Prepare for Disaster

​September 11, 2017

We are in the midst of weather chaos; Hurricanes and Wildfires causing massive destruction. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by these tragedies. Disasters make us think about what is really important in life. If you lived in Houston would you have been prepared? I can definitely say that I am not fully prepared. Here is the short list: Do you have the proper insurance, do you have photos and other memorabilia saved in digital format, do you have vital records scanned and saved in a digital format, do you have a list of all of your insurance policies, credit cards, bank accounts, investment accounts and other important items saved digitally, is your hard drive backed up to the cloud, and do you have an inventory of your possessions; if you need to file an insurance claim? I can answer yes to some but not all of these questions. It's not just having them saved digitally but saving them in the cloud. If you have them saved on a Jump Drive and that is destroyed then it defeats the purpose.

I highly recommend  saving photos and scanned copies of vital records to a cloud based account such as:

• Dropbox account.
• Google Drive ( If you use a gmail account for your email then you already have Google Drive)
• iCloud Drive  (if you use a Mac or iphone you have access to icloud Drive)
• OneDrive by Microsoft (if you use a PC you probably already have this)

There are so many choices! How do you choose? Here is an article, The Best Cloud Storage and file-sharing services of 2017, by PC Digital Magazine that can help you decide. If you worry about your files being secure... well, there are no guarantees in life. Equifax was just hacked into; everything is a risk, doing nothing is a risk. Don't forget to back up your computer hard drive too. I use Carbonite and it backs up everything automatically.Here is an article about the best backup software to use. I may want to switch because Carbonite is not listed.

If you want to learn more about protecting your treasurers, Organize for Disaster, is available at Amazon. Disasters strike in many different forms. Don't keep telling yourself, "it won't happen to me," because it might. 

Adele Gross
Chief Executive Organizer
Simple Solution Organizing