Thursday, March 10, 2016

What is Contents Insurance?

If you are like most homeowners, you have purchased property or homeowners’ insurance to protect you against a variety of situations. This type of coverage will pay to repair or even to entirely rebuild it from the ground up if necessary. Such coverage is ideal to repair or rebuild your home after fire, flooding and other types of disasters. However, the contents of your home is not covered by property insurance. Separate contents insurance cover will need to be purchased to replace your personal effects inside the home. In a 2011 article printed in The Telegraph, it is estimated that approximately 6.8 million residents in the United Kingdom either do not have contents insurance or do not have enough insurance to replace all of their home’s contents.



What Is Covered?

Contents insurance is vital to ensuring continuity of your life and preventing major financial loss when your home is damaged. It is estimated that the average contents inside a home may be valued around 45,000 pounds. However, this can vary significantly based on the size of the home, the amount of electronics, the cost of furnishings and more. The average person’s wardrobe alone may be valued at over 10,000 pounds by some estimates. Contents insurance will pay to replace your clothing, your furnishings, your housewares, your electronics and more. Even the cash that is in your wallet may be replaced if it was damaged.

How Much Do You Need?

As you can see, you can experience considerable financial loss if your home is damaged and you do not have contents insurance. Likewise, you may also experience loss if you do not have enough coverage to fully replace all of your home’s contents. With this in mind, it is wise to go through each room of your home and estimate how much it would cost to replace all of your items. Consider everything from your sofa and chairs to your shoes, socks, jewelry and books.

Protecting Yourself From Loss

Keep in mind that your contents cover will only reimburse you for the cost of items that were damaged or lost. In order avoid issues when filing a claim, consider taking photos of every room in your home. Open up drawers, cabinets and closets, and take photos of those contents. Don’t forget to photograph the items in your attic, garage, basement and other related storage areas. Then, keep your photos in a safe place, such as with a family member, in a cloud-based storage solution or in a fireproof safe. Keep in mind that if your home is damaged by a fire, photographs stored in your home may also be damaged.

Nobody wants to think about the possibility of being displaced after damage is done to their home, but there is peace of mind in knowing that property insurance may pay to repair the damage to the physical structure and contents insurance may pay to replace the contents inside your home. If you do not have contents cover or ample cover for your needs, consider shopping for this important insurance today.

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