A house is more often than not, a home. It is a place where the walls bubble over with a sense of safety, security, love, and, if you’re lucky, joy. Home is lazy Saturday mornings, cookouts on the grill, and, of course, where we bring our babies home to learn how to be children. Home is where we celebrate, where we mourn, and where we consider our most loved people to be waiting for us. Large or small, home means everything.
In the unfortunate event of a catastrophe, as logical and reasonable adults, we already understand that insurance companies won’t replace our memories, our sense of safety and security, or that cute little ding in the dining room table that made you so mad when little Johnny dropped the Thanksgiving turkey. We do, however, expect them to replace what is rightfully covered under our insurance policies.
Insurance companies are businesses, and just like any other business, they only thrive when they have more money coming in than going out. Thus, they like to skip over certain possessions if they can. Typically, this means that if the policyholder doesn’t have documented proof of the valuables they’ve accumulated over the years, the insurance company isn’t likely to reimburse them for the loss. It is unfortunate, but true. Therefore, it is up to the policyholder to make sure they have the correct documentation to prove to the insurance company that these valuables existed and that a specific lifestyle was achieved in creating the home.
How to Document Your Valuables for Insurance Purposes
Naturally, we don’t need to document the $5 treasure we found at the local yard sale, but anything that holds value and you would want replaced in the event of a fire, tornado, hurricane, or other catastrophic loss needs to be well documented. Well-documented often means more than just one form of documentation.
Receipts show the value of something on paper, but a visual backup is also recommended, such as video or still shots of the valuables in your home. Some people prefer to take video footage and store it with valuable receipts in a lockbox or safe deposit box every time they purchase a new valuable, while others update their valuables video and receipts annually.
Recording valuables is not limited to any specific price range. The word “valuable” is subjective, and if it is valuable to you, it should be recorded. Of course, some valuables are potentially irreplaceable, but you should still include them in your valuables footage. For example, the handcrafted baby cradle your father made for you before your first child was born cannot be readily replaced, but it still holds monetary value. If you feel it has value, then it does. The insurance company may argue with you about the actual value of items that don’t come with a receipt, but you should never lose sight of the fact that if it has value to you, it should be documented.
Documenting a home doesn’t have to take very long and can actually be a bit of fun. Gather up the children and take home movies of your home, including the valuables in every shot. Don’t make each movie a thirty-minute segment; just a few brief seconds to help highlight the extent of the valuables inside the home. Personalizing your story, if done with tact, can stick in the insurance adjuster’s mind better than a generic video tour of your home.
Receipts are vital. They are proof of value, purchase, and, in some cases, appreciation of value. Without a receipt, the insurance company isn’t going to care how nice your $3,000 teak and glass curio cabinet looks on video if you can’t prove you paid that much for it in the first place. As obvious as it may sound, the purpose of documenting everything you own in your home is to be able to replace as much as possible in the event the home is destroyed. Do not keep your valuable receipts in your home. It is also not a good idea to keep them in your car. Keeping them in a third-party location, such as a small self-storage unit or a safe deposit box, is the safest avenue for storing your receipts.
To protect your home, you will want to keep the proper receipts, the proper insurance (including flood insurance), and, of course, proper upkeep to help alleviate the need for an insurance claim if at all possible.
