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On Christmas morning, what’s the first thing you should do with all the loot that Santa has deposited under your tree?
Why pull out your camera or smart phone and photograph them, of course!
Remember all those stories you hear every year about families having their entire Christmas burned up in a house fire?
Or how about the families that hop in their car and head over to grandma’s house for Christmas dinner, only to discover that a burglar completely cleaned them out while they were gone?
Sadly, those things happen.
If it should end up happening to your family, having a photographic record of all of your belongings will make it much easier to file (and support) an insurance claim. This is especially true for Christmas gifts because most people don’t include receipts along with the gifts they bestow to others.
First, I recommend neatly arranging everything that will fit on a large bed and taking a couple of shots of all the gifts together.
Next, photograph every expensive item individually and write the item’s brand, model number and serial number on the back of the photo.
Once everything has been photographed and the photos have been annotated, store the prints in a fireproof safe or lock box.
That will make it easy to provide your insurance company with photographic proof of what you lost in case the unthinkable ever happens and you lose all of your earthly possessions to a fire, thief or natural disaster.
And by the way, video is a good supplement to photos, but photos are essential so be sure you take those first.
Bottom line: A detailed photographic record of all your family’s Christmas gifts will make it a lot easier for your insurance company to quickly pay up if some (or all) of your gifts end up getting damaged or stolen.
Merry Christmas, everyone!
Bonus tip: It’s also a good idea to keep receipts for all the gifts you bought for others just in case they need to file an insurance claim of their own.
You probably already have receipts for everything you purchased locally, but if you ordered items from Amazon you might not have receipts for those.
This post explains how to print receipts for the items you ordered directly from your Amazon account.