work...

In addition to all that I mentioned in the last post... I do also actually work from time to time. Haha! And since I don't talk about work very much on here I just thought I'd mix it up a little bit and share my recent blog post from our corporate blog --

Being Financially Prepared for an Emergency

(By: JenniferStreiff September 10th, 2008)

Last week there was a wild fire on the mountainside not very far from my home. Thankfully we did not need to be evacuated, but it got me thinking about whether or not we would have been prepared to leave our home in a hurry if the fire had headed towards us. Is there really any way to prepare for such a thing? With such little notice, how do you decide what to grab? My first instinct would be to grab my grandmother’s, grandfather’s and mother’s paintings off the walls as we all hurried toward the car. Those are, after all, irreplaceable and completely priceless to me.

Then I started thinking about all that paperwork in my home office… legal and financial documents of all types. It would be impossible to find everything that is important in a hurry! I definitely need to do a better job of organizing those documents that really need to come with me if I need to leave in a hurry. Perhaps I should do what the Red Cross recommends and put the originals in a safety deposit box? On her Money and Happiness blog, Laura Rowley also recently included a list of the documents you should keep safely stored. It is also recommended that you keep copies of these valuable documents in one folder or envelope, relatively close to the front door. Then if there is an emergency when you are at home, you can grab the copies on your way out.

I am happy to say, however, that for the most part I rest easy knowing that our finances will be in order even if we have to evacuate our home. I don’t worry about grabbing copies of our bills, bank statements, etc. Since we handle all our finances online with the Finicity Money Manager (formerly Mvelopes), we have access to everything we need whether we are at home or on the go – I just have to remember to grab my mobile phone!

Most of our bills are handled with automatic payments - such a stress reliever! I honestly don’t know how I ever paid all my bills on time before automatic payments – life is just too busy to sit around paying bills! I like knowing that even if I am distracted with other things, such as evacuating my family or, frankly, even if we are just out of town – our bills will be paid on time!

I hope we are never in that situation of needing to evacuate, or losing our home, but if we are, it’s great to know that we won’t have to worry about our finances!

Does anyone else have any good tips for preparing your finances for an emergency?

--------------

Each department posts something every week or so, and since my department consists of me and my boss, I get the privilege of posting quite frequently.... It's actually kinda fun. (Just don't tell Darren or me may put my name on the list more often... hahaa!)