Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Fw: Get Rich Slowly: The Big Book of Everything: A Free Life-Affairs Organizer

I downloaded the Big Book of Everything and I was impressed. I want to share with everyone.

Lena

Get Rich Slowly: The Big Book of Everything: A Free Life-Affairs Organizer

The Big Book of Everything: A Free Life-Affairs Organizer

Posted: 21 Jul 2009 05:00 AM PDT

Last summer, Mark Gavagan mailed me a copy of his It's All Right Here life and affairs organizer. This three-ring binder is big and unwieldy, but is amazingly comprehensive. It not only offers pages for credit card and saving account information, but also includes space to record family medical history, business information, and more. There are even several pages of vinyl or plastic sleeves where you can store things like keys!

The It's All Right Here life and affairs organizer provides 300 pages for recording your information (too many, if you ask me) and, like Suze Orman's Ultimate Protection Portfolio, it's a bit spendy. It's certainly worth ordering if you're looking for peace of mind, but there is another option.

After our discussion in February about how to organize your account information, GRS-reader Erik Dewey e-mailed me to say that he has created his own life-affairs organizer, and he's willing to share it with others.

Dewey calls his 565kb PDF The Big Book of Everything, and he's made it available for free download at his site. Dewey writes:

[The Big Book of Everything] is a notebook filled with all of the information anyone could possibly need to know about you. The idea is that in our lives we have countless things that we are involved in. On rare occasions, other people need this information and no one knows how to get it. That's where the Big Book comes in. By filling this out and keeping it current, you can simplify the effort others have to take on your behalf.

This is basically a less-polished version of Gavagan's life and affairs organizer. The Big Book of Everything includes sections for:

Passwords and logins
Bank accounts
Insurance policies
Tax records
Debt obligations
and more…

At just 37 pages, The Big Book of Everything is much more compact than the It's All Right Here affairs organizer. And did I mention it's free?

This is a great example of a Get Rich Slowly reader taking the time to create a tool to fill a need his in own life — and then being willing to share that solution with others. Thanks, Erik!

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