In the first half of 2025, natural disasters contributed to more than $131 billion in losses worldwide. Here are some tips to make sure that you're financially prepared for any kind of natural disaster.

Natural disasters can destroy not only homes and belongings but also critical financial records and access to banking services. Financial advisor Winnie Sun advises individuals to proactively prepare by applying for aid through official channels, organizing their finances, and ensuring access to digital records.

Sun highlights the importance of understanding how crowdfunding donations may affect federal assistance eligibility and recommends digitizing financial documents and using password keepers. These steps can help individuals recover more smoothly in the aftermath of a disaster and maintain access to essential financial information.

How to financially prepare for natural disasters

Whether it's a fire, hurricane, or tornado, how prepared are you in the aftermath? Especially when nearly everything in the disastrous path is destroyed, including neighborhood banks and in some cases, important financial records. And as more disasters move across the U.S., it's never too early to prepare your finances for the unexpected and know what to do when faced with something catastrophic like this. To understand how to get your finances in order for the worst case scenario, we met up with financial advisor Winnie Sun. A lot of folks are returning to what was their homes. What are the top three things they should be thinking about from a financial standpoint? Number one, apply for aid. Disasterassistance.gov is where you want to go. Second thing is to get your finances organized. Figure out where everything is. Make sure you have your access. And lastly, figure out cash flow and your budget. Getting a charitable donation from a crowdfunding platform can help financially, but it can impact the amount you get in federal dollars. A lot of the GoFundMe is for a specific source. Let's say to replace someone's minivan, right? Or something like that. Something very defined. That could actually impact how much you receive from FEMA benefits. And since natural disasters can destroy property and personal belongings, you shouldn't rely on physical financial documents. The point is to make sure you have access to everything online. So set up e-delivery of your statements. That's a big one. You should scan, digitize as much of your financial information as possible that's not already online, right? Absolutely. And if it is online, then save it as a PDF. But this actually works perfectly right after tax season. You've had to collect most of your financial documents anyway, so before you put everything away or shred everything, go ahead and get it scanned, make sure it's encrypted, and then you're good for the year. One final tip Sun recommends, consider signing up for a password keeper. So you're not scrambling to remember the passwords for 30 different accounts in the midst of a disaster.

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