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Saturday, April 17, 2010

Insuring your prep




And now, the most boring prep topic you can possibly imagine...

Have you thought about insuring your preps? If you're like me, you've dumped a ton of money into your preps, sacrificing current spending and future savings to make sure you have enough stuff stashed away. And, like me, you probably have a lot of that stuff stashed at home, even though you know you should diversify your storage, yadda yadda.

So with multiple thousands of dollars worth of canned goods, guns, ammo, etc. lying around the house, have you done anything to protect it in case of theft, fire or flood? Here are some questions to think about:
  1. Would your homeowner's or renter's policy cover the loss of 700 cans of Hormel chili and 40 buckets of vacuum-packed wheat?
  2. Have you documented what you have on hand? Would you be able to supply those documents to an adjuster after a loss? Would you want to, from an OPSEC standpoint?
  3. Most homeowner's policies don't cover firearms, computers, or jewelry without a rider - do you have one?
  4. Most riders are for specific items that need to be listed - are you willing to break OPSEC for that? I can't help but think precious metals would fall under some kind of rider. How would you even approach asking about this - "Hey, Mr. Insurance Guy. Hypothetically speaking, if someone had, oh, say, $50,000 in gold and silver in their house, how would they go about covering that?"
  5. Are your off-site preps covered? For example, if you have a BOL cabin which is unoccupied 50 weeks out of the year, I can see an insurance company not wanting to cover anything in there.
  6. Would any of your preps get the hairy eyeball under the terms of your policy? Read yours over - you may find some things in there that seemed funny when you took it out, but now are quite plausible for an active prepper. Got lots of propane tanks? Drums of diesel or gas? How about a garage full of methanol and lye for making biodiesel? Some insurance companies will drop you in a heartbeat if they see a trampoline in your backyard, or if you have a rottweiler or pit bull. What happens if you've got enough petrochemicals around that an adjuster thinks you've been running a meth lab?
Like I said, boring. But necessary, probably - I can't afford to replace what I have if it gets lost or stolen in the pre-SHTF world, so I'm going to look into it. Any suggestions from the insurance-savvy out there?

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