It’s hard enough going through a disaster – natural or otherwise – but when you have easy access to an inventory of everything you own, you can make recovering from the disaster a little easier.
Note: The typical homeowner’s policy will cap coverage for your belongings at 50 to 75 percent of the total amount your home is insured for.
You’ll have to decide if that will be enough to replace your things in the event of a disaster.
How to create a home inventory
Grab your tablet, phone,video camera…something to document everything you own.
Or, to make the process even easier, download and use a home inventory app to make sure you don’t forget a thing.
Next, begin creating your inventory by walking through every room. Not only take note of the larger items, such as your furniture, but smaller items such as knick-knacks, pictures, electronics and decor.
As you’re going through, documenting everything with either photos or video, think about whether or not you’ve got receipts for them, how old they are, their make and model, independent appraisals (e.g. for collectibles) etc.
You can either add this information later, or speak it out loud as you record a video of your possessions.
Must-have documentation
Give very detailed information on antiques or big-ticket items such as your appliances, furniture, professional quality cookware or designer clothing.
To ensure that you’re fairly compensated in the event of a claim, you’ll want to keep receipts, make and model, independent appraisals, numerous photos that highlight every feature of these items in great detail.
Otherwise, you could end up replacing your Williams-Sonoma cookware with ordinary pots and pans from your local big-box store.
Pay attention to the details
Insurance companies will typically set a limit on how much they will pay out by category, such as jewelry, artwork, electronics, antiques, etc.
Once you’ve created your inventory, take a close look at the policy sublimits for these different categories in your policy. Make sure that they will be adequate in the event you need to make a claim.
Check your policy and make sure that the funds you receive will be based on the “replacement value”, rather than the “actual value”.
Keep your inventory up to date
The first time will obviously be the most time consuming, but for your home inventory to do its job, you’ll need to keep on top of it whenever anything changes.
Using a digital inventory app is the easiest way to stay on top of your inventory. Not only is it easy to put your initial inventory together, you can set up reminders to help you keep your inventory up to date.
Keep your list safe
One of the best things about using a home inventory app to create your inventory is that you won’t have to worry about where to keep it safe.
It will be stored in the cloud – and if you prefer, you can save it several different places online – so you’ll always be able to access it at a moment’s notice.
If you didn’t use an app, make a copy (or two) of your video, images, notes, etc. and store in safe place such as a family member’s home or safe deposit box.
Of course you can also upload your images and video, and scanned copies of your receipts, etc. to the cloud too.
While this can be time consuming, once you’ve done it the first time, it will be faster to update your inventory as you bring new things home, or discard, sell, etc. possessions you now own.
Bottom line…everything you forget you own is money that you lose and your insurance company gets to keep so don’t put it off another year.
