[1]Welcome 2012! With the arrival of a new year and a new month, I celebrated this afternoon by decluttering, cleaning, and re-organizing my dining room. Love to start the new year off getting organized. If you are setting goals to get organized this year, then Using Time Wisely is your ally.
On Sundays, I highlight an area of document organization. Having covered in 2011 Box 1 [2], which has credit cards/credit reports and scores, personal, home ownership, and vehicle documents, we continue our insurance document organization housed in Box 2 [3]. This series reveals my organizational system. Please adjust and adapt this system to meet your needs. Finding a home for all those documents will make retrieving them a snap.
Thus far in Box 2, our first category, personal insurance, resides in the first file opening. In my file, the summary page [4], annual enrollment reports [5], and former severance package [6] fill most of this first file slot. The next two sets of documents are privacy policies and travel insurance documentation.
Privacy Policies
At one point, I housed all the privacy policies from all the insurance companies in this file. But as we have added policies, I found that keeping the privacy notices with the insurance policies is the best use of my time. I do not need to search two different file folders (one for the policy and one for the privacy notice) when I need these documents.
With all the other privacy policies with their associated insurance policies, I have one privacy policy that remains: the health insurance program for South Carolina. This state agency does not write any insurance policies, but they are the administrator of our group insurance policies. Keeping their privacy policy documentation housed in this file with the annual enrollment documentation works for me.
Travel Insurance
As holders of Visa credit cards (Yes, I use credit cards for 90% of my purchases and pay off those amounts each month!), we receive worldwide automatic travel accident and baggage delay insurance when we pay for our flights with our Visa credit card.
Visa sent us the Description of Coverage which outlines the plan, eligibility, cost, beneficiary, benefits, exclusions, and effective date. In the event I need to file a claim, I can find the information quickly from the documentation, kept safe in this file.
In keeping my family’s personal insurance documents organized, I have placed the privacy policy and travel insurance documentation behind the former severance package paperwork. In continuing this series next week (without anymore Top 10 [7] interruptions), I will complete this first category in Box 2.
Keep plugging along. By breaking down your goals to little sections, you will get there. Choose to organize one file this week. Work on a new one next week. Within a few weeks, you will have a category complete. You can do it! Happy organizing!