We talk to a lot of customers in their first month. Almost every story about a record they couldn't find, or one a relative needed but didn't have access to, traces back to a missing habit rather than a missing tool. Here are the ones we suggest most often.
1. Decide what counts as a "record"
Before any tool helps, you need a working definition. A record is any document or file that someone — you, a relative, a notary, a doctor — would need at a specific future moment. Tax filings, IDs, deeds, medical directives, account inventories, family letters. If the answer to "would I miss this in five years?" is yes, it's a record.
2. Find the things you already have
Spend ten minutes on the obvious places: your downloads folder, your desktop, your email attachments, your phone's photos. You will find more than you expect. Make a single list — a paper one is fine — of what's where.
The work isn't deciding what to keep. It's noticing what you've already kept, by accident, in eight different places.
3. Pick one source of truth
A vault is only useful if it's the one place you check. Pick somewhere you can promise yourself you'll go back to. For our customers that's My Swiss Keeper; for some it's a hard drive in a safe. The product matters less than the discipline.
4. Move ten records this week
Not all of them — just ten. Start with the ones that have a name and a date: your last tax return, the deed to your home, the contract for your car. Add the next ten next week. Two months in, you'll be done.
5. Tell one person where it is
The single thing that turns a private archive into a useful one. They don't need the password — they need to know it exists, and how to start the recovery process if needed. Most vaults (ours included) have a "trusted contact" mechanism for exactly this.
6. Set a 90-day reminder
Most digital hygiene is annual at best. Quarterly is plenty. Put a recurring 30-minute slot in your calendar to review what you've added, what's outdated, and whether anything needs to be retired.
The takeaway
None of this requires a product. It requires a habit. We built My Swiss Keeper because the habit is easier to keep when the tool is built around it — but the habit comes first.