I always considered it a fairly standard practice to keep a "defense gun" loaded and readily accessible while the rest of the collection is unloaded and locked up in the safe. Ideally, that gun is on your person, though that isn't always practical. It might help to think about where a bad guy could break in and where you might be; where you would run to and where he might run to.
As for the squib thing... I like to keep the defensive weapons as simple to use as possible, so you don't have to remember to rack the slide twice on this gun and not at all on the other. An autoloader with a manual safety on is much easier to use (esp. one handed) and will reportedly fool most bad guys long enough to get a back-up gun, or take it back from them, or just run away. This also has the advantage of not blowing up your expensive gun.
Plus, I have heard that some guns will actually function properly firing a live round with a bullet already in the barrel. They reportedly did this to a HK USP and it didn't blow up.