Yesterday at the gym, I overheard a woman comment that she never bothered to get a lock for her gym locker.  After all, she took her purse with her while she worked out and who would want to steal her clothes?  While she may be right, I am still surprised at her attitude.  Our gym has had problems with people rifiling through lockers (admittedly only in the men’s locker room) and even if I’m not worried about someone stealing my clothes, I still don’t want anyone else going through them looking for something to steal.  Besides, it’s cold outside!  What happens if someone steals my clothes?  What will I wear back to the office?

Of course, I always lock my locker, so unless someone goes into the locker room with a bolt cutter, I should be okay.

But that made me think about how perhaps I’m not protecting everything that I own.  I’m good about taking my GPS out of my car when I park it in the lot, as a visible GPS is a big temptation for a potential thief.  But I’m frequently guilty of leaving my iPod sitting out on my desk in the office.  Never overnight or while I’m at lunch, but I could be in a 2 hour meeting and it would just be sitting right there in plain sight.  Right now, my purse is in a cabinet above my desk, but the cabinet is not locked.  It has a lock, I just never lock it. 

Now, I work in a federal government office building, and so we’ve got pretty good security here.  Everyone in the office is either an escorted visitor or an employee or contractor.  So it’s not as though there are people just wandering through, and my cubicle isn’t on a major walkway, so it’s a bit more secluded, but it’s not like I have my own little hidey hole. 

While I’ve never heard of anything being stolen in the office (aside from filched office supplies), I probably should be more careful about what I own.  While that doesn’t mean locking everything away, I should probably at the very least slide my iPod into a drawer when I walk away from my desk.

I must also take a moment to plug renters insurance.  If you own your home, you probably have homeowners insurance.  But for those of you who rent - is your stuff insured?  Sure, you might not think you own very much, but what happens if a pipe bursts and floods your apartment and destroys everything?  Even if everything you own came from Goodwill, it will still take you a significant bit of money to replace it all.  Also, does your insurance cover your big ticket items?  Did you initially get insurance as a poor recent college graduate and now that you’re making money, you’ve bought a nice new tv and stereo system?  You might want to make sure you have sufficient insurance. 

I have car insurance and renters insurance through the same company (State Farm, and while I’ve never had to file a renters insurance claim, their car insurance procedures couldn’t be easier), so I get a discount on both. My renters insurance runs me about $100 a year, and even though I didn’t need to file a claim all last year, I still consider it among the best money I spend every year. 

Do you protect your stuff?  Or do you not think about it?