I want to dive into a hot topic today: Self vs Paid Home Security Monitoring.
We’ve gotten to a fantastic point from a home security standpoint. There’s ton’s of choices for providers – you can set them up yourself, and it is extremely affordable.
Beyond the choice of equipment, we’re increasingly seeing options for self monitoring.
Usually having a monthly fee, Is self monitoring really worth it or are you better off just having a call center monitoring your house for you?
Let’s dive in and learn about both self and paid home security monitoring.
Self Monitoring
Self monitoring is often a cheaper alternative upfront. Buy an alarm system for a couple hundred bucks, have notifications sent to your phone, and call the police if something is wrong.
Paid Monitoring
Paid Monitoring might be more costly up front. You’ll need an alarm system, just like with paid monitoring – and your alerts may or may not be sent to your phone, but a monitoring center will call the police on your behalf.
Paid or Self Monitored
While it may seem enticing to ditch the monthly payments and just rely on app notifications. There’s really more risk and less reward from this method.
Lets say, you’re at the movies watching a 3 hour, loud, action movie. Your phone vibrates in your pocket while the theater subwoofer goes off. Your entire body vibrates. Perhaps you don’t notice your phone going off.
Bam – someone has broken in, and there’s nobody watching your back. When the movie finishes, you see the notifications, but it’s too late.
Dead battery, vacation, not having your phone on you, and about a million other everyday circumstances could lead to you being caught unawares.
You may have saved $120-$240 over the course of a year by self monitoring – but at what cost?
If you own your home, you may also be missing out on insurance discounts as well. Some may save you just about as much as your monitoring costs each month.
We’re all interested in both being secure and saving money. That’s the crux of Self Vs Paid Home Security Monitoring. Let’s look a little deeper at both approaches.
Why Self Monitor?
The ideal situation for self monitoring is someone who is normally home, lives in an apartment, and is rarely without their phone.
A system to monitor only one door, or a door and a few windows is significantly cheaper, and the cost per month will likely outweigh any gain just having insurance, and monitoring yourself might bring.
Why Professionally Monitor?
Hiring Simplisafe, Ring, or Alarm.com, to professionally monitor your house seems like a great deal these days. With a Ring System, for $10 a month, you can self monitor and have the fallback of Professional monitoring for peace of mind at an incredible value.
Being able to reduce the risk of the heartache of loss seems worth it to me. Simplisafe charges $25 to have access to their app, but only $15 for professional monitoring – they’ll call you if anything goes wrong for $15, which is probably enough.
These services also operate on a no-contract basis, so for the perpetual homebody that rarely leaves the house – they can activate monitoring for a short time to account for vacations or other absences from the house.
Another great reason is – incapacitated. If you’re ever unable to call the police during a burglary while you’re at home and an alarm is triggered, the police will still be dispatched. If you’re self monitoring, you may never get the chance to call the police.
Why have an alarm at all?
Most home burglaries occur during the day, while the victims are at work or away. Think the Home Alone bad guys. They prey on houses where people are on vacation or otherwise indisposed. They’re very unlikely to break in while you’re home – but it does happen, often late at night when they expect you to be asleep.
It’s so simple, cheap, and effective to have an alarm, a camera, and methods of home defense. Find a way to work it into your budget.