How to Protect Yourself from Burglars Without Spending a Mint on an Alarm System
Keeping yourself safe inside the home doesn’t need to cost you every cent you are trying to protect. An extravagant and expensive home alarm system is fine and dandy, but unless you’ve got something really worth protecting, the cash outlay is likely not worth the amount of protection. You can find much less expensive ways to keep burglars and home invaders at bay.
Lock Your Doors
Unless you have something that burglars specifically know lie behind your door and are willing to put in the time to retrieve, your best defense against a break-in is the fact that burglars want to get in and out as quickly as possible. Burglars are not the type of criminal to spend much time trying to get inside through your door. Give them a minute and at most two to work their way inside your home through and door before they give up and move onto the next entryway. What this means is that you likely will get a better monetary return by investing in the most secure type of door locks than on a home alarm system. If you have any money at all with which to splurge on home security, do so on door locks.
Lock Your Windows, Too
The next big expenditure should be on locks for the windows. If the burglar can’t get the door open, his next most likely move is to the window. Broken glass means a loud sound, possible injury, signaling his presence and the potential for tripping an alarm. For these reasons, a burglar would rather try to defeat the locking system on the window than bust the glass. Invest in the highest quality window locks you can. Then invest in high quality double-paned glass, preferably with a metal protector between the panes.
Lighting
Like a cockroach, a burglar’s worst friend is light. The last thing that a burglar wants is for his actions to be seen by anybody. Unless he is a local and knows the personalities of the neighbors, he will likely assume that at least somebody on the block is nosy enough to recognize he is not suppose to be doing what he’s doing. The best protection for a burglar is therefore darkness. Your job is to do everything you can to not make it that easy. Outdoor lighting can be flipped on when you go to bed and forgotten about. Or it can be more sophisticated so that it only lights up when it detects movement. The key is in making sure that illumination is thrown onto the parts of the house where illegal activity can result in your stuff being removed easily. Worry less about the decorative aspects of outdoor lighting and more about making sure that the glow bathes every single possible entryway into your house. You want to be lit so that anyone passing by on the road or standing on the property of any neighboring home can immediately see that something is taking place which ain’t right.
