A Place Where Nobody Knows Your Name

You never want to find yourself in a disaster situation, period—whether it’s an EMP attack, a solar flare, or a hurricane. But if you do, then you owe it to yourself and your family to be prepared to the best of your ability.

Before you can say “Houston, we have a problem,” it’s too late to get your passport renewed, have your financial statements faxed to you, or call your mother to mail you your birth certificate.

In Ron Howard’s Apollo 13, flight director Gene Kranz, played by Ed Harris, says, “What do we got on the spacecraft that’s good?” Sy Liebergot (Clint Howard) responds, “I’ll get back to you, Gene.”

What do we got that’s good? First, I’d tell my wife Becky we’ve got our and the kids’ passports and birth certificates, our licenses, full tanks of gas, and plenty of U.S. dollars, silver, and Canadian dollars. Plus the marriage license—more as a reminder in case she tries to ditch me.

How will you prove that you are who you are or that what you say is true? You should have up-to-date pictures of your family and your home. Up-to-date pictures of family members are vital if you’re separated, and pictures of your home are all the proof you’ll have if you need to file insurance claims.

Have copies of bank account and brokerage statements, including those for your kids, such as UGMAs, UTMAs, or 529s. In addition, make sure you’re banking with a company that has made sufficient disaster preparations. For disaster preparedness, the two companies that make me most comfortable are Fidelity Investments and the Vanguard Group.

As an aside, I’ve considered opening a bank account in Canada. I made some calls this week. One was to Bank of Nova Scotia. They tell me I can have an account set up in a couple of weeks without leaving my desk. But after further thought, I don’t want to be hassled with fees, account minimums, and the added responsibility.

So I redoubled my efforts at reviewing Fidelity’s and Vanguard’s disaster plans.

I remember from my days working at Fidelity how serious disaster planning was to the company. For one, Fidelity has multiple campuses, not just little retail outlets spread around the country. It also has plans for certain degrees of outages.

I know they have a team dedicated to hacking their own systems. My friend there tells me there’s a continuous review of potential weak spots that get revealed with mock outages and cyber-attacks.

Both companies have a disaster plan laid out that you can read on their websites—click here for Fidelity or here for Vanguard.

There are a lot of good commonsense reasons to have your own contingency plan. It makes all the sense in the world to back up your docs and accounts properly and have some cash on hand. If you’re asked to do what the guys on Apollo 13 did—the equivalent of driving a toaster through a car wash—at least you’ll be in the best possible position to come out the other side.

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E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy

Preparing your investments and family for when disaster strikes.

E.J. Smith is the Founder of YourSurvivalGuy.com, Managing Director at Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd., a Managing Editor of Richardcyoung.com, and Editor-in-Chief of Youngresearch.com. E.J. graduated from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with a B.S. in finance and investments. In 1995, E.J. began his investment career at Fidelity Investments in Boston before joining Richard C. Young & Co., Ltd. in 1998. E.J. has trained at Sig Sauer Academy in Epping, NH, where he completed course-work in Practical and Defensive Handgun, Conceal Carry Pistol, Shotguns, Precision Scope Rifle and Kidnapping Prevention. E.J. plays a Yamaha Recording Custom drum set with Zilldjian cymbals. His first drum set was a 5-piece Slingerland with Zilldjians. He grew-up worshiping Neil Peart of the band Rush, and loves the song Tom Sawyer—the name of his family’s boat, a Grady-White Canyon 306. He grew up in Mattapoisett, MA, an idyllic small town on the water near Cape Cod. He spends time in Newport, RI and Bartlett, NH—both as far away from Wall Street as one could mentally get. The Newport office is on a quiet, tree lined street not far from the harbor and the log cabin in Bartlett, NH, the “Live Free or Die” state, sits on the edge of the White Mountain National Forest. He enjoys spending time in Key West and Paris. Please get in touch with E.J. at ejsmith@youngresearch.com. Sign up here to receive all the best content from Richardcyoung.com each week.