The most common way families try to get organized is to start with a list. Someone opens a spreadsheet, a notes app, or a fresh notebook and begins writing down everything they can remember: accounts, passwords, contacts, account numbers, where the safe-deposit box is, who the attorney is. This feels productive. Lists feel like progress. … Read more
Ask any IT professional how many copies of an important file should exist and you will get the same answer: 3-2-1. Three copies. Two on different media or in different formats. One stored offsite. The rule has been the standard for digital preservation for two decades. Photographer Peter Krogh distilled it in The DAM Book … Read more
The call came from the school in the middle of a workday: Lily’s phone had been stolen. Frank called the police, and the officer asked three ordinary questions, the three every stolen-phone police report needs. What model is the phone? What is the serial number? What accounts were logged in? Frank is 42, an operations … Read more
When Robert and Eleanor Campbell sat down to inventory their insurance policies, they found something they had stopped seeing years ago: a whole life policy that still named, as its beneficiary, a relative who had been dead for twelve years. Nothing about the policy looked wrong from the outside. The premiums were paid. The statements … Read more
Most family-information documents begin with the data: a list of accounts, a roster of contacts, a stack of document locations. The reader is expected to figure out what to do with the information by inference. This is the wrong way for a Family Guide to open. Imagine the moment your Family Guide is most likely … Read more