Tracking what you own: why home inventory software appeals to Boomers

I've been thinking about buying a new digital camera, especially after looking through some photo albums I treasure. I have always loved to take pictures, especially of my children, who by coincidence, happen to be the most beautiful girls in the world.

Anyway, I came across one album this weekend that really made me stop and think. It was a huge binder of photos I made years ago of all the big-ticket items in my house. I had done an inventory and had created a list of furniture, china, silver and treasured household itmes, including where they were purchased and their approximate worth. Suddenly, I realized the pictures were 7 years old and didn't include several major purchases we had made since then. They also didn't include many of the beautiful things, including antiques, that Ralph's mother gave us when she moved out of her estate home to a one bedroom apartment at St. George Village two years ago.

I confess I was also a bit red-faced at realizing I had never put the album into a safety vault, so if I had lost everything in a disaster, the album would have been included. Duh.

Then my mind jumped to the awful fire that caused my parents to have to move out of their home of 55 years in 2006 (it took six months to rebuild and they didn't salvage any furniture). Suddenly, I felt a sense of urgency to do something.

Like most Boomers, I turned to the Internet to search for better solutions than taking a video or snapping  pictures and putting them in an album. I was delighted by the number of inventory solutions I found.

KnowYourStuff.org is free downloadable inventory software and is a service of the Insurance Information Institute. There's also MakeLifeEasy.com, a service that guides you through all the steps of what to inventory, how to categorize it and it even lets you scan in receipts and appraisals. I also came across Vault24.com, a Swiss company that enables you - for a small monthly fee - to store all your inventory data online so you can access if on the web from anywhere, just in case you need to file a claim in the case of a natural disaster that requires you to move away quickly (as was the case with so many Katrina victims).  (By the way, for any cynics reading this, let me assure you none of these companies is an Edelman client - I found them randomly.)

This is a great example of the kind of service Boomers love. We like technology that helps us accomplish a specific task as much as we love any service that reduces stress and makes us more efficient.

Inventory software not only helps us keep up with our own things (which is also important when we start to downsize or decide to move) but it's a great way to keep up with our parents' things. Seems to me a web-based inventory with photos could be especially helpful to families scattered about when it comes time to divide up mom and dad's treasures.

My girls are still beautiful and when I buy a new camera I'll still take a lot of pictures of them, but you can bet I'll be all over this web-based inventory system as well. I'd love to hear from people who have used any of these - or other systems. Tell what your experience has been like!

Comments

[poetryman69]

good if you loose something or to guard against theft

[Working After 50]

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Please know I am NEW at this and the sight will evolve.

Thank you

Bob