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A home inventory is a list of the entire contents of your home including price, brand, and model, if applicable. Having a detailed home inventory can speed insurance claims after a fire, flood, or burglary as well as help you determine the right amount of insurance to begin with.

Until you capture every last item in your home, your claim will probably be undervalued. Of course, a complete inventory could be extremely time-consuming to compile. To help get you started, here are some tips:

Start Small by Starting Big

By starting your home inventory with the highest value items that you own, you’ll get the most value from your time. In the end, the sum of smaller items will likely be even more valuable, but when just starting out, focus on big ticket Items.

Items that Are Often Overlooked

Looking around each room, our eyes tend to see past some items. Make sure that you account for the following: appliances, rugs, desks, entertainment centers, and the contents of drawers, closets, attics, and basements.

Include New Purchases

Regardless of which existing items you inventory first, capturing new items as you purchase them is a good idea. You may not have a good estimate for what you paid for something years ago, but new purchases are the easiest to inventory because you have all of the information you need.

An Inventory is More than a List

Using photos of items is an excellent way to supplement your inventory. With digital cameras, the cost of an extensive photo inventory is minimal. While it doesn’t replace an actual inventory, filming a walkthrough of your home may be a good idea when you first start out. It may not capture the serial number and value of each item, but it will serve as a reminder of what you owned should it be needed before your full inventory is complete.

Get High Value Items Appraised Every Few Years

Items which appreciate in value should be appraised on a regular basis. Being reimbursed for less than an item is truly worth is money out of your pocket.

What to Do With Your Inventory

For obvious reasons, your inventory should be stored outside of your home. You may be tempted to store it with a trusted neighbor, but doing so can be risky. If a natural disaster were to destroy your home, chances are that a nearby home may be damaged as well. So store your inventory in a safe deposit box, with a distant friend or relative, or archive your data online. If you choose the last method, ensure that your data is kept private and safe. Placing your inventory video on YouTube would give a would-be thief a preview of all your home had to offer.

While creating an extensive home inventory will take a lot of time, not having one could cost you a lot of money. If you need encouragement, try this exercise: write down every item you can think of in any one room of your home. When your list is complete, go to the actual room to see how well you did. You’ll likely be surprised to discover how many items you forgot about. Considering the number of items that you’d probably miss when doing a complete inventory from memory, you quickly realize that making the investment of your time to create a home inventory is time well spent.

Spring arrives with the singing of birds and the blooming of flowers, and it wouldn’t be complete without the scrubbing of bathrooms and the vacuuming of living rooms.

Spring cleaning is as much a seasonal tradition as spotting the first robin or picking the first cherry blossom. Families across the country come out from winter hibernation to polish up their homes and de-clutter their lives in anticipation of a brand new year sure to be spent getting homes dirty and adding more clutter.

Your personal finances could use the same refurbishing. The winter doldrums can do a number on one’s personal pocketbook, so a fresh coat of spring cleaning suds is just what the financial planner ordered.

Here are four ways to take the tasks of spring cleaning and apply them to money makeovers.

1. Clean the cobwebs

A typical spring task is clearing away the unsightly cobwebs and dust bunnies that reside in the overlooked corners of the home. After a long winter, some abodes can resemble the early stages of a ghost town villa, as if all semblance of cleaning were abandoned. There’s no telling what awaits the Swiffer in that cluttered corner of the kitchen.

Fittingly, financial portfolios can also need the same long-lost love. There are lots of different parts of one’s money matters that are so often overlooked and disregarded. Here are just a couple:

• Utilities: Many consumers barely pay attention to their monthly gas, water, and electrical bills. They assume that the prices of these services are fairly constant and that there is not a whole lot a person can do to change the total. However, noticing the fluctuations from month to month can help determine ways to reduce your bill. Remembering what happened during the cheaper periods (taking shorter showers, turning off lights) can help keep utilities at a low standard.
• Statements: Another overlooked area is bank and credit card statements. These important accounts are often left unnoticed when statements arrive in the mail, but keeping a close eye on them could make a huge difference. By not regularly checking a statement, a consumer is leaving himself open to a bevy of harmful missteps. The proliferation of fraud and stolen identity should be reason enough to closely monitor what happens with your bank accounts and credit cards. Not doing so could result in bad news.

2. Reorganize

One of the most fun aspects of spring cleaning is a fancy rearrangement of a living space. There is no better time than spring to change around a family room or alter the kitchen layout, and doing so can make an old home feel like a new place.

Finances can often use a shake-up, too, and spring is as good a time as any to do so. Often, cash flow can get stuck in the same predictable rut month after month. Certainly, there is nothing wrong with finding a prudent money plan and sticking to it, so keeping on that forward-thinking road is definitely recommended. But those who aren’t headed toward a responsible end might need to rethink their financial direction. Spring is a great time to do so. Reorganize expenditures, reality check your budget, set aside money to save, and plan ahead for emergencies.

For those who are already on the straight and narrow, spring might be a good time to plan out a big purchase. Setting a timetable for getting that new barbecue or new hot tub would help keep the budget intact and reward a thrifty consumer for all those months spent pinching pennies. Spring organizing is a great way to get a new perspective on these types of budgetary goals.

3. Box up unnecessary items

Another rite of spring is putting away the clutter of winter. Random Christmas gifts, extra trinkets, and a horde of blankets and clothes make a home seem a lot smaller than it is, so come spring, most families decide to put their excess in boxes and sate their living space anew until next winter.

