When it comes to valuables in your possession, you may wonder what to do with them when you, or a loved one, moves into a retirement community. Over our lifetimes, we accumulate valuables, which is ok as long as we are in our own homes. However, when we have to move to a retirement community, the question of what to do arises. In this article, we talk about the different valuables and what are your options if you are moving into an independent living community.
Defining Valuables
Although this sounds like an obvious question, there is more nuance than seems at first. Things are valuable for many reasons, but the two critical ones as far as this blog article is concerned are monetary value and intrinsic or personal value. While many things hold intrinsic value to us, they may not necessarily have much monetary value. We are not worried about this very much. For example, while one may consider a personal photo album more valuable than a diamond necklace, the photo album is unlikely to be stolen. However, the diamond necklace could, and this is usually what people worry about when they ask about what to do with valuables when they move into independent living communities. Depending on the value of your valuables, here is a rough guide on what you can do.
High Value Items
This includes items such as the aforementioned diamond necklace, jewelry, stock and securities, valuable paintings and other works of art. With such items with high monetary value, it is not a good idea to keep them with you in your independent living community. Instead, you should consider securing them in a safe deposit box where they are perfectly safe. This gives you peace of mind hat they are safe and may probably lower the insurance premiums that you need to pay for the items.
Valuable Items
Some items may not be so valuable or may have personal value attached to them. Depending on the space that you have in your retirement community apartment, you could consider taking out personal storage to keep these items. There are numerous storage facilities all across the United States, and there certainly is one near your retirement community. Such storage facilities are ideal for oversized items and are also very secure. Ensure that you have a clear catalog of the items that you store in such storage for easy retrieval. You should also give a copy of the catalog to a family member (or an attorney) so that in case of an emergency, the items are not lost forever.
Other Items
For items that don’t exactly fall under these two categories, you could consider keeping them with you in your retirement community apartment if space allows. The thing to note if you decide to do this is to ensure that you do not clutter your apartment. This is because this increases the risk of breakages, some of these items could pose a danger of slips and falls and much more. You will need to carefully balance what to keep and what to store. Other options exist as well. You could, for example, decide to sell some of the items, or donate them to charity. All these are valid options as well.
