Are you aware that your personal belongings inside your home are covered with your Homeowners policy. If your furniture, clothes or other items are stolen or destroyed in an insured event, they are covered under the contents portion of your homeowners policy. But, you must make sure you have a complete home inventory to make sure your personal coverage is enough for your belongings, and to prove you actually owned your belongings. But how do we do this accurately.
There are several tools out there in cyberland that can help you keep the most accurate inventory of your belongings.
How do you find the inventory tool that is right for you?
Here are several things to to consider when you are looking for a home inventory system program:
- Is it easy to use?
- Is it compatible with the computer/phone that I have?
- Does it provide enough information about my belongings that I can easy assess a value?
- Does it allow me to store other important insurance information?
The Insurance Information Institute offers a neat tool that can help in the event that you need to make a claim against your contents policy. It’s the Know Your Stuff app (found in the App Store or on Google Play). It is a cloud-based app that allows you to store all of you insurance policy information and a current inventory with pictures of everything that you own. This app is free to use, but in order to store the information online, there is a small fee. Otherwise you can save the completed forms onto a Flash drive to keep and just hope it doesn’t get stolen along with the rest of your items.
Another tool that does a similar inventory is Belongings. This tool is also Cloud based and allows you to store an inventory of all of your stuff. It also allows you to keep proofs of purchase, warranties and other important documents. However, from the site’s own posted reviews, I would wait to use this app until all of the bugs have been worked out.
Yet another way to keep inventory is to simply walk through your home with a video camera in hand and video tape all of the items, serial numbers and the condition of each within you home. Make sure to store the video online to make sure that it won’t be destroyed within the home. You can back up this process with a Google Docs spreadsheet. These items are free all the time. Maybe your best investment, though.
Whichever method you choose to keep your inventory, please just make sure it is accurate and updated at least once a year. If your contents coverage within your homeowners policy is not enough, this is when it is time to complete a review of your entire policy.
Call Henry Insurance Service today at 225-927-0451 for a free evaluation of your current insurance plans and we can see if modifying your contents coverage should be an option for you.
