Photo by Vasily Koloda on Unsplash

Welcome back to week 4 of the now officially renamed “Facts of Life Book” Challenge. Over the course of about the last 20 weeks of 2022, I’m pulling together all of the important, but often not urgent, documentation that you need for life — and you often need that information urgently at a time when you’re panicked or stressed. So, pulling it together now will hopefully minimize stress in the future. If you’ve missed any week in the series, no worries — the order isn’t really that important. You can check the index here to see all of the articles in the series as they are published.

Checking in From Last Week — Your Passwords and Capturing Your Wallet

So, how did you come with setting up a process for storing passwords last week?
I got a few questions across different platforms that I thought I’d address here.

Do you have reservations about storing financial institution or other really important stuff digitally?

I don’t — but I thought I should also talk about my monitoring strategy for financial accounts. When I open any new account at any bank or financial institution, I immediately go to the notification settings for that account. I set up alerts for any spending or any transfer of any amount of 0.01 or more. So, yes — I get a notification — typically by text of any transaction.

These notifications have allowed me to catch things quickly when they do happen.

I also monitor my credit reports regularly — something we’ll talk more about in a future week.

In addition to the digital storage, do you keep a paper copy of all of your passwords?

No. I keep a paper copy of how to access my passwords and any other two factor authentication information I might need but otherwise, everything is stored in 1Password. Like many people, if I come upon a password that’s not stored in my system, I’ll use the “forgot password” to reset my password.

Do you ever delete online accounts?

All the time — and probably far more than most people do because I try out more things than I think most people do or even want to consider trying. I try them so you don’t have to. When I delete an online account, I typically archive it in 1Password unless I truly tried it and then immediately deleted it — in which case I will actually delete it from 1Password.

We’ve laid a strong foundation — now we’re going to build on it.

Before I introduce this week’s item to capture, let’s talk about how the pieces and parts we’ve built play together. Thus far, you’ve built a paper storage system and a digital storage system for secure information. You’ve also started to build a life timeline (and hopefully you’re thinking to add to it as you capture new items). You’ve also developed processes to store passwords and other important information securely. This week we’re going to begin to pull together information you might find on a resume or curriculum vitae. I’ll talk about that more below. As you’re capturing things this week, you may also realize that there are passwords to be stored or items to be added to your Life Timeline. We built that foundation so that you could add to those as you collect additional information.

Week 4 — Education and Training Records

In all honesty, it’s this week and next week’s information that started this whole project. I recently started my own company and I regularly need to provide transcripts, custom resumes and vitae and training records to potential clients in order to get or keep a contract. I started gathering all of this information into a central location and realized how valuable it was to have this and decided to map out the whole project.

Keeping a Resume or Curriculum Vitae

First, I’m going to encourage you, if you don’t already have one, to begin building a “primary” resume or curriculum vitae (CV). I keep all information in this one document (I actually call it my CV and then all the individual responses to jobs or specific needs are customized versions of it that I call resumes). While a vitae is more specific to the types of academic industries that I hail from it essentially means life record — and so keeping all of these records in my CV means I can just grab the pieces I want/need for a specific job or contract and create a resume.

Let’s take a look at the information we’re going to collect this week. As you collect pieces, add them to your “primary” resume/vitae.

Academic Transcripts

You need to collect a copy of the transcript from every college or university you’ve ever attended. These don’t need to be official (i.e. you don’t need to pay for them). If you have an existing copy that shows all the work you completed at that institution, that’s good enough for these purposes. If you don’t have a transcript, try these things to obtain one without paying for it:

1. See if you have a log in to the college or university’s portal. If you do, you may be able to print a copy of an unofficial transcript.
2. If you don’t have a log in to the college or university’s portal, then google “get transcript from X college or university”. This will typically take you to a page for the Registrar or Record’s office where you can request a transcript.

A vast majority of academic transcripts today are not sent by the college or university — rather they are sent by a third party software company — Parchment is a leading provider of these in the U.S. There is often a fee to request transcripts — even those that are emailed only to you.

Once you’ve obtained a copy of all transcripts, make sure you update your vitae, your life timeline if anything pops out that’s important, any usernames or passwords you discovered as a result of these efforts and then make sure you file the copies away digitally and/or physically as appropriate.

Military transcripts

If you served in the military, you very likely have a military transcript — called a Joint Services Transcript. Again, an unofficial copy is what’s important for this purpose — as long as it shows all work you completed.

If you don’t have a copy and need to request one, you can visit https://jst.doded.mil/official.html.

Again, once you obtain your transcript, make sure you update your vitae, your life timeline if anything pops out that’s important, any usernames or passwords you discovered and then make sure you file the copies away digitally and/or physically as appropriate.

Certification & Training Records

Official transcripts are the easy ones. The harder part is what comes next — collecting all of the records from seminars, training programs, and certifications. I’m going to provide as exhaustive a laundry list of items to spur your thinking as I can. I read through the list a couple of times and made a brainstorm style list of anything I could think of that I did and then started trying to put dates, official titles, and exams to those records.

• Certification exams (e.g. technical certifications, major training certifications, etc.)
• Licensure exams (e.g. nursing, legal, and others)
• Employer training records — you can ask your HR team or log in to an employer training portal to see these records
• Courses you’ve taken from providers other than colleges or universities
• Seminars & Training Programs you’ve attended
• Other Educational Adjacent Types of Records

There is a whole range of other things you might want to include here. For example, you might want to include things like the results from your latest assessments like Meyers-Briggs or Strengths Finder. You might also want to include samples of your work that you’re really proud of.

Looking ahead to next week

This week, as you collect Education and Training records, remember that we’re also going to be collecting Employment records next week so if you run across presentations you’ve done, conferences you’ve attended (that maybe you wouldn’t put in your education record), and more that is more in the employment realm, note it now as you’re doing this collection.

Adding to the “Find My Information” Game

Last week, I introduced you to the “Find My Password” game. This week, add a couple of additional questions to your game card based on the information you added to your Facts of Life Book this week. Here are a few suggestions for you:

What year did I graduate from XYZ University?
What degree did I earn at ABC university?
How many credits did I earn at NMO College?
What year did I earn my X License?

Looking Ahead

I’m going to add this section to each future article to help you remember where we’re heading — and to recap what we’ve gotten done.

Week One: Personal Documents & Information
Week Two: The Life Timeline
Week Three: Passwords & Wallet Contents
YOU ARE HERE: Week Four: Education & Training Records
Week Five: Resume & Work Documentation (Optional: Military Records)
Week Six: Banking Information
Week Seven: Insurance Information
Week Eight: Investment Information
Week Nine: Real Estate Information
Week Ten: Vehicle Information
Week Eleven: Credit Card Information
Week Twelve: Other Accounts Information
Week Thirteen: Medical Information
Week Fourteen: Contact Information
Week Fifteen: Will, Estate, & Trust Documents
Week Sixteen: Living Will and End of Life Decisions
Week Seventeen: (Optional) Memory Letters
Week Eighteen: (Optional) Business Information
Week Nineteen: (Optional) Bucket List
Week Twenty: (Optional) Personal Plan/Annual Review Plan

I’d love to know if you’re following along with this project. There is no such thing as falling behind — there is only moving forward!