information

We're thrilled to present this smart LearnVest story here on Savvy!

In today’s day and age, many of us have traded in our little black books for little black Blackberries—but, regardless, these troves of information should contain more than the phone numbers of old high school crushes and college flings. The last time you needed your passport number or vaccination history, did you have it on hand? Are your bank passwords taped to your computer, in full view of hackers-to-be? We at LearnVest have re-envisioned the little black book, and we invite you to take the plunge: You should have a command center that contains every piece of necessary information you might need. We’ll help you set it up.

Your Financial Life . . . In One Place

All of your financial info should be stored somewhere safe, secure, and easy for you—and only you—to get to. We’re fans of Wallet (for Mac and iPhone), which is basically a password-protected database that has fields where you can enter your account name, password, and any relevant info. Alternately, check out the similar Clipperz or Passpack. If you’re attached to that old school black Moleskine notebook, just make sure to include all of your pertinent info and hide the book in a safe, secure place where you’ll be able to find it again. Know where to find the following:

• Bank account numbers.
• Login names, passwords, and bookmarked web addresses for all financial accounts.
• Account numbers for your 401(k) or IRA.
• Contact information for your company’s human resources department or retirement account administrator.
• Your Social Security number.
• Birth certificate.
• Home and auto insurance policy numbers and contact info.
• Credit card numbers (stored separately from your cards).
• A copy of your driver’s license and passport.
• Frequent flyer numbers.

Read after the jump for more tips to organize your personal information.

Volunteers who edit Wikipedia each day are quickly teaching the online encyclopedia that freedom and fun are crucial to the democratization of information. Burdened by complicated restrictions and uninterested in the more mundane topics (the most popular entries have already been written), volunteer editors are leaving Wikipedia faster than new ones are joining.

Wikipedia is under constant pressure to police the accuracy of its information, and that typically means leaving the moderation to millions of engaged users. That approach is fine with me, since I usually use Wikipedia to find out what everyone else knows about something; whether or not the info is true is a secondary consideration. But if less people engage in the content creation and moderation the quality of the information could go down. And that's a problem when these pages embody, and perhaps create, conventional wisdom. It's safer when there are more people who edit the entries, and thus more people who hold the power of truth (or truthiness) in their hands.

Luckily right now there are more than three million people who write, edit, and check the information, guaranteeing some level of oversight. Let's hope Wikipedia figures out how to keep them coming back. Have you ever contributed to Wikipedia?