Lisa Woodruff argues that families need portable binders with critical documents like insurance policies and medical records, not filing cabinets. After the 2017 disasters that destroyed countless homes, she saw families lose vital paperwork. The 20-percent rule: only that fraction of what you file actually matters in an emergency.
Chapters
In the fall of 2017, the amount of tragedy, destruction, and horrific natural events that were going on was just— I mean, I could cry right now and I wasn't in any of them. Like, I'm tearing up. It was, it was terrifying to watch the numerous huge fires that continued to break out across the whole West Coast of the United States. From probably around— I think it was around August until January. There was always a fire burning. These were gigantic fires. People were dying. People are displaced. A lot of my clients would be displaced. And the amount of smoke, it was, it was just horrifying. Then there were all of these earthquakes that kept happening. Specifically, the ones I remember were happening mostly in Mexico. And then we had all of those hurricanes. Like, I mean, hurricane after hurricane after hurricane. And I'm watching fires and hurricanes and earthquakes. And at that point, we recorded the podcast episode, and I already knew we were moving our binders to physical binders. I hadn't decided what I was doing digitally, but I just wanted people to get their financial and medical information at least in a binder because all of these people's filing cabinets were burning up or going into the ground or being washed out to sea. Like, literally everybody's records, all of their— so here's the thing, you have these filing cabinets, it has all this information, 80% of which you don't need, but the 20% that you do need, you do need. Like, you need it. It's not somewhere else. That's why you have it in a filing cabinet. And so it didn't matter if you were going to organize your filing cabinet with rainbow-colored files. If you found out a hurricane was coming, how are you going to get the files out of your house? Or if you had to evacuate in an hour with the fire, how are you going to get the files out of your house? Some people thought to get them out, some people didn't. Some people in the, you know, the hurricanes or the flooding in Houston moved their files up to a higher level of the house and they had them in a Rubbermaid tub. That's fine if you're only saving 20%. If you still have 4 large lateral drawers of files in your basement, that's a lot of files to move. While you're also trying to move medical supplies and food supplies and find safety and calm your kids and get your dog upstairs. And where did he go to the bathroom? That's still a question I have. Um, you know, all of these. So I was seeing all of these tragedies. So I thought, okay, I created the financial and medical binder because my father got sick and passed away, but it's also something I've used for my kids with IEPs. And my friends whose, you know, spouses have been diagnosed or they themselves have been diagnosed with cancer, they need a medical binder. But in that instance, I realized that we all need these binders.
