Can you close your eyes and name every item in your house? Don't worry. Most people can't, but they should. Unless you have a photographic memory, having a home inventory is the easiest way to deal with insurance claims after a disaster or loss. This also expedites the claim, and makes sure you get paid faster, a factor that has a value of its own that isn't so easy to quantify.
Of course there are plenty of other advantages to having (and maintaining) this inventory list. Knowing the value of all of your items makes it much easier to know how much insurance you should have. If you have too little coverage, you can't replace lost belonging, and if you have too much, you are finding creative ways to waste your money!
People usually under-insure, however. Either they undervalue their assets, or they neglect to list things, usually household items like patio furniture, luggage, appliance, clothing, mattresses, sporting goods, and everyday items that really add up! This is after all, where most of spend our money. Wouldn't make sense to claim them as assets so we can replace them?
Some of you might also be money wasters who over-insure. Usually you do this because you think of the retail price you might have paid for something years ago, and not the real cost of replacing it with something similar today. I have a real awesome VCR from the 80's I still use with my VHS collection. As a gadget nut, I'm what people call an "early adopter." I paid $1100 for it when it was new, and have kept it in good repair. I wouldn't however, insure it at $1100. A quick look on retail sites on the Internet tells me I can buy a better one than I have for $200. So that's what I enter in my home inventory program.
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We have not yet been robbed in our most recent home, so I can't vouch for how well a home inventory works with theft, but I'm sure it work just the same with insurance as it would for any other kind of loss. When I have been robbed in the past, I found it hard to even figure out what had been stolen other than the obvious thing I missed most (my television, my stereo, my computer, my music equipment, my jewelry). Now I'm sure, we'd do the same process in reverse, referencing the inventory with what we are able to verify is still there in the home.
Years ago, when I lived in a crummy two room flat in the outer reaches of London, I once had a very fancy and expensive juicer my health-conscious cousin bought me. I used it daily, for maybe a month, and didn't use it again until about four months after I had been robbed. Then I found it wasn't there. To be fair, these crooks were probably much more health conscious than I am, and maybe deserved it more than I did. Still, it was a gift, and I didn't report it stolen, because I simply didn't notice its absence.
Making one isn't so hard. It can be as simple as a pad of paper. The more aggressive might use a spreadsheet program, and maybe take some photos with a digital camera.Most insurance companies now offer a downloadable form you can print out as well. All of them advise keeping that inventory off-site somewhere. Obviously if your house destroyed and your inventory is among the items engulfed by flame or flood waters it won't help you much.
Do you have a home inventory? Before I worked at Pameno, I never heard of such a thing. Now, as a full disclaimer, Pameno offers one, and I use it. While I feel obligate to shill for my corporate masters, I have to say, the beta-test I've used now for six months is easy enough even for my wife to use, who is not what anyone would call an "early adopter." Pameno offers this application called, honestly enough, Home Inventory, as a part of it's multi-suite Pameno Platinum Protection.
What she likes about it, is that it works by "room." That is, you start by listing the rooms in your house: basement, garage, master bedroom, kitchen, and so on. What we do, is take the laptop into the room we work on, and one types while the other starts at one end and starts naming stuff. It's way, way easier than looking at a blank sheet of paper and trying to list all the things you own. Also, this photograph to the right is not of me and my wife. It's been a long time since I had that much hair.
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Anyway, back to the topic, we weren't the first people in the neighborhood to make a home inventory. In Portland now (where we live) there are a few companies that offer inventory services. Yes, people will come to your house and write down and photograph what they see. While I am lazy enough to pay someone else $100 an hour for the trouble, my wife, unfortunately is not, and does not believe in conspicuous consumption.
Okay, it might not be the most fun way to spend a day off, but it's relatively painless. We got out the camera early on and that seemed daunting, until we realized, we don't have to photograph everything. A MacBook Pro is a MacBook Pro, and a 42 inch Sony LCD is a 42 inch Sony LCD. Odd things, rare things, pieces of jewelry, these are the things we took the time to shoot. Our two bedroom home took about three hours to list and photograph, another hour to upload the photos to Pameno, and maybe another hour to get price quotes from the Internet for things like my VCR, where I know I couldn't trust the retail price I paid in 1980.
In conclusion though, a home inventory can really offer a ton of security. Don't feel pressured to spend too much on it, especially since, you are going to need to update it from time to time for it to do you any good. You don't have to photograph everything, as I learned, but you do need to list everything and know it's cost to replace. Where it not for the Home Inventory application I used (and with all due respect to my editor would not have if he had not made me) I probably would never have made one. So, I can honestly endorse it. If you have comments or complaints, about the application or home inventories in general, I'd really hear about user experiences. Feel free to write me at my email address.
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