PIMYU gives you a great way to get all of your inventory in one place, and if you track all of the different aspects of your inventory, you stand to benefit in several different ways. By tracking the cost of the items, it will be easier to determine their actual value later. This is beneficial both in terms of insurance in the event of a fire or other disaster, as well as giving you a way to update your will. If your inventory has not been updated in the last year, it probably should become a higher priority, if for no other reason than you need to keep your insurance information current.
To help you through the first round of updating your will, here is how I recently used our PIMYU inventory information to update mine.
While my kids were eating their fresh baked cookies following their work to get our inventory updated, I sat down to pull the latest report, which I exported to Excel. I copied the will so that I could mark up items and pencil in new ones (you don’t want to write on your actual will).
The first thing to do was to remove anything in the inventory that belonged to the kids, like the Wii U and their tablets. We have their names in the descriptions so that we can keep track of their stuff (it has resolved at least one fight over the last year). After that, I sorted the spreadsheet by value. Anything that had a lot of sentimental value (such as my grandfather’s pocket watch) I separated from the things that only had monetary value (like the washer and drier).
Since it had been over seven years when we last updated the will, I felt it was something to discuss with the kids and husband. That evening after a nice homemade dinner, we sat down to go over who would get what in the event that both my husband and I died. There were a few heated discussions about some things, but eventually the kids were able to agree that my son would get the roll top desk as long as my daughter got the old chest that had been used for their costumes over the years (both are antiques). Those were hardly the only two items that had some back and forth, so the discussion lasted about an hour and a half. At the end, I had the information I needed to update our will. I made sure to enter the arrangement into the comments section so that it was on record.