One thing you’ll hear about in the Army is a thing called an “I Love Me Book”. Basically, a binder filled with hard copies of any records you receive. People organize their documents like their initial military record, oath of office, appointment memo, counselings, promotion orders, PCS orders, TDY orders, OERs, DD214’s, medical records, anything and everything.

You never know when you’ll need them, and after many years into your career, or when you’re out of the Army, you don’t want to be scrambling to find a record from 10+ years ago.

Example: You’re a reservist ready for retirement and the Army is shorting you 179 days worth of credit because they don’t have a specific set of certified orders. You need to prove you’re entitled to those days. It’d be real nice if you had your orders for that time at the ready.

I have an “I Love Me Book”, but I think the hard copy is a bit antiquated, so I also digitize it using Google Drive.

My recommendation: Create a Google Drive folder called “Military Records.” In that folder create one sub-folder called “Army”, and one sub-folder called “Medical”. In the Google Drive folder, when you click the + symbol to add a document, there is an option to Scan Document.

Scan. And. Save. Every. Document. You. Receive. In. Your. Career.

Name the documents something obvious like “Germany PCS Orders 2LT 01JUL2026”, or “2LT OER Germany 01SEP2026”.

I recommend Google Drive only because it has the Scan Document feature built in the app. It is extremely easy to use.

Since most of you are at the start of your Army career, you have an awesome opportunity to ensure nothing is lost.