For the majority of us, the thought of being driven out of our homes as a result of drastic weather conditions may seem highly unlikely. However, thousands of UK Homes have been severely damaged with losses tallying up to millions.

ABI (Association of British Insurers) states that more than 2 million homes are at risk from coastal or inland flooding (10% of total homes in the UK) It also revealed that insurance claims for storm and flood damages in the UK have doubled to over 6 billion over the period 1998-2003. However, a significant number of these claims are rejected due to underinsured home contents cover.

Although there is no control over the weather, you can improve the recovery costs of your damaged contents by insuring them! For those of you who have insured your contents, it is highly probable that your contents cover was decided as an estimated guess. Guessing in these serious circumstances will cost you a fortune.

So how do you calculate your home contents insurance cover? A common dilemma amongst people is where to start? Some insurance companies have introduced 'online home contents calculators.' These calculators are a basic form of calculating the value of the contents of your home.

However, there are several specialist home inventory software packages such as Chieftain Housekeeper which will, in addition to calculating the value of your possessions, allow you to store serial numbers and pictures of your valuables. Recording such details in this way will provide solid evidence should the need to make a home insurance claim arise.

Better to be safe than sorry, says Chieftain who point out that household information stored with their software will also be useful after a burglary too. But do remember to make backups of the data created and give them to a friend to keep, otherwise if your computer is swept away or stolen you may loose access to the files.