Comments on: Protect Yourself: 5 Easy Steps to a Complete Home Inventory

By: Kevin

Kevin — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 19:28:26 +0000

@Debbie: That’s a decent idea, but I would be worried about someone stealing the information from work.

The online idea is a good one, several other people have commented on other posts with that idea. For some reason, I didn’t even think about that!

By: Debbie M

Debbie M — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:04:45 +0000

I store things like this at work. It’s not in another state, so it’s no good for city-wide disasters, but it’s definitely good for fires, broken water mains, and tornados that don’t hit both the house and the workplace.

If you can copy your spreadsheet onto an online place like google docs, or attach it to an e-mail to yourself, that is a nice accessible far away well-backed-up place to store things, but then you have to evaluate the risk of having a list of all your (deliciously stealable?) stuff sitting out there in there on the web.

By: xiLLeNtz

xiLLeNtz — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:23:41 +0000

I read this the other day and then just recently on DownloadSquad.com there was a link for one of these:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/weblogsinc/downloadsquad/~3/343584872/

By: Bobbi Jo

Bobbi Jo — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 19:51:33 +0000

I feel so lucky at this point. Nothing like that has happened to me yet, but I know that I am not immune so I am prepared just in case. I wanted to add a point about receipts and insurance companies. I have spoken to many now, and they all say that receipts aren’t necessary particularly if there is a good photo of the item that can show the manufacturer’s or brand name. Now the exception to that is if it is an item that should be appraised in order to prove its value, such as an antique, collectible, or collection. Then I would definitely have it appraised, scan the appraisal, and store that somewhere safe.

By: Kevin

Kevin — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:54:46 +0000

@Kym: Yea, if they’re giving you a hassle about documenting for insurance… then find another insurance company. Seriously. Mine wanted to know the structure of the building, etc., but it wasn’t too bad.

Sorry to hear about your experience. Hopefully you can learn from it

I think it is nuts that you can’t have scanned in copy of receipts. Here’s why: say you buy a computer at Office Depot (bad idea, but go with me here)… that paper receipt they give you will fade over time.

I can see someone standing in court going “Here’s my receipt!” and it’s blank. Then what?

By: Kym

Kym — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 04:46:42 +0000

Wow. This really hit home for me. The story you told at the start of this post – that person with the apartment on fire, that was me last May. Only it was not put out with minor damage. It took 30 mins for fire fighters to arrive and another hour to put it out, and very little remained that wasn’t damaged by fire, water, flame retardant, or soot. I did not have renter’s insurance, so you can imagine how well that worked out. I had an estimated $12k in items lost, as did my 1 roommate. I successfully sued my neighbor, whose neglect had started the fire in the garage below the townhouse we rented, last December for $4.5k. It didn’t cover everything by a long shot, but it was better than nothing.

I learned a lot from that experience. I was moving the following month anyway (I was in my last year in college and moving to a new city for work), so I looked into getting renter’s insurance on my new place. They wanted every little thing documented, though, and I didn’t have the patience to do all of that, so I still don’t have renter’s insurance (bad, I know, and I really need to get on this). When I was suing, the photos I had to prove that I owned items didn’t count as proving my ownership, nor did having people come to court to testify that I did have these items. The only thing that mattered was receipts, which naturally did not make it! Even credit card statements did not count, as you can’t identify the item purchased from them. Since then, I have saved every receipt for every non-consumable good I have bought. In court, scans of receipts weren’t acceptable either as they could have been doctored, so here I am with my big stack of real receipts. I can’t picture myself hanging onto the physical receipt of everything I ever buy ever, but apparently that’s what you have to do, and I hope insurance doesn’t work the same way. I have also photographed my major purchases as they came in as a bonus.

Last year I bought Quicken Home Inventory so that I could document every single thing I own, just like you suggest doing in an Excel sheet. With it you can attach photos (I intend to attach a photo of the item and a scan of the receipt it’s on). I’m a software engineer, and I had actually started out writing my own program to do this – but for $25 I thought I may as well just buy the one that already exists once I found it. Now I need to get on it and use it and get some insurance!

Thanks for this post. It has reminded me of the importance of getting these things taken care of. You never know what day you’ll lose your home and everything inside, I sure never expected it.

By: PT

PT — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:07:54 +0000

Glad you guys are ok. Scary.

Great advice. Stumbled.

I havn’t done an inventory in a while. Thanks for the motivation.