Individuals who have an accurate and available record of all personal assets will often be able to help mitigate the disruption and stress associated with a loss or damage. While you could certainly do little more than write all of your items down on a piece of paper, you might want to go a bit further than that to have a more useful point of reference for your possessions and to help keep the information safe.
Notably, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, a group devoted to insurance research and information dissemination, points out only about 40 percent of consumers actually keep a proper inventory of their assets.
Let’s take a look at some of the best practices:
Setting yourself up for success
Before taking inventory, you will need to have the right information about your assets. Consider holding on to receipts, especially for more expensive, prized and longer-lasting items like your furniture, antiques, artwork, jewelry and electronics. Also, try to keep your accounting for new possessions categorized. For example, if you have a computer that you use for work and a television for entertainment, keep those items segregated.
Property Management Insider, a publication that focuses on asset management, suggests also keeping track of makes and models from manufacturers, and also label the inventory record for where the item resides at any given moment. More obviously, the news source recommends immediately crossing items off of the list when you sell, dispose of or otherwise eradicate assets.
You can then check your inventory once a month or whenever you add or remove an item to ensure it is timely and accurate on a rolling basis.
Hold on to receipts for jewelry and other prized possessions.
Easing the tasks
You do not necessarily need to find a big ledger and keep all of your inventory on paper. In fact, this will not be the safest, nor most efficient, way to keep up. It’s a better idea to keep inventory information safe outside of your premises, particularly in digital form. Consider one of these apps for personal property inventory management:
- Sortly: An organization app specifically built for inventory, and several notable publications such as Forbes and Fast Company praise it.
- Know Your Stuff: The Know Your Stuff app was made by the Insurance Information Institute, a leading research firm, created the Know Your Stuff free app, which offers a range of special capabilities that improve your visibility of your possessions.
As always, part of maintaining protection for your inventory of assets is the right insurance coverage. Contact us to review your personal property insurance coverage today.
Reprinted with Permission – Selective Insurance Company
