuracy annually, you should have greater comfort knowing that no one in your family will have to go through the scenario described at the beginning of this article. Today, in the financially complex world we live in, an ounce of prevention is worth two pounds of cure.