Of course, the best time to think about preserving your financial records is well ahead of any emergency situation. By taking a few simple precautions, you can ensure your vital records and documents will never get washed out, burned up or blown away.

Here are a few preservation suggestions:

• Know where you keep your records and documents — Keep a file of all your brokerage statements, insurance policies, annuity contracts, bank accounts, financial planning materials and any other financial paperwork you may have. If you exactly where everything is — and you keep it all in one easily accessible location — you won’t have to scramble around for your papers when you have to leave in a hurry.

• Minimize the papers you keep — When it comes to collecting paperwork, we all have different tendencies. If you’re a saver, than you might get nervous if you don’t on to every scrap of paper, every letter, every statement. But if you’re a “purger,” then you might look at something once, and then toss it. In terms of maintaining your financial records, it’s good to be somewhere in between. Save just those documents you feel are really essential, and get rid of the rest. Too much clutter will make it hard for you to grab the things you need in an emergency.

• Computerize as much as you can — Whenever it’s possible, put your important financial information on your personal computer. If you’ve got the equipment and the know-how to scan documents into your computer, that’s great. But even if you don’t, you can do something as simple as creating a document and typing in all your important financial information. However you enter your financial information on your computer, be sure to back it up on a diskette or CD. Both are extremely portable, so they won’t slow you down when you need to move fast.

• Don’t keep everything in the house — If you have particularly important documents, such as your will or living trust arrangements, you may want to consider keeping them in a safe deposit box in a bank. Your attorney or accountant probably has copies of these documents, but it is always best to err on the safe side.

By taking these few simple steps, you can avoid having a natural disaster destroy your “personal paper trail.” However, if worse comes to worse and you can’t get your documents out of harm’s way, there is still no need to panic. Sooner or later, you could probably replace just about everything that is lost. So pay the most attention to preserving what’s truly irreplaceable — the lives of you and your family.