ANYBODY who knows me will tell you that I am not a morning person. I woke up out of a dead sleep at 4:30am with a strangle-hold on my cell phone (which doubles as my alarm clock) because I couldn't get the thing to shut off. Then nano-seconds later when a begin to come to I realize that the noise I was hearing wasn't my alarm clock, but a chorus of fire alarms going off in my family's house. My family and I live in a 2-story, plus basement house, so for fire alarms to be going off on multiple floors- something must be seriously wrong..... right? Its amazing how many thoughts and details can run through your head in what was literally less than 10 seconds. As I was racing down the hall taking deep breaths trying to figure out how bad the situation was I'm plotting where I was going to get my wife and daughters out safely- THEN what was I going to rush back in to get out.
In a sputtering of seconds my thoughts ran to our computer. maybe more than anything I needed to get the computer. It had ALL of our family financial records since we had been married on it- NOT to mention files that contained literally THOUSANDS of digital pictures and mpegs of our family memories. BUT- I recalled that last night I spent time trying to get the computer back up because apparently it had been affected by the storms and terrible lightning our area had experienced a few days ago (as a point of reference, the "touchdown Jesus" statue that was struck by lightning and burned to the ground that received international attention this week, is only 10 minutes form my house). My thoughts turned sour- that must be the culprit. This seemed even worse than I thought; everything on that computer was probably destroyed- and, this particular piece was in our office in the basement. We've probably reached the 10-second mark in my story. By this time my wife and I are in the hallway trying to shut off the upstairs fire alarm, which was right outside our daughters rooms (miraculously, they stayed asleep). No smell of smoke. OK- I proceed downstairs to the dark main floor and flip on some lights. No smoke, no smell of smoke. I proceeded to the basement door in fear of what was on the other side. No smoke, no smell of smoke.
Five hours later I am here at my desk still unsure what caused the alarms to go off. I only know that the adrenaline was flowing, I was in crisis mode, and WIDE AWAKE. So I had a few hours to think and reflect as to how that would have all played out if it had been a "real" emergency. AND- would we be sufficiently covered by our insurance if we did incur a loss.
I am VERY fortunate to say that had that occurred our insurance coverage would have been the least of my concerns. My family and I go through regular insurance audits/check-ups to make sure that we are covered. I have no doubt that we would be covered for every 2X4, every brick, couch, etc... All I would need to concern myself with are the "unreplaceables."
Have you had an insurance checkup recently? Homeowners? Auto? Life? Insurance is one of those things that we buy- HOPING that we'll never need it. But it is a near necessity. If you have not had an insurance check up in the last 12-24 months, you're overdue for one. Emery Federal Credit Union has resources to help! Visit our website at www.emeryfcu.org and click on Insurance for more information.