How much of your life is stored on electronic gadgets? Think about this for a moment or two. Stop and think about all those recent images on your camera, all those telephone numbers on your mobile phone and all those important email messages on your laptop.

You may also use a PDA (personal digital assistant) in which case you’re likely to have centralized all of your important personal and business contacts. Consider the impace on your life of suddenly losing one of these vital devices?

There is a high likelihood that, sooner or later, you will lose your mobile phone or it will become badly damaged or even stolen. Last year over 200,000 mobile telephones were put through a wash cycle in washing machines, over 600,000 were dropped into toilets and around 55,000 were left in the back seat of taxis. When was the last time you backed up your sim card data. At the very least you should consider some cheap mobile phone insurance. While this can’t protect your valuable data it is an affordable way to get a replacement.

Cameras, like mobile phones, are small, lightweight and portable making them easy to carry but also easy to lose. Cameras are particularly susceptible to damage. They can be bumped around inside luggage, dropped and have heavy item placed on top of them. Like mobile phones there is no way that camera insurance can compensate for the loss of images stored on the camera, but it is an affordable way to get yourself a replacement if your camera is damaged or lost.

For me my laptop computer is absoluted vital to both my work and my personal life. I rarely need to take my laptop away from home but around 17% of laptop ownere routinely take their laptops along when travelling which makes them more vulnerable to theft and damage. So how much of your laptop data is safely backed up to some form of secure media? Losing my laptop would be a disaster for me as this is where I store all of my contact details, emails and images.

As for other gadgets, some laptop insurance can’t ensure that your laptop will not be stolen or damaged but it can make it less financially painful to get a replacement.

I really recommend that you ensure that you routinely back up the data from all of your electronic gadgets. Make certain you get yourself some gadget insurance for your important devices as at least this will enable you to get a replacement quickly and with minimal cost to you.