I used to always find myself at a loss when it came to know­ing what model my TV is and when the war­ranty expires, what is the water fil­ter type in my fridge, the VIN of my car, air fil­ters for my home A/C’s etc. The list of not know­ing what I needed to know when I needed to know it seemed end­less. Until I came up with an approach that solved this prob­lem, hope­fully once and for all. There is also the whole angle of insur­ance — a recent neigh­bor­hood fire brought this point close to home.

1. The Video Walk-Through

Walk around the house with a high qual­ity video cam­era, slowly pan­ning across things in each room. I used my iPhone for this. Upload this file to a secure online stor­age ser­vice. I use Drop­box. This does a high level cap­ture of assets in the house, so you don’t have to cat­a­log each and every thing into an asset database.

2. Cap­ture the Asset

Main­tain an asset data­base of key items, espe­cially the ones that are likely to require main­te­nance or atten­tion more fre­quently. I use Life­Topix for this as it ties the assets with ser­vices, pay­ments, shop­ping and media files. Regard­less of what tool you use, the point is to cap­ture some key things: Title, Cat­e­gory, Descrip­tion, Seller, Pur­chase Date, Cost, Cur­rent Value, Man­u­fac­turer, Model, SKU/Serial #/VIN, and a photo.

3. Man­age the Asset

Asso­ciate the fol­low­ing with the asset: Shop­ping items for replace­ment parts (with model, store, price etc.), Reminders, Tasks (per­haps recur­ring, espe­cially for things like water fil­ters, air fil­ters, car inspec­tion, oil change), Book­marks, Voice Notes, and per­haps checklists.

4. Know the Value

For things I plan to sell/upgrade/replace some­day, as well as for other rea­sons, I update the cur­rent val­ues of the assets (TV/car/laptop/house etc.) from time to time using list­ings like eBay, Gazelle, appraisal sites. I have a reminder for that. Also, I main­tain reminders and notes about my thoughts on when I should look at sell­ing it. My approach also gives me totals of cur­rent val­ues across cat­e­gories (Electronics/Valuables/Appliances etc.).

5. Main­te­nance and Service

I track the ser­vices, war­ranties, bills, and ser­vice providers asso­ci­ated with the assets — the place where I get my car inspected, the mechanic who fixed the car, the autho­rized TV repair place, the extended war­ranty ven­dor, etc.

6. It Was Eas­ier Than I Thought

Since I main­tain the key data described in points 2 and 3 only for a dozen or so KEY assets (house/cars/large appliances/home the­ater com­po­nents), it’s not a lot of data entry. The beauty is, I use the info so much more often than I update it, it’s really effi­cient — when I need to can­cel my XM ser­vice and need my car VIN, at Home Depot and need to buy fil­ters and need the size or model, look up the plumber I used the last time, or know when my TV war­ranty expires. It’s nice  to be able to pull out my iPhone and look it up instantly.

I am very happy with this approach. It makes a topic that is gen­er­ally bor­ing to me a lot more excit­ing with infor­ma­tion at my fingertips!