Moving? Insure Your Belongings

You may remember the post I wrote in August about the warehouse fire that destroyed all of our belongings we left in a storage unit. The fire occurred six months after we placed our most prized possessions in the unit.

This week, the Husband and I have been going through all of the items lost, trying to place a value on them. Doing research online to dig up the cost of many of these items is difficult from Yangon. Internet connection is slow, making the process tedious. 

It has also been difficult and sad to recount and actually list each of the lost items. As I sat at 50th Street this week trying to access internet (the connection was awful!), I often had to hold back tears. I didn't want to make the list. It was hard enough to write X number of photo albums, but then to actually document which albums they were was sad There was the pregnancy journal, and my daughter's Baby Book. My baby book. Family heirlooms.

We've been slow to document all of this for the storage company's insurance claim. Sadly and frustratingly, we did not insure our storage items, even though we left the possessions most special to us there. We would've had to pay out-of-pocket for the insurance and we thought it was safe. We thought the biggest risk was our air shipment or our ship container. So we insured that instead.

Calcuating the actual cost of our personal effects - almost $20,000 worth - infuriated me. I wished we had taken a moment to sit down and calculate the worth before we decided to not insure them. We wish we would've put some of the things in my mother's house. We wish we would've shipped them here.

Of course, we couldn't have predicted what would have happened and we also know we're lucky that no one was hurt in the fire. We're aware that others lose their homes in fires. We were lucky. And sometimes I feel like a brat, like I don't have a right to complain.

But it sucks.

And I'm writing this to all of you who are in the process of moving: insure ALL of your belongings. Insure your air shipment. Insure your ship container. Insure your storage items. If you're in a rental house, get rental insurance. You never know what will happen and it's better to be safe.