Setting Up A Love Drawer

Create A Drawer Of Key Documents For Your Loved Ones

(CBS) 
The next folder should hold your investment documents.

"You put everything you've got in there. The house file, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, your Roth IRA, 401(k) at work, your kid's college funds, and mutual fund statements go in there," Ramsey says. "The whole point is you can reach to one place when something happens and it's all taken care of and it's easy. It's not, 'I wonder where Uncle Harry buried the mutual fund statement in the backyard. No, we've got a game plan. It's all right here together and makes the whole process so much easier.

"My wife, Sharon, is a very bright lady, but she's not a financial geek like me. So, it's all laid out there. I'm a nerd. There's a little outline on each file. The way I look at it, that's diligence. And again, it's a way I tell my family I care about them."

The next folder to add, Ramsey says, is the insurance folder.

"Of course, that's all the different kinds of insurance," he says. "Your health insurance policies are in there, disability policies are in there. Life insurance. And you should have about eight to 10 times your income on you for life insurance if your family is dependent upon your income. If you make like $40,000 a year, you ought to have $400,000 in life insurance. If you die, your spouse can take that $400,000 and invest it. At 10 percent, it re-creates $40,000 a year worth of income."

The last thing is a safe deposit box.

"You keep a copy of the will in the deposit box and keep the key. In so many states and places, you can't get into a safe deposit box when someone passes away. It's a good place to keep duplicates of things and other things too," Ramsey says.

"Sometimes people keep antique jewelry or something in there and there's a way to get to it later. Everything is organized. It's in one place and in the midst of one of the worst times you face," he adds.