The spring would also be a good time to put away frivolous spending habits. Over the winter, there are plenty of holidays and events that make spending money an easy occupation. Christmas and Valentine’s Day are money pits that virtually demand a departure from a budget, but there is just as much unnecessary scratch spent on keeping oneself busy during the dull winter days.

Winter entertainment is much more costly than spring and summer fun. When it is cold out, consumers choose to go to movies, go out to dinner, and buy CDs, DVDs, and games to play indoors. Basically, anything enjoyable that can be done indoors is the activity of choice during the winter – unless you favor those pricey outdoor snow sports, that is. Either way, winter activities are expensive. Summer days, though, offer an opportunity to get outside where there are far more possibilities—mostly at a much cheaper price. Looking for cheaper alternatives starting in the spring will help out in the long haul and give more leeway when it comes to spending around the next holiday.

4. Get the family involved

The stereotypical spring makeover is often orchestrated by the mother. She is the one with the motivation to clean and organize, much to the chagrin of her less-than-interested family.

Things don’t need to be this way. In fact, getting everyone involved not only makes spring cleaning faster and more fun, but it also would be a great way to spruce up one’s spring pocketbook.

Paring down a budget can be an overwhelming chore, so splitting up responsibility among a group helps out tremendously. Dad can find ways to make the dollar go further when it comes to utilities. Mom can work on that grocery tab. Bro and sis can team up to trim down their Spongebob stipend. You get the idea.

Getting everyone involved will certainly make the task go by faster, but it also serves an important purpose to give each family member some ownership over the family finances. If one person makes all the financial decisions, the rest of the group tends to get disinterested or bitter or jealous. Having the input of everyone would make sure that each person’s voice gets heard, and it would help unite a family around common goals

While you may feel gouged at their gas pumps, making other purchases at a gas station convenience store is where you might see the highest prices.

We often hear conspiracy theories about the profits made by gas stations, but this recent article helps to put things in perspective. It describes how many stations are barely breaking even on gasoline sales. Some are even losing money. How can they stay in business? By selling other products and services at marked up prices.

The biggest obstacle for these stores is the fact that another convenience item, paying at the pump, keeps you out of the store. By making an investment in advertising and offering other incentives, owners are trying to lure you back into the store. By selling everything from snacks and drinks, household items, groceries, and made to order food, they are able to satisfy many of the needs that were traditionally reserved for larger stores. For years, they have also had ATM machines, which have above average withdrawal fees for borrowing money.

Depending on what your time is worth, picking up a few items at a truly convenient store, may be worth the higher prices. If you can save time and gas by not having to drive to a distant store with better prices, you may be able to justify it. For many of us, knowing that the prices at convenience stores are inflated to make up for small margins on gasoline should be reason enough to avoid making any purchases other than our main reason for going: to buy gas.

While you have to buy your gas from a gas station, you have better choices when deciding where to buy other items. Making an occasional purchase at a convenience store may be unavoidable, but on a regular basis, lower prices elsewhere likely beat any perceived convenience.

Think back to your high school days. Did you ever learn anything about how to deal with money? Sure, you learned all about how geometry and algebra can be used in the real world, and how to interpret literature, but many schools never teach this most basic skill.

Good news is on the horizon, though. The Tennessee State Board of Education has enacted a new high school policy that will make Tennessee the eighth state to require a personal finance class to graduate. The other seven, as noted by the National Council on Economic Education, are Illinois, Idaho, Utah, South Dakota, Missouri, Louisiana, and Georgia. This is great, especially since Tennessee has one of the highest numbers of bankruptcy in America.

The difficulty is making a personal finance course engaging and interesting to high schoolers. I don't know how I would do it -- thinking back to my own high school days, most kids wouldn't even come to classes on economics, much less learn from them. I think the most difficult part is making the classes fun and personally relevant to each student.

Hopefully, more states will formally educate their students on how to deal with money. With consumerism at an all time high in our culture, a good understanding of financial concepts is bound to help people succeed in life.

As home values across the country have declined, and new credit is more difficult to come by, Americans all across the country are reaching for their credit cards more than ever before.

Data from the Federal Reserve released this month showed American credit card debt has reached $951.7 billion. This number is up 8.2 percent from a year ago and is the highest amount ever recorded.

What's going on here?

1. Falling home prices have nearly eliminated the HELOC (home equity line of credit), one of the most popular ways to pay off high interest credit cards.
2. Homeowners are choosing to pay their credit card minimums (thus keeping lines of cash flow available) and giving up on their mortgage payments.

Here are some simple tips to avoid reaching for the plastic:

1. Freeze your credit cards. No, really.

To put your credit card spending on ice....put your cards on ice. Literally. Commit to paying cash and stick all your cards in a large plastic bottle. Fill the bottle with water, and stick it in the freezer.

This little technique isn't quite as drastic as cutting up your cards completely, but at least if you feel the urge to splurge, you'll have to wait for the cards to thaw out.

2. Choose one credit card

If you can't live without your cards, commit to using just one credit card. Preferably the one with the lowest APR. Start paying down your other cards as you learn to rely on just one credit card.

3. Get a battle buddy

Find a friend who's in a similar situation financially as you are. Make a pact to go over your credit card bills together each month. If you have a spouse, you should be doing this with him or her as well. Either way, it's good to have a battle buddy when it comes to using credit cards responsibly.

4. Spend less than you earn

It sounds so simple: spend less than you earn. Yet more and more Americans are spending more than they earn each year. Set up a budget and stick to it. Yeah, budgets may not be cool, but what's really not cool is having to choose between paying a mortgage or a credit card bill.

If this means you have to sell your home and rent for awhile, then do it. If it means giving up eating out, then do it.