You must have a great homeowner’s policy, or renters’ insurance and incredible backup for a multitude of items located in your house.
Why do I say this?
Last Monday I fell victim to a home invasion as they say a break-in. During a 5 hour window of time, broad daylight, between 10AM and 4PM, "they" decided to shop at my house. No witnesses, no neighborhood watch patrol to sound the alarm, nothing.
Police showed up, case number assigned, 2 finger prints found in very good condition as he said, however, the reality of finding anyone to match would be near impossible given what is happening in my neighborhood. I bought a new construction home, picked out custom features as did many in on my street and surrounding subdivision and as such, the streets are filled with a lot of workers from various places. So it’s hard to tell who is coming and going and what they are doing or taking or placing or fixing. So... the stuff is gone.
Suggestion... if you’re a homeowner... get the best coverage you can. This is a very small price to pay to have relative piece of mind and a reduction of your out of pocket expenses. I have a $1000 dollar deductible, so not too bad, $250,000 in coverage on stolen items, which is replacement cost - a key thing here... not just value of the item, which is always reduced or depreciated. Get the coverage even if a renter. Not that expensive, no more than $100 bucks a year.
Backup. I suggest taking pictures of ALL your stuff, keep every receipt no matter how little or stupid it may seem. I am fortunate that I keep most receipts in a file with most manuals, which has actually helped me in this case immensely in time, effort, and stress and ultimately, getting my house put back together. I do have pictures of my new house and most rooms, so for some of the small things that were say in my den that were taken (i.e. keyboards, mice, back up USB drives etc) which I cannot find a receipt, I do have the picture showing the set up so I can recover some monies there.... I also take a lot of pictures when traveling or going to parties, so that picture of me holding the guitar or using my laptop for music at a friend’s house or at a BBQ is further proof.
As of today, I have 110 line items on an Excel Spreadsheet that I have to hand over to my insurance company which details the items taken. I do have receipts for about 100 of the items. Not too bad.
Fortunate thing is... most everything can somewhat be easily replaced. Some items have sentimental value, most are electronics that I can buy new. A few items are just hassles factors. No one was hurt, the large picture window in the dining room, point of entry, will be replaced, the new security system which is now installed will help with piece of mind and whatever lingering PTSD I may have in the middle of the night.
Backup your DATA. I had 2 Apple Laptops taken as well as my prized 30" Cinema display. Unfortunate, but I did have 7 years of Quicken files taken because they were on the laptop. Yes, I did not back that up, I just got the new OS from Apple with "TimeMachine" to back up everything, but I need more backup drives and had not done so. I am getting a 2 Terabyte backup system now to complement my home system to never loose data again and have it mounted in the wall where my network terminates in my house. I doubt "they" will look in my walls for a hard drive.
Cool thing to note... when you buy from Amazon, Apple, REI and a few other places, they have a total history of all your purchases since nearly first purchase. Amazon had records online and easily accessible going back to 1998 for me... awesome backup for the list of CD's, DVD's etc I bought that are now gone.
So as of today's work, receipts found, websites I have had to visit and print out invoices, stores I asked for records of my purchases my lose tally is nearly complete. Once I have the finally estimate for inside my home repairs - in taking my 2 flat panel TV's and the computer equipment, they literally yanked the cords from the wall pulling the wires out quite a bit, cause damage to the wall, the face plate and possible damage to the wires in the wall. My house was pre-wired for all coax (both cable and dish), cat 5 wires (both un-powered and powered), phone lines and security wires.
Grand Total for goods - - - - $33,246.65
We shall see after deductible, depreciation and other insurance related verbiage, how much my final check will be.
Stay tuned