LESSONS LEARNED

During a two week vacation a lot of life and business lessons were brought to the forefront.

The most important life lesson was how precious and vulnerable our human lives are. Anyone of us, regardless of our age or health status can be whisked away without notice. On the second night of our vacation a person suffered a heart attack and actually died at the scene. A young man from Australia had just completed a CPR course and, along with the help of several others, brought this person back to life; it was a miracle!

If you were to leave your family and business without any notice today, are you organized enough and do you have enough instructions for your family and business to continue? Do you have a trust for your family along with instruction on where everything you have is and what to do in such an emergency? Have you made financial contingency plans for your family?

On the business side, do you have enough instruction so that someone else can step in and continue your business or close it? Are your accounting and client records up to date? In the case of many small businesses the only person that knows everything about everything is the owner. Unfortunatley most of the information is stored in the business owner’s memory.

From simple things like passwords to more critical things like receivables and bank balances r the  most part, are usually not part of the day to day records keeping.

When travelling simple things like who to contact in case of an emergency is the the last thing in the mind of a person planning a vacation.

About ten years ago I published a book, again mostly for myself, called “the Be Prepared Book”. Its purpose was to serve as a central repository of all the necessary information about a person, including such things as family information, doctors, wills, trusts, bank accounts, passwords, etc.  I presented it in a lose leaf format along with an interactive disk to update it as needed.

I will be updating the book and will include a mini take-along version of pertinent information necessary for traveling. This information is the basic information that each of us should maintain and make several copies of for distribution to family members and your attorney.

Please contact me for additional information on my original book.