Study after study has shown that security cameras — even really basic ones — help keep your home safe from burglary.
Home burglaries used to be a huge problem. They were one of the primary reasons people feared for their personal safety in the United States. Today, they are far less common than they used to be. It is now very rare to hear about someone suffering a home burglary, and affordable tech is a major reason why.
How Cheap Cameras Are Stopping Crime
The quality of today’s budget cameras is incredible. The video captured by a $25 home security camera is so sharp, day or night, that it has completely changed the game.
Burglars get it now. They realize that if their image gets captured on camera, the police won’t just tie them to one house. Usually, if a crook gets caught for one burglary, it isn’t the first one they’ve ever done. Law enforcement can take that clear footage, string the cases together, and say, “Oh, he or she burgled that house, that house, and that house.”
The criminals simply don’t want their faces on camera, making even the cheapest setup a massive deterrent.
How To Secure Your Home on a Budget
You do not need to spend thousands of dollars to protect your home:
Start with the basics: It can be as simple as a video doorbell. However, for maximum coverage, placing a camera on each corner of your house is ideal.
Keep costs low: Even with inexpensive cameras, you create such a strong deterrent that you are unlikely to ever experience a break-in.
Increase capture odds: If the unthinkable happens and someone does try to break in, your ability to help police capture the crook goes way up.
Consider Skipping the Monthly Subscription Fees
Many people think buying home cameras means getting locked into a pricey monthly monitoring contract. You don’t have to subscribe to a monthly service to keep your home safe.
Many of the cheapest cameras use a local SD card. You just pop a memory card directly into the camera. It holds enough video that if something happens, you simply pull the card out, plug it into a computer, and you have the exact footage you need without ever paying a dime in subscription fees.
But there is one drawback to consider: If the memory card is inside an outdoor camera and a thief steals or destroys the camera, you could lose the footage along with it.
For added protection without necessarily paying a monthly fee, consider a system that can save recordings to a separate indoor hub, base station or other local storage device. Mounting cameras securely and out of easy reach can also make them harder to tamper with.
But even if you opt for the bare-bones camera with a local SD card, its presence alone is likely to deter many would-be thieves.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, protecting your home doesn’t require a high-priced security system or a long-term contract. By spending around $100 on a few budget-friendly cameras, you get peace of mind, a proven crime deterrent, and full control over your property — all without adding another recurring charge to your monthly budget.
The post The Cheap Home Security Device That Keeps Burglars Away appeared first on Clark Howard.