“Prepared, Not Scared,” is this year’s theme for National Preparedness Month, a time to promote family and community disaster and emergency planning in September and throughout the year.

This week the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency stress for people to save early for disaster costs. Adair and Guthrie County Emergency Management Deputy Coordinator Jeremy Cooper says a large facet of that is checking your insurance coverage, and taking into account your personal property, “Sit down (and) do an inventory of your belongings and that can be taking pictures, even videos. Because when a disaster strikes those videos, those pictures, everything you wrote down, the serial numbers, all that information is good and it might speed up the claim process with your insurance too. And it shows the proof then of what you have.”

Many people may have an emergency first aid kit in their home or car, but Cooper adds it’s important to create an Emergency Financial First Aid Kit, which is a centralized record of essential household information ready for when you’re faced with recovering from a disaster. For more information on this and other financial preparedness tools, visit here.