Contents Home Insurance 

Almost everyone has inadequate home contents cover

Although I think we all know the need for proper insurance covering the fabric of our homes, contents home insurance has always been considerably neglected due to a natural tendency for us all to undervalue our moveable property. Most people value items at purchase value at the most and largely items are devalued over time or simply excluded from cover because we think if the worst happens that we could probably replace that item ourselves and wait if we have to, in order to do so.

What is often forgotten is that most contents home insurance claims are for practically everything you own, as house fires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters tend to destroy all our possessions in one go. When absolutely everything you own is in need of replacement, the idea of paying for it all by yourself becomes a much more difficult and usually impossible task without good contents home insurance. Simple necessities such as cooking equipment and food, clothing and bedding, basic furniture and communications equipment can in themselves amount to years worth of a normal salary. 

Contents Home Insurance: Suggestion

Factor in such items as work-related tools or reference materials, items for looking after babies and young children, personal documentation and simply cash, and you have a bill for replacement that without the help of a contents home insurance company no individual can realistically pay. Just consider some of the stories from Florida and you will see that adequate contents home insurance is probably more important than home insurance itself. Most of us, although we wouldn’t want to, could survive for quite some time in a tent if we had to, but if you cannot replace the items you need to live and work from day to day relatively quickly, few of us would survive for long without outside help such as that provided by contents home insurance.

The average household also has been shown to consider goods they own as a sort of contents home insurance policy in themselves, with the idea that in the worst situation luxuries can be sold on to generate some cash at least, but if all these items are ruined or destroyed, stolen or damaged beyond repair then this option is no longer going to help, and that is what contents home insurance is for. 

We all need to look very carefully at what is covered and what is not covered – usually with a contents home insurance policy only a few items are covered as standard and most of the rest are dependent on us adding them to the policy, something that even those who have comprehensively covered themselves when a policy is first purchased do not tend to update contents home insurance policies anything like as often as is required.