Who Am I?

Who Am I?

When you are comfortably at home with your wallet and phone and computer and file cabinet, and all is right with the world (i.e., the electricity is on), you are who you are, and you have access to your considerable resources.  Take those circumstances away – by earthquake, raging inferno, civil war, whatever – and you are just another featherless biped wandering through a hostile world.

Is there any way to mitigate the loss of personal identity and power that disaster can cause?  Probably – with a little preparation.  Many of your resources still exist – what has been disrupted is your access.  You can preserve some of that by having information at your disposal.   That means in your wallet, in your go-bag, and in the glove compartment of your car.  What, and how?

What follows is a set of considered suggestions.  Cost-benefit, risk tradeoffs, and all such things are personal considerations.  Reject the specific approaches if you wish, but consider the issues very seriously.

Here’s what I carry around – I’ll get to the where and how at the end of the list.

A piece of paper, with the following information:

Name, address phone(s) and email(s) for myself and my primary contacts (wife and children) and also for RVM.

Identification:  Social Security, Driver’s License and passport numbers
[Yabbut #1: You might get your identity stolen.  Yep – might come in pretty damned handy too.  Your risk, your choice.  Yabbut  #2: why not carry copies?  Good idea – when and where you can.  Tough to fit them all in one of those little wallet pockets, though.]

Medical Info:  Primary care physician name, address, phone. Conditions, ailments, diseases, handicaps (basically what an ER person should know before treating you for whatever got you there).  Allergies.  More if it’s important.

Medications:  Pharmacy, address, phone; prescriptions – number, medication, dose, directions.

Insurance, etc.:  Medicare #, Insurance carriers, policy #s, local agents if any.  [Yabbut #3 – see Yabbuts #1 and #2.  Same story – risk of delayed treatment or rescue vs. risk of account usurpation.  Your choice.]

Financial and Legal:  Adviser/business names & contact info.  What about account numbers etc.?  Accessing a credit card account might be really handy, but if you carry the info in writing, it’s probably best to separate the account #, the PIN, and the carrier so that the combination isn’t obvious.

How to do it?  I typed it up (Arial font 10 pt, 9 would work) and formatted the page so a two-sided printout had all the information on a piece of paper that was 4.25” x 7.75”.  Fold it in half one way and in thirds the other, and you have something the size of a business card.  I found a teeny-tiny ziploc to contain it, and fit it into one end of my tri-fold wallet next to my Medicare card.

With less compression you can fit it comfortably into go-bag or car, along with photocopies if you wish.  You can also include copies of birth/death/marriage certificates, and title information – most important things are legally recorded, so you don’t have to have the item, just an indication of how to find it.

The information counts, much more than the document – with careful formatting and copying you should be able to get everything you need onto a couple of sheets of paper – low weight, low bulk, opportunities for multiple copies.