The Family Emergency Binder
Every contact, document, medication, and account your family would need in a crisis, organized the way emergency responders think. Nothing in here is homework: the quick setup gets the essentials done tonight, and the rest waits for whenever you're ready.
Instant download. Fillable PDF works in any free reader.
Your insurance policy is in an email you'd have to search for. The pediatrician's number is in your phone, which might be dead or missing. Your kid's allergy list is something you just remember. The Wi-Fi password, the gas shutoff location, where the birth certificates are, who has a spare key. It's all real. It's all somewhere. And most of it lives in one parent's head.
That works fine on a normal Tuesday. It doesn't work when the power's out, you're evacuating in twenty minutes, or someone else has to step in and you're not there to answer questions. It also doesn't work if something happens to you: a spouse or adult child settling your affairs shouldn't have to guess where the will is or spend three weeks locked out of your email.
The Family Emergency Binder gets it all out of your head and your inbox and onto paper (or a filled-in PDF) that anyone in your family can pick up and use, tonight or years from now.
What's inside
Flip to the red tab first. Everything else follows the order that actually matters under stress: 12 tabs, 100+ pages, built so you never have to do it all in one sitting.
Grab this one first
The one tab you grab first. First-10-minutes steps for six real scenarios: house fire, medical emergency, evacuation order, sheltering in place, power outage, gas leak. Who to call, what to grab, in that order.
The 15-minute quick setup and the full 3-day build plan, so you know exactly where to begin and you're never staring at a blank binder.
A profile for every person (and pet) in your house: medical conditions, medications, allergies, school and pickup info, care notes for kids or elderly family members.
ICE contacts, your out-of-area check-in person, and where everyone meets if you get separated.
A locator for every vital record: where the original is, where the copy is, what's digital. No more searching for the passport when you need it in ten minutes.
Every policy and account, at a glance: carrier, contact, what it covers. (We never ask for account numbers or passwords. More on that below.)
Utility shutoffs with a spot to tape in a photo, home inventory starter, warranties, and who to call for repairs.
Doctors, prescriptions, vaccination records, and medical history for everyone in the house, in one place a babysitter or grandparent could actually use.
Where your password manager is and who has emergency access. Never the passwords themselves.
Go-bag checklists built for adults, kids, babies, and pets, plus what to keep in the car.
A locator for your will, power of attorney, and attorney contact, and a page of conversations worth having now instead of later.
A 10-minute seasonal checklist so the binder stays current instead of becoming another thing you filled out once and forgot.
Extras included
Wallet-size ICE cards for each family member, a fridge sheet for babysitters and guests, a one-page babysitter/caregiver cheat sheet, and binder spine and cover inserts.
Why this one's different
Flip to the red Emergency Now tab and you get first-10-minutes steps, not a blank form. Every other binder on the market is built to hold information. This one is built to be used in the first ten minutes of a bad day.
The order isn't random. Life safety comes first, then communication, then documents, then recovery. That's the same structure CERT training uses, and it means the binder makes sense under stress, not just when you're calmly filling it out on a Sunday.
This isn't a Word doc with a stock-photo cover. It's 100+ pages built with the same calm, considered design system as the rest of the site. It's something you'd leave on the shelf, not shove in a drawer.
Every page has a "last updated" field. Tab 11 gives you a 10-minute seasonal review checklist and a change log, so the binder still matches your life a year from now, not just the week you bought it.
Also built for after
Not everyone opens this binder during a crisis. Some open it afterward: a parent has died, and someone has to find the will, get into the accounts, and call the right people, all while grieving.
This isn't a will or a substitute for legal advice. If you don't have a will yet, that's worth a call to a local attorney, not a form in this binder. Tabs 5 and 11 just make sure whatever you do have is findable.
Why I built this
I'm a parent, and I'm CERT-trained, the community emergency response training run by the same people who show up when you call 911. The biggest thing that training drills into you is that the first ten minutes decide how most emergencies go, and families with their information written down get through those minutes calmer and faster. Meanwhile, half my own family's critical information lived in my head and the rest was scattered across old emails nobody could find under pressure. So I built the binder I wanted on my own shelf: organized the way responders think, honest about what should never be written down, and simple enough that anyone in the house can use it. This is that binder.
The safety edge no other binder has
Most emergency binders on the market ask you to write your passwords and account numbers on a printed page that can be lost, borrowed, or found by the wrong person. This one doesn't. A binder full of your family's information should make you feel more secure, not less. So there are hard lines:
Instead, the binder uses a locator system: where the password manager is, who has emergency access, which drawer the safe deposit key is in, which institution holds which account. It tells whoever's reading it where to find the real thing and who can get to it, without turning your binder into a single point of failure if it's ever lost, borrowed, or left open on the kitchen table.
One more thing worth knowing. The federal government's own emergency checklist (FEMA's Emergency Financial First Aid Kit) asks you to write full account and routing numbers into its forms. Ours never will.
What you get
How it works
See it before you buy it
This is what prints when you buy it. No stock photos, no placeholders.
The cover
15-minute quick setup
House fire, Tab 1
Family member profile, Tab 3
Launch price
$39$19
Less than a family takeout order, and it covers what actually matters if you ever need it.
Get it for $19 at launchInstant download. Fillable PDF works in any free reader.
One thing to do
The binder is in final production and lands mid-September. Leave your email and you lock in the launch price.
The whole system
$39$19
All 12 tabs, both editions, every extra. The 15-minute quick setup covers the essentials on day one; the 3-day plan finishes the rest.
Get it for $19 at launchYes. It's a digital download. You'll have the file within a minute or two of checkout, no shipping, no waiting.
No. The fillable edition works in any free PDF reader, including Adobe Acrobat Reader, which most computers already have. Type directly into the fields, save, and print whenever you want a paper copy on hand.
The quick setup covers the 8 pages that matter most in about 15 minutes. That gets your family's essentials covered on day one. The full binder is built around a 3-day plan — one weekend push or three separate Saturdays — so you can fill in the rest at a pace that doesn't feel like homework.
The binder is designed with that exact concern in mind. It never asks for full passwords, full Social Security numbers, or PINs. It stores locators instead, where things are and who has access, so it's genuinely useful without becoming a risk if it ends up somewhere you didn't plan.
Any home printer or local print shop works. It's formatted for standard US Letter paper. Regular printer paper is fine; if you want it to hold up to years of handling, a print shop can laminate the most-used pages (Emergency Now and the ICE cards) for a few dollars more.
No. This is for regular families who want their information organized before they need it, not people building bunkers. There's no doomsday talk in here. Just the practical stuff every household deals with: outages, evacuation orders, a trip to the ER, a babysitter who needs the pediatrician's number fast.
The fillable PDF is yours to edit anytime in your PDF reader. Tab 11 includes a seasonal review checklist and a change log built specifically for keeping it current as your family's information changes.
It's a digital download, so returns aren't automatic the way they are with something that ships. But if the binder isn't what you expected, send me a message and tell me what didn't work. I'd rather make it right than keep money you regret spending.
Fifteen minutes gets the essentials covered. One weekend gets the whole thing done. Get it while things are calm, so it's already done when they're not.
Most families build this the week a storm's already in the forecast, when the shelves are empty and nobody's calm. Do it now, on a quiet night, instead.
Get it for $19 at launchInstant download. Fillable PDF and print-blank edition, both included.
The Family Emergency Binder, $19 at launch
Get itComing mid-September
The Family Emergency Binder lands mid-September at $39. Join the list and it is yours for $19 in launch week.
One email when it launches. Unsubscribe anytime.