MAJOR Downside To Stockpiling

[skyangel]

I am so sorry to hear that you lost so much. We had a hurricane here one year and our power got knocked out for about a week. I had just went grocery shopping and ended up loosing everything. Hubby decided to buy a generator this year in case anything like that would happen again. Hope the companys send you some good coupons.

[Maura]

I have to agree with derketchup - at least you didn't pay full price for all that food...and I bet you had a good stockpile of dry and canned food to eat from during the emergency!

Here's what I would do...make the homeowner's claim and let them reimburse you for the retail price of the food. But take that check, and put it toward a backup generator. The food can be replaced easily enough over the next couple months. But having the generator will give you peace of mind so you don't have to worry about another emergency!

[hopeky94]

Originally Posted by temroy2 Thanks for the tip, but we don't have homeowners insurance. We rent. (no renter's insurance either heh)

After everything settles down again, get some quotes from reputable companies for some renter's insurance. In my area, $10,000 in personal property coverage costs like $100 a YEAR (except for mobile homes, they're higher although no one can quite explain that to me! )... I think that price is with a $500 deductible, but a big freezer full of food would easily be worth more than that, since they figure it on the current market price of what you lost!

Just an FYI-- without some sort of personal property insurance coverage (either renter's insurance or personal property coverage in a homeowner's policy), you have no coverage for:
- damage to your belongings caused by fire, smoke, lightning, tornado, water, power outage, etc (landlord's insurance covers building only)
- theft, vandalism, or other damage of your personal belongings, regardless of their location (including things like CDs, laptop, etc that you may have inside your car- they are NOT covered by auto insurance, as they're not "part of" the vehicle )

And as a final note-- for those who do have property coverage, please review your policy coverages every year or two and/or when a major purchase or improvement has been made. If you've fixed up your home and have $50,000+ worth of stuff, you need more than the $10,000 in coverage that was sufficient when you first moved in and used your parents' hand-me-down furniture!

[rachelanne127]

Be careful with making claims... if you make too many they will cancel your insurance regardless of how many houses you have too (they tried to do it to my grandfather because he had 2 claims on 2 different houses in the past 5 years and one more they would have dropped the insurance.)

[Jenna26]

Originally Posted by queenofthehivemomof5 I am sorry that that happened. I guess fortunatly for us power outages are more likely to happen in the winter months than summer months. And with Wyoming winters we would probably be OK. But we have invested in a generator this summer (craigslist) and that makes me feel a bit better since if we have no power in the winter we have no way to cook (I guess we could BBQ outside?) or heat our house.

This made me smile, because 3 years ago while living in Indiana, we had a huge ice storm come through that knocked out our town's power for 6 days, 7 nights! I stayed with my in-laws, as they had a generator and the temps didn't go below the low 60's in their home. We grilled out on the back porch almost every night, and hung a battery-operated lantern from the dining room light! LOL.

OP, I'm sorry you had such a loss, but glad you didn't pay full price for all the food.

[mysticme]

I am so sorry OP. We just got a chest freezer last week and it is already superfull. I am scared of the same thing happening as we are probably gonna get a direct hit Friday/Saturday from the Hanna storm. I heard somewhere that your fridge and freezer can stay cold for up to 48 hours. I hope this is true. I turned it up to max cold tonight to get ready for this weekend when the power will surely be out. Wish us luck!!

[lovelace]

I was thinking about that when i first start but now i do not worrried about it.It is the same thing as having a fire which I had before.I live on the east coast,so you all know we can had a storm at least we can eat we have a grill and a generator if we lose powder.So we are ready for it all.Sep. 11 change the way i stockpile I allways want to be prepare for anything.ANd before i let food go bad we wil just have to cook it and share with the neighbors.

[shelleyf]

Originally Posted by lovelace ANd before i let food go bad we wil just have to cook it and share with the neighbors.

That is such a sweet thing to do.

[MrsPinecone]

We're going to be investing in a generator when we move into our new house.

[enginerd]

We were without power for three days last winter. I immediately took everything out of the refrigerator and put it in the garage (I put a thermometer out there and the temperature stayed within 2 degrees of our refrigerator). We didn't open the freezers. It worked fine except we had to take a flashlight out to the garage to find what we needed from the fridge. We just didn't cook - we ate alot of peanut butter and jelly and cereal. On the third day we got out an old generator that my dad had given us years ago which we hadn't tried because we weren't sure it would work. DH hooked it up to the freezers and ran it 3 times for 2 hours each throughout the third day. At the end of the third day our electric came back on and we checked our frozen stuff - everything was still frozen solid. We didn't loose anything. Lucky for us we had just put in a new gas fireplace which we used to heat our house. It worked so good that we had to turn it off at times to keep the house from getting too hot.