There Has to Be a Better Way

When Rita and I retired, something unexpected happened.

For the first time in many years, we had the opportunity to slow down and look at something we'd never really had time to organize.

Our lives.

Like most families, we had accumulated a lifetime of important information.

Doctors.

Medications.

Insurance policies.

Bank accounts.

Property records.

Emergency contacts.

Important documents.

Passwords.

The information wasn't missing.

It was simply scattered everywhere.

So I did what probably millions of people would do.

I opened Google Docs.

One document became two.

Two became five.

Five became ten.

Every time I thought of another part of our lives that our children might someday need, I created another document.

At first, it felt productive.

Each document represented another piece of our lives finally becoming organized.

Then one afternoon I stopped and looked at what I had created.

There were documents everywhere.

And before I had even thought about printing them or putting them into a binder, I realized something.

There has to be a better way.

It wasn't that Google Docs had failed me.

They had done exactly what they were supposed to do.

The problem was much bigger.

Life doesn't stand still.

Medications change.

Phone numbers change.

Insurance policies are renewed.

New financial accounts are opened.

Children grow up.

Grandchildren are born.

Life keeps moving.

Every one of those changes meant opening another document.

Editing it.

Saving it.

Trying to remember if I'd updated everything else that depended on it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized something important.

I probably wouldn't keep up with it.

Not because I didn't care.

Because eventually it would become too much work.

That's when I realized the real problem wasn't organizing information. It was keeping it current.

That simple realization became the seed that eventually grew into MyRegistr.

I didn't set out to build software.

I set out to solve a problem Rita and I had just discovered in our own lives.

What if all of our important information could live in one place?

What if it stayed current instead of becoming outdated?

What if our children could always find the latest information instead of wondering which document was the newest?

Little by little, those questions became ideas.

Those ideas became sketches.

Those sketches became conversations.

Eventually, those conversations became MyRegistr.

People sometimes ask me where the idea came from.

It didn't begin with a business plan.

It didn't begin with a technology breakthrough.

It began with a husband trying to organize his family's life.

One thing I didn't want to lose was the comfort of having a printed copy.

Some people simply like knowing there's a family binder on the bookshelf.

So even though MyRegistr became the better way to organize everything, it never abandoned the original idea.

If you want a printed Family Binder, you can still have one.

Print your My Health Book.

Print your financial information.

Print your property records.

Print your preparedness plans.

Or create and print your entire Family Book.

It's all there.

And if you'd rather keep everything on your phone, tablet, or computer, that's there too.

You don't have to choose one or the other.

Use whatever gives you—and your family—the greatest peace of mind.

The difference is this.

The binder is no longer where your information lives. It's simply a snapshot of information that's always current.

When life changes...

You update MyRegistr.

Then, whenever you choose, you print a fresh copy.

No wondering whether a document is outdated.

No searching through dozens of files.

No asking yourself which version is the right one.

Looking back, I realize I wasn't trying to build software at all.

I was simply looking for a better way.

And that's still how I think about MyRegistr today.

Not as another app.

But as a better way to organize the lives of the people we love.