The Family Emergency Binder

Fifteen minutes covers the essentials. Everything that matters lives in one place after that.

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.

Join the list, get it for $19

Instant download. Fillable PDF, made for free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The 15-minute quick setup page from the Family Emergency Binder

15 minutes to the essentials

What an emergency binder is

An emergency binder is one organized place for the contacts, documents, medical details, and financial information a household would need during a crisis or after a death. A good one records where each original is kept rather than the account numbers themselves, so a lost binder exposes far less.

Right now, your family's most important information lives in 15 places.

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

Essentials done in 15 minutes. Everything that matters in one place.

Start Here opens the binder with the 15-minute quick setup and the 3-day build plan. Then 12 color-coded sections, red one first.

Grab this one first

🔴 Emergency Now

The one tab you grab first. First-10-minutes steps for eight emergencies: house fire, medical emergency, evacuation order, shelter in place, power outage, gas leak, earthquake, and flash flood. Plus your fire escape plan and grab list.

Family & Household

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.

Contacts & Communication

ICE contacts, your out-of-area check-in person, and where everyone meets if you get separated.

Documents

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.

Finances & Insurance

Every policy and account, at a glance: carrier, contact, what it covers. (We never ask for account numbers or passwords. More on that below.)

Home & Property

Utility shutoffs with a spot to tape in a photo, home inventory starter, warranties, and who to call for repairs.

Medical & Health

Doctors, prescriptions, vaccination records, and medical history for everyone in the house, in one place a babysitter or grandparent could actually use.

Digital Life

Where your password manager is and who has emergency access. Never the passwords themselves.

Evacuation & Shelter

Go-bag checklists built for adults, kids, babies, and pets, plus what to keep in the car.

Wills & Wishes

A locator for your will, power of attorney, and attorney contact, and a page of conversations worth having now instead of later.

Review & Maintain

A 10-minute seasonal checklist so the binder stays current instead of becoming another thing you filled out once and forgot.

Extra Pages & Photocopies

Wallet ICE cards, a fridge sheet, a sitter one-pager, spine and cover inserts, and spare pages for extra kids, pets, and go-bags.

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

Most emergency binders are filing cabinets. This one also tells you what to do.

It doesn't just store information, it tells you what to do first.

Flip to the red Emergency Now tab and you get first-10-minutes steps, not a blank form. A lot of binders are built to hold information. This one is built to be used in the first ten minutes of a bad day.

It's organized the way emergency responders actually think.

The order isn't random. Life safety comes first, then communication, then documents, then recovery. CERT training drills the same first rule: protect lives before anything else. So the binder makes sense under stress, not just on a calm Sunday.

It's actually designed, not clip-art on a template.

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.

It's built to stay current, not fill-once-and-forget.

The title page has an update log, and Section 11 gives you a 10-minute seasonal review four times a year plus 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

For when it's not an emergency, it's a loss

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.

A locator for the will, power of attorney, and attorney contact, so nobody's searching a house for paperwork that may not exist yet.
Who has emergency access to the password manager, so accounts don't stay locked for weeks waiting on a support ticket.
Wishes written down: burial or cremation, service preferences, who to notify first. A few lines that spare your family a hundred hard guesses.

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. Sections 4 and 10 just make sure whatever you do have is findable.

Why I built this

Hi, I'm Todd

I'm a parent, and I'm CERT-trained. That's the FEMA-backed community emergency response course, usually taught by local fire departments. The thing that training drills into you is that the first few minutes matter, and families with their information written down get through them 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 line we hold

What this binder deliberately never asks you to write down

Plenty of binder templates ask you to write 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:

No full passwords. Ever.
No full Social Security numbers.
No PINs or account numbers.

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, so a lost or borrowed binder gives away far less than one full of passwords and account numbers.

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.

Be Prepared For It is independent. We aren't affiliated with or endorsed by FEMA, CDC, Ready.gov, or the CERT program; we check our pages against their published guidance.

What you get

What's in the box (there is no box)

The Family Emergency Binder: 100+ designed pages across 12 sections
Two full editions included: type-in fillable PDF (made for free Adobe Acrobat Reader) and a print-blank version for handwriting
Print-and-cut extras: wallet ICE cards, a fridge sheet, and a babysitter one-pager
The 15-minute quick setup guide and the full 3-day build plan
US Letter format, ready to print at home or at any print shop

How it works

1 Buy the binder ($19 during launch week, then $39, secure checkout).
2 Download it instantly. Nothing ships, nothing to wait for.
3 Open the quick setup page and do the fast four: grab list, ICE contacts, meeting points, one wallet card. Fifteen minutes, and the essentials are covered.
4 Come back on your own schedule for the full 3-day build plan when you're ready to fill in the rest.

See it before you buy it

Real pages from the binder

Final printed pages may differ slightly.

The cover

15-minute quick setup

House fire, Section 1

Family member profile, Section 2

Launch price

$19during launch week, then $39

Less than a family takeout order, and it covers what actually matters if you ever need it.

Join the list, get it for $19

Instant download. Fillable PDF, made for free Adobe Acrobat Reader.

30-day full refund, no questions asked. Refund terms

One thing to do

Get your family covered

The binder is in final production and is coming soon. Join the list and get it for $19 during launch week. Your launch email carries the code.

Coming soon The Family Emergency Binder cover

The whole system

The Family Emergency Binder

$19during launch week, then $39

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.

Join the list, get it for $19

Questions before you buy

See the gear the binder mentions

Is this instant?

Yes. It's a digital download. You'll have the file within a minute or two of checkout, no shipping, no waiting.

Do I need special software to fill it out?

No. The type-in edition is built for free Adobe Acrobat Reader on Mac or PC. Type into the fields, use Save As, and reopen it once to check your answers stuck. Prefer pen and paper? The print-blank edition is in the same download.

How long does it take to fill out?

The quick setup covers four essentials, one entry each, in about 15 minutes. That gets your family covered on day one. The rest of the binder follows a 3-day plan. Do it three days in a row or one day a weekend for three weekends, whatever doesn't feel like homework.

Is my information safe if this binder gets lost or someone else sees it?

The binder is designed with that exact concern in mind. It never asks for full passwords, full Social Security numbers, PINs, or full account numbers. It records where those things are and who can get to them. It still holds personal details and ID copies, so treat it like your passport: keep it somewhere safe that your family knows about, and give a sitter the one-page sitter sheet instead.

What printer or paper do I need?

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.

Is this for preppers?

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.

What if I need to make changes later?

The fillable PDF is yours to edit anytime in your PDF reader. Section 11 includes a seasonal review checklist and a change log built specifically for keeping it current as your family's information changes.

What's your refund policy?

You get 30 days from purchase to ask for a full refund on the binder, no questions asked. Reply to your receipt email or use the contact page and we'll refund you. The full terms are on the terms of service page.

Your family's plan shouldn't live in your head.

Fifteen minutes gets the essentials covered. Three days, at your own pace, 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.

Join the list, get it for $19

Instant download. Fillable PDF and print-blank edition, both included.

Coming soon

Get the binder for $19 during launch week

The Family Emergency Binder is coming soon. Join the list and get it for $19 during launch week. Your launch email carries the code. After launch week the price is $39.

One email when it launches. Unsubscribe anytime.