Open the daily paper and you quickly discover that calamity can strike at any moment. Early Spring brings flooding and hot Summer days spawn devastating tornadoes. A forgotten burning candle, children playing with matches or even a small cooking fire that roars out of control can in seconds destroy possessions that have taken a lifetime to acquire.
The short lived disaster can bring years of headaches as afflicted homeowners attempt to prove to their insurers that they really DID own a priceless Ming vase, or even a cupboard full of grandmas china.
Once again the internet comes to the rescue with free home-inventory software to catalog your possessions from grandma’s china to your plasma television.
Download free home-inventory software such as KnowYourStuff.org (www.knowyourstuff.org), a service of the Insurance Information Institute. The software will
help you inventory your home by creating files for individual rooms and adding descriptions of their respective items, including the purchase date, replacement cost and serial number.
You can also upload photos through some services. Scan receipts and appraisals, and include them in your home inventory to prove the value of an item.
For a fee, some sites will store your information on their own computers. Swiss based Vault 24 (www.vault24.com/public) charges $14.99 a year to store a home-inventory project that you can access via its Web site in the event of a disaster.
When taking inventory, you should videotape the exterior and interior of your home, describing each item you see. Store your video or DVD in a safe-deposit box, along with a printed copy of your inventory, and give a second copy to a friend or relative or keep at the office.
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