What you own, owe and insure, on one page

Are you ready to know what you own, owe and insure?

Here is a small challenge. Without opening an app, list every financial account you hold. Checking, savings, cards, loans, retirement, investments, insurance policies. All of them.

If you got stuck somewhere around the third credit card, welcome. A financial life builds up one account at a time over years, and it rarely gets written down in one place.

Not a budget. An inventory.

A budget is about where money goes. A plan is about where it should go, and that belongs with you and, if you want one, a financial professional. An inventory is something simpler: a list of what exists.

It answers three questions:

• What do you own? Bank accounts, retirement and investment accounts, property, vehicles.
• What do you owe? Mortgage, car loans, student loans, credit cards, anything else with a balance.
• What do you insure? Health, life, home or renters, car, disability, anything else with a policy number.

What goes on the list

For each item, a handful of details turns a name into something useful:

• The institution or company, and what kind of account or policy it is
• The last four digits of the account or policy number
• How to reach them: website, phone line, a named contact if there is one
• Where statements or policy documents arrive: email, paper, an app
• Who else is on the account, if anyone

Full account numbers and passwords do not need to be on it. The point is to know what exists and where to find it, not to make a list that would be a problem if it went missing.

The forgotten corners

Every inventory turns up surprises. A few places they tend to hide:

• A workplace retirement plan from an old job
• A savings account opened for a long-forgotten goal
• A store card used once for a discount
• An insurance policy that came bundled with something else
• Automatic payments still running for things nobody uses

Bank and card statements are a good map here. Anything that charges or pays you regularly shows up on them.

Who else would need it

An inventory is useful to you. It is even more useful to the people who might one day help you: a partner, an adult child, a trusted friend. Would they know your accounts exist? Would they know who to call?

Where the list lives, and who knows about it, is a decision only you can make. Some people keep it with their other important documents; some share it with one trusted person. What matters is that it exists and that it can be found.

Updating, not perfecting

A money inventory is never finished, and that is fine. Accounts open and close, policies renew, loans get paid off. A quick look once or twice a year, perhaps at tax time, keeps it current enough to be useful.

The MONEY READY page lists what people most often go looking for on the financial side, and the Readyness Check has a short section on money among its questions.