Rest assured: Use your PC to document valuables

Keep a digital record of your belongings for insurance

By Camilla Cornell

When Tony and Maureen Gilroy arrived home from a recent vacation, they found their back door open and a raccoon dining on food scraps in the kitchen. The couple’s Toronto home had been robbed and every room had been tossed. Everything — electronic equipment, passports, jewellery and clothing — was gone.

Losing important items can be a heartbreaking and costly experience.

“We had to painstakingly go through it all to figure out what was missing,” says Maureen. “Then we had to guesstimate how much we paid for it. We were still finding stuff missing two months down the road.”

That, says Eve Patterson, manager of regional services for the Insurance Bureau of Canada, is one very good reason to complete a personal property inventory of your home. “The onus is on the consumer to prove loss,” she says. “If you don’t have an inventory in advance, you sometimes don’t remember everything that you’ve got.”

You can avoid a lot of aggravation by having a detailed record of your valuables.

Get your bits on bytes

Putting together a personal inventory doesn’t have to be difficult, particularly if you make use of your PC. Many personal finance packages, such as Quicken, include a home inventory feature. Can’t find what you’re looking for? Create a simple Excel spreadsheet that includes the following data for each item:

name and description
model and serial number
purchase date and place
original cost
estimated current value

The Microsoft Home Magazine template we’ve designed also includes a category for specifying whom you’d like to leave valuables to in the future. And, with a PC, you can easily add items and amend your document, says Keith Wilson, an insurance broker with Orr & Associates in King City, Ont.

With technology, you can

update files
add digital photos of valuables
scan receipts and make multiple copies

Download our personal inventory spreadsheet to keep track of what you own and what it’s worth.

Back it up

“The main thing is not to store your inventory in the house,” advises Wilson. “If your house burns to the ground, your home inventory could go up in flames, too.”

Remember to back up your inventory on CD or DVD.

Even better, online services such as www.mediamax.com allow you to store, organize and automatically back up documents such as your home inventory, precious family photos and digital music collections.

Although paper valuables such as wills, insurance documents and the deed to your house are best kept in a safety deposit box, it’s a good idea to scan them or take digital photos. Keep a copy on your PC as well, suggests Wilson.

Take it one room at a time

Patterson suggests that you tackle the task of compiling a home inventory one room at a time until you’ve got a comprehensive list of your home’s contents. Include jewellery, silverware, artwork and collectibles, furniture, carpets, electronics, clothing, draperies, CDs, lamps and household goods.

“Make sure you open drawers, cupboards and closets and record what is inside,” she says. Use your digital camera to take photos and then download them onto your inventory disk. Or get out the video camera and film the drawer. “A picture is worth a thousand words,” says Patterson.