I haven't been around much the last couple of weeks, but as many of you know, I had a fire at my house on St. Patrick's Day. (Luck o' the Irish indeed...) The past two weeks have been an exhausting blur of cleaning crews, insurance adjusters, public advocates, building contractors, etc. We're almost back to some small sense of normalcy, but only insofar as we'll be back in the house tomorrow night. Inflatable mattresses will be the order of the day until new beds/mattresses come in, and replacing the rest of my stuff will be a long ordeal of money shuffling.
For those of you who have never had a claimable loss, here's how the deal works:
1) You make a list of everything you lost, listing model numbers, cost at time of purchase, and date of purchase. You also have to make and submit a list of the replacement cost for current comparable items. If you forget things, that's OK. The typical claim gives you up to 1 year to submit supplemental claims for review.
2) Your insurance company cuts you a check for the depreciated value of your lost property. (Depreciation value on personal property is 20% per year.)
3) You then use this nest egg to start replacing your valuables.
4) Once you receive whatever you've purchased with your available funds, you submit copies of the receipts to the insurance company.
5) They send you a check for the difference in cost between depreciated value and the replacement item, if applicable. This is how they save themselves from giving you money for things you decide you don't need anymore. If you don't replace it, you don't get full replacement value, just the depreciated value. As you can imagine, if you don't have a lot of capital (like me) it can take a long time to replace everything. We're getting an advance of $5G, which will cover beds, clothing and some miscellaneous expenses, but after that, it'll probably take the better part of a year to get everything settled satisfactorily. I'll be coming out somewhat on the winning end after it's all said and done, but it's a monumental amount of work, even for such a small claim.
There's a couple more steps I'll be taking, since I'll be reorganizing my possessions. Insurance policies specify that you MUST purchase COMPARABLE replacement items - NO UPGRADING. For instance, I don't really need 4 computers anymore, so first I'll order replacement items. (Up to the maximum allowable computer equipment coverage, which is $2500 per occupant. Too bad, since I had about $4500 worth of computer stuff, not even counting software.) Once they arrive, I won't open any boxes. (This saves me from restocking fees.) I'll submit copies of my receipts to the insurance company, then turn around and return all the stuff I won't be using. I'll then use that money to buy the item I REALLY want. In my case, instead of two laptops, two custom-built desktops, four car amplifiers and a set of components I'll never use, I'll be replacing everything with the new Hewlett-Packard HDX Dragon 20.1" widescreen laptop. Behold, 512MB discrete graphics, true HD resolution, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive space, and Blue Ray/Super-Multidrive.
For those of you who have never had a claimable loss, here's how the deal works:
1) You make a list of everything you lost, listing model numbers, cost at time of purchase, and date of purchase. You also have to make and submit a list of the replacement cost for current comparable items. If you forget things, that's OK. The typical claim gives you up to 1 year to submit supplemental claims for review.
2) Your insurance company cuts you a check for the depreciated value of your lost property. (Depreciation value on personal property is 20% per year.)
3) You then use this nest egg to start replacing your valuables.
4) Once you receive whatever you've purchased with your available funds, you submit copies of the receipts to the insurance company.
5) They send you a check for the difference in cost between depreciated value and the replacement item, if applicable. This is how they save themselves from giving you money for things you decide you don't need anymore. If you don't replace it, you don't get full replacement value, just the depreciated value. As you can imagine, if you don't have a lot of capital (like me) it can take a long time to replace everything. We're getting an advance of $5G, which will cover beds, clothing and some miscellaneous expenses, but after that, it'll probably take the better part of a year to get everything settled satisfactorily. I'll be coming out somewhat on the winning end after it's all said and done, but it's a monumental amount of work, even for such a small claim.
There's a couple more steps I'll be taking, since I'll be reorganizing my possessions. Insurance policies specify that you MUST purchase COMPARABLE replacement items - NO UPGRADING. For instance, I don't really need 4 computers anymore, so first I'll order replacement items. (Up to the maximum allowable computer equipment coverage, which is $2500 per occupant. Too bad, since I had about $4500 worth of computer stuff, not even counting software.) Once they arrive, I won't open any boxes. (This saves me from restocking fees.) I'll submit copies of my receipts to the insurance company, then turn around and return all the stuff I won't be using. I'll then use that money to buy the item I REALLY want. In my case, instead of two laptops, two custom-built desktops, four car amplifiers and a set of components I'll never use, I'll be replacing everything with the new Hewlett-Packard HDX Dragon 20.1" widescreen laptop. Behold, 512MB discrete graphics, true HD resolution, 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive space, and Blue Ray/Super-Multidrive.
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