The only thing worse than having your house catch on fire is not knowing what was in it when you go to file a claim. That one scenario, hopefully one that you will never experience, is the very reason why you should keep an inventory of the contents of your home and store that information outside your home!
A home inventory can be as basic and as comprehensive as you want, remembering that the more information that you have, the easier it will be to get money from the insurance company. A common tactic is to occasionally take pictures of all your rooms and list all the valuable inside of that room. The picture is proof that you, at one point, owned the items you will put on your claim and they will also give a general idea of that item’s condition. Secondly, if you have receipts for those items then you will want to place copies with your inventory. Remember, the more information, the better.
As for storing the inventory, remember to keep it off site and keep numerous backups in the event of any sort of crazy scenario. Computers crash, paper files sometimes go missing, etc. Life happens, so be prepared by having plenty of backups.
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Pictures are definitely a good idea. I normally record a video tape of all the items and store the tape in a safety deposit box. Since tapes are more delicate than dvd’s, i’ve converted to burning video of everything on dvd’s. You can then include a document file of your inventory on it as well.
Some insurance companies will let you submit your recordings and pictures with them ahead of time. Just remember to periodically update what the insurance company has, as well as what you have. Normally after a big purchase is a good idea.
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[...] work of digging it all up so putting that together is important. Also, if you do anything like a home inventory for your homeowners insurance (or have photos of your car, etc.), you’ll want to reference those documents and their [...]
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