Last winter a client opened her notebook to the custody section and found three paragraphs about a hardware wallet — none with a date. She could not remember whether the safe-deposit reference was current or referred to a box she had already closed.
We spent twenty minutes of her review session reconstructing timelines from bank records. Time she would not have lost if each paragraph had started with a month and year.
The minimum standard
Every entry in a wallet notebook should carry a date in the first line. Not “recently” or “last year” — an actual date: 14 March 2025.
This applies to:
- New wallet index rows
- Custody note updates
- Exchange history lines
- Annual summary pages
How to handle corrections
When information changes, do not erase the old entry. Draw a single line through the outdated text, write the correction beneath it, and date the correction. Your notebook becomes a history, not a palimpsest.
A simple footer habit
Some clients write the date in the bottom-right corner of every page they touch during a sitting. Others use a column on the left margin. Either works. The point is consistency — pick one method and use it for every section.
Starting today
Open your notebook to the last page you wrote. Add today’s date to any undated entry you can still verify. For the rest, write “date uncertain — verified [today]” and move forward with the new habit.
If your notebook has grown messy, an Annual Record Review gives you a structured hour to clean up without starting over.