If you were knocked into a coma, would anyone know how to pay your monthly bills?

Everyone ought to have a will to say who gets what when you die. That's not what I'm posting about, though it is related to estate planning. If you were to die, or, perhaps more importantly, become incapacitated, there needs to be someone who can step in to handle your affairs. Otherwise you'll come home to not only a pile of medical bills, but collections notices from your utilities and credit cards as well.

Someone should really have a copy of all your important info, just in case something happens to you. Preferably, you keep a copy to use as a cheat sheet of accounts if your wallet or your identy get stolen. Then a copy goes to a parent or sibling or trusted friend for safe keeping... just in case. If you had a lawyer draw up your will, they should probably have a copy of this as well.

I'm in the process to creating our emergency document. In some ways, ours in very simple. There's no children to worry about. We have very few bills. And we're lucky to have parents we can trust with the documents. But we spend a lot of time together and away from home - increasing the likelihood that we'd die or be in an accident together. So it's very important to have this document.

So how do you make one of these things? Personally, I'm opting to create a spreadsheet. I'll keep it on my computer (researching encryption options tonight) and leave a printed copy in our safe at home. Printed copies will also be mailed to each set of parents. Filling it all in is time consuming, but not very difficult. The hardest part was deciding what all to include.

So what is included? A lot of important info:

• Account numbers, contact info, and PINs for utilities, insurance, banks, investments, credit cards, and loans.
  
• Asset information like car VINs and gun serial numbers
  
• Personal data like birth date, SSN, drivers license, and passport number.
  
• Professional contacts for your lawyer, accountant, boss, etc.
  
• Personal contacts like family, friends, and neighbors you want informed if something happens to you.
  
• Log in info for all your important online accounts including URL, userID, password, security question, etc.
  

I'll delete all the data and post the skeleton document I create when I'm done with it. It's based, roughly, on a PDF estate planning guide I got from T Rowe Price. You can download that here. You can fill out the info in the file and then print it out to paper or a new, non-editable PDF. But you can't fill out the form and save the data in it to edit later. I wanted something a bit more customized, and something that could be saved electronically for future edits, so I opted to make my own spreadsheet instead. But that PDF is great all own it's own.

Be very careful about where you store all this personal data. It's an identity theft goldmine. So keep it encrypted and locked away. Don't email it, only give out printed copies, and make sure the people you give it to will keep it in a secure location - like a bolted down safe or safety deposit box.