If you have ever started organizing your family’s important information, you have probably hit the same wall. You sit down with a notebook or a spreadsheet, you start listing accounts and documents, and within an hour you are stuck on the same question: which of this should be written down where my family can find it, and which of this is too sensitive to leave anywhere?
The answer most people reach is to keep everything in one place, sometimes hidden, sometimes shared, never quite right. The result is either a document that exposes the family to risk if it is found, or a document that is so locked down that it might as well not exist when someone needs it.
The FIRM System resolves this with two documents. The Secure Guide is the family’s full, sensitive record: credentials, account details, original document locations, full access information. It lives inside the Vault. The Family Guide is the orientation layer. It is what exists, why it matters, where to look next, who to call. It is meant to be findable, not hidden.
The question is how to decide what belongs in each.
There is a single test, and it takes two minutes.
The test
For any piece of information you are considering writing down, ask yourself one question:
If this page were left on a kitchen counter, would its contents cause harm?
If yes, it belongs in the Secure Guide, inside the Vault. If no, it belongs in the Family Guide.
That is the entire test.
Should you write down passwords?
Walk through a few examples to see how the test sorts them.
- “We have a checking account at First National Bank.” No harm if seen by a guest, a contractor, or a neighbor’s child. Family Guide.
- “The account number is 123457842.” Account numbers are sensitive enough that publishing them creates real risk: identity theft, account takeover, social engineering against the bank. Secure Guide.
- “Login credential information is in the Secure Guide. If you need access and cannot find it, contact First National at 1-800-XXX-XXXX.” No credentials disclosed; orientation only; harmless if seen. Family Guide.
- “The login password is
Sunshine2026!.” The harm is immediate and obvious. Secure Guide.
So yes — write your passwords down. Durable, recoverable, written form beats memory. The test just tells you where the written form belongs: inside the Vault, never on the counter.
Most family information falls cleanly on one side or the other when the test is applied. The cases that feel ambiguous are usually cases where the test is being avoided: the writer knows the answer but is reluctant to commit to splitting the information across two documents. The test is a forcing function. Apply it, and the split becomes mechanical.
What the test does not ask
The test does not ask whether the information is important. Both documents contain important information; the Family Guide is no less important than the Secure Guide. The test asks whether the information’s exposure would cause harm. Importance and exposure are different axes.
The test also does not ask whether the information is yours. Information about a parent, a child, a spouse, or a business partner all passes through the same filter. The test is about consequence, not ownership.
Why this matters more than tool choice
It is tempting to focus the family-information conversation on which password manager to use, or which document tool to write in, or which folder structure to adopt. Those choices matter, but they sit downstream of this test. A perfectly chosen tool, used to write a document that mixes orientation and credentials, is not a Family Guide. It is a security risk in a nice container. A simpler tool that produces a clean split (orientation in one document, credentials in another) is exactly what the FIRM System is built to produce.
This is why the FIRM System builds the Vault first, the Secure Guide second, the Family Guide third. The Family Guide is the last artifact because it depends on the first two existing and on the writer being willing to apply the test to every entry in the Secure Guide as it is migrated.
How to apply it today
If you have a single document right now that mixes everything (accounts, passwords, contacts, document locations) all in one notes app or one spreadsheet, print it or open it. Read each line. Apply the test.
Lines that fail the test, the ones that would cause harm if seen, get moved into a Vault: a password manager, a fireproof safe, an encrypted folder. They become the Secure Guide.
Lines that pass the test get moved into a separate document. That document becomes the start of the Family Guide.
You do not have to do this all at once. You do have to do it deliberately, item by item, with the test as the rule. The two-minute test is the operational core of the FIRM System’s most important separation.
The map and the key live in different places. The test is what tells them apart.
Ready to see how your family’s information holds up? Take the 2-minute Recoverability Self-Assessment.