Anyone Else Do This Security Sticker Trick?

So my wife the other day sent me a text that looked something like this:

“Hey honey! Just picked up a bunch of security stickers off Amazon… gonna put them all over our new house so we don’t have to spend $200 on a security system!”

To which I replied,

“Lololololol”

And then quickly polled my Twitter friends to see if this was “a thing,” haha…

And as you can see from the # of responses there, apparently it is! Who knew?? (Besides everyone who responded? ;))

Here were some of my favorite replies:

It’s a thing, but not complete till you put the yard signs near windows and doors as well – @GetRichQuickish

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Our old landlord made us keep a sign in our window that said, “This property is monitored by the neighborhood watch.” There was no neighborhood watch.
– @FarmhousFinance

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My public library had security gates that weren’t connected to anything for about 5 years and found that the rate of stolen items was about the same as when they were paying for security… – @JaxsBeachLife

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There are people that put up fake cameras. They were for sale here at feilds and the dollar store last fall. – @sundae675

The consensus was that pretty much having a sticker or lawn sign saying you have security is just as good as having a security system to ward off criminals…

And people were throwing out all kinds of stats like they were “90%” or “99%” effective, and quoting sources such as Freakonomics et al.

I tried to do my own sleuthing online, but the first 99 results came from SECURITY COMPANIES themselves, and not shockingly they did not recommend trying it (although the # of posts that came up surely re-emphasizes just how popular this idea is ;)).

But not everyone was convinced:

If they’re the generic ones you get off Amazon a legit thief can spot those from the van at 8 miles an hour :) – @I_Dream_of_Fire

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The psychology of those stickers work better for cars if they’re in a parking garage or something because of the uncertainty of when the owner comes back. Since your house is always where it is, the burglar has more time to case it out if you have a sched and can always come back – @BirdsOfaFire

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“If you ever get a system don’t put their system stickers up. Intruders google the sys admin on the companies you use prior to breaking in.” – @beskeie

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Not sure if stickers give you a break on home insurance premium though.
– @ActuaryOnFire

So are these stickers helpful?? Is it safe?? Should you do it??

Can’t tell you on that, but what I can tell you is that we’ll be rocking them at our new house because we have yet to ever pick up any security systems before, haha… And it has to be better than nothing, right??  So long as we got the non-fake looking ones? (Or maybe it’s better to ask a friend to spare a real one, unless everyone else is gaming the system too?! :))

We’re fortunate to never have had a break in so far, so never felt the need to pick a system up, however maybe with kids now and blog stalkers out there it’s worth looking into a bit…

And of course, the day we do get burglarized I’ll be sure to come back and update this post right away, haha… (knocks on 10,000 pieces of wood…)

Reminds me of a neighbor though who once told me that “it’s your own fault if someone breaks in to get your stuff” because “you shouldn’t have owned expensive stuff to begin with!”

It took me by surprise and couldn’t immediately tell if I was offended or if I agreed at the time (here’s the link to the full conversation to put it in context) but what I did come away with was that for the first time in my life I wasn’t *attached* to any of my possessions anymore. Which was incredibly liberating! And outside of my laptop and coin collection, there’s honestly nothing much a burglar would even want from our house, haha…

Of course, I’d be annoyed that someone broke into our space and wouldn’t want to deal with it all, but the fact someone would stoop to this level means they’re in much more need of this stuff than I am anyways. And in which case, you can only be so mad. How lucky are we to even have all this stuff to begin with??

But not trying to get all righteous up in here, haha…

Point is – stuff is stuff, and if you can find ways to protect it more through hacks and stickers, great, but it’s not the end of the world if you do get robbed either :) Provided everyone is safe, of course – especially our angelic children!

Lemme know if you do any of this stuff though, or if you have secret hacks of your own you don’t mind divulging with your fellow budgeters… And let’s just pretend no criminals are reading this so they’re not onto our tricks, cool?

I’ll leave you with one more house idea, which comes with a nice fuzzy prize as well:

A dog’s water bowl outside is a pretty good deterrent too. – @DebtDiscipline

Happy savings! :)

Via Finance http://www.rssmix.com/