Effective Ways to Protect Your Home

My goal is to empower you to make safer decisions for yourself and your family, because our safety is our own responsibility. Today, I want to share some of my favorite ways that you can upgrade your home's security. These tips won't break the bank, and they're good for just about every living situation. All of that and more coming up on The Secure Family Podcast.

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Home security kind of conjures up some odd feelings for some people. While many parents are very active in keeping their kids safe online, they kind of rely on this thought of, well we live in a nice neighborhood, nothing bad will ever happen to us. Then others are intimidated by the thought of doing anything that might make their house more secure because they just don't know where to begin.

And some people think it's dumb to even consider taking responsibility for the safety of their loved ones at home. And yes, I actually do have friends that think that way. While you may feel safe in your house, you never want to take your home security for granted. So today i'm going to share some simple effective ways to upgrade your home security. The first thing that we need to do to better protect our home is take ownership of it. I talked about this last week.

You have to take responsibility for your personal safety even at home. The security of your home is up to you. Yes, the police will come if you call them, but they would rather you take a few minutes to tighten up your property so that they can chase down other criminals. A lot of home break ins are preventable with just a little bit of effort on your part.

So let's start putting some effort into taking ownership of doing something very simple, and that is locking your doors. While this may seem very basic and not really an upgrade, let me ask you this. Does everyone e in your home know to keep the doors locked while you're inside? Does your garage door get left up sometimes? Do your kids go in and out without locking the door? If your answer to any of these questions wasn't absolute Then we need to work on this, and it's not a big deal.

According to FBI statistics, the most common way a thief enters your home is through the front door. That makes sense, because, you know, that's what doors are for, right? This is why you need to create a door locking culture in your home. Make sure that everyone knows that the standard is that your doors should always be locked, except when people are outside and they need to come in shortly. This might take a few weeks to work out, but that's okay.

My son is good about locking the door behind him. So much so that he's even, you know, locked me out of the house before. And I never get mad at him for doing it. Because overall, he's making a really good decision. If you think I'm odd for really harping on this, get a load of this story out of Miami from back in September. A Florida man was arrested for burglary and other charges, because in just three days, he committed between 10 and 12 home robberies.

In this particular case, in the majority of these events, people were actually inside the home when this burglar broke in. Well, that sounds really scary, right? The burglar would turn door handles, checking to see if the doors were unlocked. Once inside, he would allegedly take the easiest thing to swipe, which is pretty much always a purse. So yes, burglars turn the door handle first. An open door makes things so much easier for them. Don't make things easier for the bad guys. Lock your doors.

While we're on the topic of doors, let's talk about one of my favorite upgrades that you can make to your front door. Adding a secondary lock to your door is a great way to prevent somebody from kicking down your front door. This device is something other than the deadbolt lock or the little knob lock that you have already. My favorite, and in my opinion, the best secondary lock on the market is the FlipLok.

A FlipLok is a new generation of secondary locks that can withstand 1300 pounds of force and will give plenty of strength to your doors. This will buy you time to respond to protect your family or outright deter the intruder in the first place. I have a FlipLok on my home and I've done a full review of it. I will leave a link for you in the show notes if you want to get one for yourself.

What makes my approach to home security so different is that I believe that home security starts at the street. A lot of people think it starts at the front door and honestly, that's too close for me. So it starts at the street.

You need to communicate to a potential thief that your home is going to be a hard target and one way to do that is to add strategic lighting to your property. The darker your property is, the more enticing it is for a bad guy. For a long time, I have suggested keeping the porch light on or installing dawn to dusk light bulbs to illuminate your home's front door. If you want to upgrade your security lighting, I suggest that you add motion acted floodlights to the mix.

These can brighten up the areas in the front and the sides of your home where people really ought not be. I do suggest that you have an electrician install these. To level up your security lighting even more, you might want to have a home security camera and floodlight combo. And this acts as a floodlight and a surveillance camera all in one. Generally, these are powered by batteries, so you can skip the electrician if you like. Popular companies like Blink and Ring will make units like this.

Um, and you can get them on Amazon pretty easily. And I'm going to talk more about cameras in a moment.

Another important thing to know to protect your home is to really know what's going on around your house. What's happening around your property. If you're like me, you are avoiding being on the neighborhood chat or the Facebook group, that sort of thing. I never really wanted to be involved in anything like that until I realized that people were sharing some really useful information.

Many times, neighbors were expressing their concerns over real issues about strange people being in the neighborhood, or that their property had been vandalized, or a car had been parked in front of a house for a day or two that was unusual. To get first hand information about what's happening close to your property is very valuable. Sometimes you even get pictures and videos of an odd occurrence that happens on your street.

This will help you determine the extra precautions that you need to take to protect your home and your family. You don't have to participate in any of the online posts, but it's good to have that information where you can get to it.

In a study of U. S. households, there are more than an estimated 20 million video doorbell cameras. Personally, I think this is a good thing. The more chances that people have to see trouble coming, the better off they're going to be. But I don't want you to solely rely on a doorbell camera to cover the entirety of your home. If you have a doorbell camera, then you're invested in that security system, and chances are there are more cameras that can be added easily.

Remember that floodlight thing we were just talking about? Consider placing cameras that cover the external doors of your home. Then branch out to areas like the garage, and then maybe out to the front yard if you want to. But it's my personal recommendation that you don't put cameras inside your home. Cameras are for the outside. You don't want to make your home feel like a prison. You don't want your family to feel odd watching TV in the living room.

So that's why I really encourage cameras for the outside, not for the inside.

The last thing I want to share today is to be open about securing your home with everyone. It's a good idea to make home security a family responsibility. Your entire family uses your home, and everybody should share some sort of responsibility on how it's protected. This can mean that even a five year old can learn how to lock the door behind them or remind her parents to arm the alarm when they're going out. Everyone has a role to play. Make protecting your home the new normal for your family.

When talked about in a positive way, it's not abnormal for a child. Just remember to speak to them at a level that they're mature enough to understand. You don't want to scare them. You really want to empower them and make them feel good about this. And this will help them build lifelong habits that will protect them well into the future. And even when they have a home of their own.

If you want to know even more ways to protect your home, I have several resources that can help you. I recommend using a layered home defense strategy to protect your home. And this is Discipline, Deter, Fortify, and Defend. And I explain all of this in my Amazon bestselling book, Home

Well, that's everything that I have for The Secure Family Podcast for today. Thank you, friend for listening. Keep an eye out for my new safety ebook coming soon. I'm very excited about it and I will have more details in the future. Take back your privacy and personal data with help from DeleteMe. Get 20% off our privacy plan when using the Code DAD at checkout. DeleteMe is the official data removal service of The Secure Dad.

If you'd like to know more about the Secure Dad, visit TheSecureDad.com. There you'll find free downloads. Books to buy, podcast episodes, and a whole lot more. The best way to stay informed is with The Secure Dad email newsletter. There's a link for you to sign up in today's show notes. I'm Andy Murphy reminding you not to take your home security for granted. Stay aware, stay vigilant, and stay one step ahead of the bad guys.