A friend just had a fire in their trailer and it's a total loss (in this area, you've got trailer-dwellers and people with big homes on acreage -- not a lot in between). When they said the insurance company was paying them $35k for the contents I said "Aside from the loss of sentimental items, you came out alright then, eh?". Nope. They were still tallying up things from memory and had reached $75k worth of contents. So they say. I'm having trouble imagining it.
Reminded me of the fact that though we carry a fair amount of life insurance on me, a running joke is that we spell "Daddy's Life Insurance" as "Estate Sale".
Which reminded me of a thought I'd only had a week or so ago. That I really do need to inventory everything. If I were to kick the bucket right now, my wife would have to count on the generosity of one of my friends to go through my workshop and organize things for sale (not mixing Snap-On end wrenches with made-in-Taiwan ones, for example).
And we've long talked of the need to go through house, garage, workshop, storage shed, and around the property video-taping everything with commentary, then build a database listing everything we own with its cost and FMV. And though we still haven't done so, we did learn years ago (and each time we say we wish we had time to do it -- maybe companies should offer this as a service!!!) that a rough estimate won't even be close. I'd estimate $100k contents right now, but no sooner had I typed that than I realized there's easily $25k worth of musical gear in here. About $10k for recording equipment, my daughter's trumpet is $2500, and then there's all my guitars, the piano, drums, two more trumpets, other keyboards, tenor sax, clarinet, trombone. Heck, I may've sand-bagged just the musical instruments pretty badly. And we probably have about 300 DVD's now. Adds up. If I remember right, our coverage is about $200k for house contents. I don't remember if the outbuildings have coverage for contents, but think it's typically half the value of the building. Nothing in the garage near the house (imagine that! A garage with room for cars!) but it could take a month to inventory everything in the workshop, and I quickly exceeded $100k just running through the 4-wheeled vehicle category (my truck and backhoe happen to be in the building right now or it wouldn't be close). In a comparatively flimsy building in Tornado Alley. Hmmmm....
So, I guess my point is that what you own should be catalogued, not only for estate planning, but for making sure you've got appropriate insurance coverage. And someday I should put this sermon into practice. |
