Good morning.
We spend most of our summer in Flagstaff, AZ and wildfire season has us watching WatchDuty the way we used to watch the weather forecast. I've told myself for years that we should document what we own. This article is what finally made me stop putting it off. I think it'll do the same for you.
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AI TUTORIAL
Your House Burns Down Tonight. Could You List What You Lost?
Imagine you just got out of a house fire alive. The dog. Two photo albums. The clothes on your back. Everything else burned.
A week later your insurance adjuster hands you a blank inventory sheet and asks you to list what you lost. Room by room. With replacement values. You sit at your sister's kitchen table because you do not have one anymore. The tools in the garage. The contents of the hall closet. Your mother's costume jewelry in a tin in the spare room. The stuff you stop noticing because it has always been there.
You remember maybe half.
That is not a thought experiment. A real homeowner's adjuster paid her 38 cents on the dollar because she could not prove what she owned.
We spend most of the summer at our place in Flagstaff Arizona, and wildfire season has us watching the WatchDuty app the way we used to watch the weather. I'd love to tell you we have a complete home inventory. We don't. Almost nobody does. The good news is AI cut the fix down to less time than mowing the lawn.
Here's how to spend twenty minutes this weekend and walk away with something she would have given anything to have.
Step 1: Film a slow walkthrough of your home.
Open the camera on your phone, hit record, and walk through every room. Open closets, kitchen drawers, the pantry, the garage. Talk while you film. Name the brands you can see: "KitchenAid mixer, Vitamix blender, two Cuisinart coffee makers, not sure why."
Step 2: Upload the video to AI.
Open ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or Grok and upload the video. If it runs long, break it into shorter clips by room. Photos work too if your tool will not accept video.
Step 3: Paste this prompt.
The right prompt turns a casual video into a usable insurance document. Use this one:
You are an insurance claims specialist helping a homeowner build a complete home inventory. From this video, please: (1) list every visible item, (2) estimate a current replacement cost for each, (3) organize by room with subtotals, and (4) give a grand total replacement value. Flag anything that may need a separate insurance rider, such as jewelry, art, firearms, or electronics over $1,000.
Step 4: Save the list in three places.
Your phone. Your email. A cloud service like Google Drive or iCloud. If the only copy lives in a folder on your desk, you have no copy when the desk is gone. Three places, three different systems.
Step 5: Email the list to your insurance agent now, not later.
This is the step nobody talks about. Send the finished list to your agent before anything happens. They can spot coverage gaps while there is still time to fix them. Your agent will not ask for this. You have to offer it.
A short note works:
Hi [agent], I put together a current home inventory of our belongings and wanted to send it before we ever need to file a claim. Could you look it over and flag anything our coverage might not fully protect? Thanks, [your name]
Want to try this yourself?
Copy this prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini right after uploading your walkthrough video:
You are an insurance claims specialist helping me create a complete home inventory from the video I just uploaded. List every visible item, estimate the current replacement cost for each, organize by room with subtotals, and give a grand total. Flag anything that may need a separate rider, such as jewelry, art, firearms, or electronics over $1,000.
The average American home holds $100,000 to $300,000 in personal belongings. Most of us could not list a third of it from memory. Your insurance company knows that. She found out the hard way. You do not have to.
This same inventory protects against more than fire. Floods, theft, a burst pipe in February. Every one of those claims runs on what you can prove. Once a year, do a quick refresh: new TV, new appliance, the watch your spouse gave you for your fiftieth.
Your move this Sunday: one walkthrough, twenty minutes, hit record. If you want to make it a date, we plan to do ours over next weekend, then drive up and do the same in Flagstaff. Insurance claims are not romantic. Losing 62 cents on the dollar is even less so.
Do you have a home inventory you could find right now?
WHERE TO GO NEXT
More on this topic, from sources worth your time:
Emergency Essentials Without the Prepper Hype. The short, practical list to keep ready.
Everyday Money Prompts. More ways AI quietly saves real dollars at home.
Legal Checklist for Aging Parents. The paperwork side of "what if."
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