Important personal financial information template – a handy guide in emergencies

Emergencies do not come calling at a scheduled time. And when they happen, everyone in the family must support each other while they fight out the bad times. In such a scenario, having a well documented personal financial information template and it’s ready access by the family members is more critical than it is envisaged.

To exemplify, a typical middle class household today will have the husband employed somewhere while the wife stays at home. The kids go to school and the entire family is dependent on the husband’s income generating capacity. The husband keeps all the important personal financial documents and information at his end and never shares it with his wife because he thinks there is no need to do so. When an emergency strikes the family and the husband is say no more or is hospitalized, how will the wife ever come to know about the bank details the family has, whether a will existed or what insurance the husband took while he was alive ?

To help your family in such cases, storing and sharing such important personal financial information amongst family members is very important. Let us quickly run through the list of what all information is needed and then you can download the important personal financial information template for your own use.

Contents of personal financial information template

The following list of documents are important to be maintained in the tracker and shared amongst the family members.

Insurance details – Insurance, especially life insurnace in the form of term plans, is what needs to be used in case of demise of the primary bread winner of the family. Keep the details of life insurance polices handy – name of the insurance company, policy number, sum assured, term of the policy among other information. Details of health insurance, motor insurance, personal accident insurance, home insurance must also be recorded.

Bank Account Details – A typical middle class family must be having 3-5 savings bank accounts. It is important to document the bank account numbers and which banks they are with along with the nomination details. A spouse typically has at least one joint bank savings account but the rest are operated mainly by ‘the man of the house’. So these need to be stored in the personal financial tracker as well. This is also the place where you can put down any information on lockers you have and what the holding mode is for them – joint with your spouse or single. You will also need to document what are the contents of the locker so that your family knows what was parked in them. I would also recommend that you jot down the credit card and debit cards that you have and which issuer it was taken from.

Property information – A house or other real estate investments are generally known to both the spouses. But remember that calamity can befall both the parents and then it becomes important for other family members to know about the assets the family had. The personal financial tracker should mention the property details and whether a loan was taken on them. If a loan does exist, then the loan account number, principal outstanding and which lender it was taken from needs to be documented.

General Information – Important information like your driver license number, passport number, Aadhar number, PAN number and others can also be stored in the personal financial information template.

Investment details – So you have 100 stocks, 10 mutual funds, 20 FDs and many fixed income instruments ? And you saying you took them from various banks through agents that have long gone ? Well, you cannot wait for a disaster to happen – it is of utmost importance that you document these in the personal financial information template now. Give the details of when the fixed income instruments were taken and from where. For the mutual funds the folio numbers are important to document. Ensure that nomination information for all these are also keyed in. Also note that if you have DEMAT accounts, then you should put the DEMAT account number with the nomination information. If you have an EPF account with your employer of an NPS account that you are operating,  enter those as well. Use this section to document every investment that you have ever made.

Loans – This is the place where you document what all you owe to the world -it could be a home loan, car loan, personal loan or credit card loan. This is important because when the income stops and you begin to default in payments, the creditors come calling at your doorstep. To keep them at bay, you will need to ward them off very quickly but for that, you will need to know who the lender is, how much you owe to them and at what rate of interest. Put those down.

Online passwords – If you are net savvy, you must have loads of userids and passwords for net banking, DEMAT accounts and other financial transactions. It makes sense to write down the login information for each of these. Note that you must not note the password for the same in the personal financial information template. The passwords must be placed elsewhere otherwise someone else will have a jolly good time hacking your accounts and taking your money away.

Points to note

I know you must be yawning by now. This is boring work but imagine the importance of this for your loved ones. If they don’t have access to all this information, will not they struggle especially at a time when you are not around ?

You will need to keep updating this personal financial information template as and when new accounts or information surfaces. You should remove the ones that become redundant. You must also note that this information is to be kept confidential and only the close family members should know about it.

You can password protect this document and share it with your family members. Alternatively, you can use online storing sites (there are many out there) which can be accessed by family members from multiple locations.

And finally, here is the personal financial information template to download.