One of my favorite movies of all time is The Goonies.
And certainly one of my favorite moments is when Mikey finds One-Eye Willy’s treasure map (actually, that’s when Chunk drops the body) and the Goonies go on their quest to find their treasure.
We love treasure maps.
And now we also have one: it is a map of our treasure.
We now have two Grasp documents that define our funds: the Internet Price Spreadsheet and the Treasure Map.
The Internet Pricing Spreadsheet is a Microsoft Excel document that calculates our web pricing. It is a month-by-month accounting of our monetary accounts and it sticks strictly to the numbers.
He Treasure map is he qualitative clarification of our monetary configuration. It’s a Phrase document that explains the purpose of each account, the purpose of the contact, and how each of the elements fit together. Our treasure map begins with our money map, which is a picture of how our accounts are interconnected.
Collectively, they give you a complete picture of our funds.
The Treasure Map shows someone where our stuff is so it can be discovered if I’m unavailable (unreachable, dead, incapacitated, whatever). It takes all the data I have in mind and dumps it directly into a document so no one has to guess what I used to be doing.
And it is written in as primary a way as possible, without making any assumptions on the part of the reader.
It has 5 sections:
table of contents
- treasure map legend
- Financial institution accounts
- financing accounts
- Direct Investments
- Insurance coverage
- Remember to replace it!
treasure map legend
The treasure map is an easy document, however something will get misunderstood, so I keep a legend at the entrance explaining what it is and what you will find on it.
Also, anytime someone wants to, it’s probably a traumatic time…so I tried to keep it as simple as possible.
It explains how all the sheets are connected, what updates the place, and someone reading the document will be able to continue accounting (not that they can). This also acts as a reminder to myself in case I neglect how I set something up.
That’s where our currency community map comes in.
Financial institution accounts
We clarify the purpose and reasoning behind each account.
Someone looking through the spreadsheet and our list of bank accounts will be surprised why we now have so many, so this part explains how it fits all.
For example, we now have a total of 5 banks and each one performs a particular function:
- Checking account that offers us a strategy to deposit money and obtain documents signed/certified before a notary.
- Our premier online financial checking and savings account.
- Business checking account.
- Online high-yield checking account that allows free bank transfers
- An account that acts as a firewall for different cost accounts (money app, Paypal and many others).
It also explains how they are all associated and any particular account information you need to enter.
financing accounts
We have now simplified our funding life into two brokerage accounts and this part explains the purpose of each.
The investment technique part is more detailed than banking, with my objective of asset allocation and how these assets are distributed within each of the accounts.
I use Vanguard as one of my custodians and have a Rollover IRA, a Roth IRA, and a taxable brokerage account. One of the many difficult things about these various types of accounts is that getting the asset allocation right is often a problem. It’s even harder to reverse engineer what you used to be doing if you start with just the accounts.
The doc explains what’s what. For example, I don’t put our bonds in our IRA Rollover account, which is a tax-deferred retirement account. The last rule of thumb is that you simply put the bonds in a tax-deferred account because the bonds generate income and you would pay taxes on that income if it were outside of a tax-deferred account.
Bonds have had low yields recently, so it’s actually better to have stock in these tax-deferred accounts, but that’s not why we do it. If we wanted to access our funds quickly, we would first liquidate our bonds because they are the least risky. In the event that they are in tax-deferred accounts, we would receive a large penalty. That’s the number 1 reason why — the way it’s more fiscally friendly right now, because of the low returns, it’s just a plus.
Okay, that full clarification is not possible, except that I write it in a Phrase document.
Direct Investments
For some time I made a series of direct investments, or angel investments, in companies. I don’t do this anymore, but we still have several legacy investments elsewhere.
This part of the document includes all of the contact details for each funding, who was the lead investor, my relationship, who to name is likely to have a query (in case I’m not the lead investor), plus anything else that presents legibility in the deal
Some of these are offers that do not exist outside of the authorized documents. You can’t log in somewhere and see them. Without this and the enumeration in the spreadsheet, it might be hard for someone rebuilding them to even find them because they wouldn’t know where to look.
For others, they are managed in Carta.
Insurance coverage
Pretty easy here: a list of all the different insurance we have now, levels of protection, and the company we have it with now. Ours are all with one company, so it’s pretty easy to understand.
If yours is a bit more sophisticated, try to add as many elements as you can. For example, you probably have time period life insurance coverage from multiple companies (it’s not unusual to get $1,000,000 from two companies at $500,000 each), listing them and their details.
Remember to replace it!
If you regularly replace a web pricing spreadsheet, you may neglect to replace your treasure map just because your scenario may not change much from month to month. I do a grade to review every quarter or so and this check usually only takes a few minutes.
If there are any updates, such as new accounts or new investments, I jot down quick notes so the guide is complete and up-to-date. I think updating it annually is enough, except you make a series of changes and you think it will be hard to remember.
While having an out-of-date copy is healthier than having nothing, an up-to-date one is better.
Does he have a treasure map or something similar?
How would you increase or improve mine?
