The Money Matters

My fight with the mighty dollar did not just show up at my door step it has haunted my for as long as I can remember.....It is not always just debt either. It can be any event that cost you money that you are not planing on. It could be as small as replacing a windshield after that rock on the freeway or something as big as your furnace going out. Lets just say if it can break it will, it's just a matter of when.

The point I am making here is to self insure the Small stuff so you don't have to sweat it. Home insurance will not cover the repairs if your furnace breaks or if your hard drive crashes on your computer. Do a little walk around your house and look at the items that may need to be replaced.
Take a picture of the item and its model number if you can find it.

 Next take all of the photos and sit down at a computer and index the items. Make a list of all of the items that would be more than 100 dollars to replace. Now for the fun part, once you have all of the items listed Google search each item. Find the replacement cost if listed. Now write down that cost next to the item. If the item is more than five years old shop for an item replacement.

Once you have them cataloged put them in a fire proof safe so they can be looked at later if a fire or flood were to damage the items. You can give the insurance company something to refer to when they replace the items.

Now for a little math.....

Take the top three most expensive items and add them together

Example

Furnace 2500
Air conditioner 2000
Fridge 1200

Total 5,700 dollars

This is what I call your peace of mind number. Try to save this as fast as you can once you are out of debt. Maybe keep your tax returns for the first year. Anything that can speed up this process is great. You can also sell anything that you have not used in the past year. If it has not been used in the last 12 months you are just storing it anyway.  Look at it as paying a monthly insurance fee to your family an their well being. Once you reach this number you will have peace of mind that you can replace any item in your home if something were to happen to it.

-Ryan