Home Contents Insurance

 The house you have been dwelling in and the contents in your house all are equally important to make your living complete and enjoyable. While a covered protection from weather (rain, hail, storm, etc) and other external troubles is provided by the house, your performance of daily activities would not have been possible without the contents therein. The furniture in your home, kitchen utensils, electrical appliances, television set, expensive carpets, clothes and jewelry, all these are so necessary that you cannot spend even a day without them. And what if these items are damaged or lost all at once? Can you replace everything at a time so easily? What if the things are broken or damaged? If you plan to buy new contents then where will you dispose your older and damaged properties? There are many such questions which will only add to your worries. The main point is your daily life will get a setback if you lose all your home contents all of a sudden.

 
Home contents can be protected against various damages and also their replacement costs can be saved to a great extent simply by getting home contents insurance. Sometimes coverage for home content is also included in your homeowners’ policy, and you must check whether you already have the coverage. However coverage for the building and the contents therein are separately available. Sometimes it happens that your house is too old (with very high depreciation) while the contents are quite new and with higher value. In such case it is often advisable to buy separate policies for home and contents. Since the value of your old house is lower (after deducting the depreciation) you need to pay lower premium for the homeowners’ insurance. But since the values of contents are higher, the premium you will be paying for home content policy will also be higher. The reverse is also true when the value of your house is higher than the comparative values of the content (this happens when it’s a newly build or renovated house).

 
A standard home contents policy will cover all kinds of household items as well as the personal items of your family. The coverage provided by such a policy includes theft, fire, impacts of weather and animals. Whether your newly bought television set is accidentally damaged, the air-conditioner catches fire, the heating system stops functioning or the soft furnishings like carpets and curtains are torn by the pet, the home contents insurance will provide wide coverage for all these damages. You may have valuable content inside the extended parts of your house such as in garage or on the roof. Will these items be also included in your policy coverage? Yes, they will. Most of the home content policies consider the extended parts as the integral parts of your home and hence contents in those areas are also covered.

 
Many insurance companies also provide coverage, although in limited manner, while you are away from your home while some even provide replacement of locks had there been a burglary in your home. Items which are of very high value (financial or other) have limited coverage under the policies. If you keep jewelry, silver wares, currencies, antique products and arms in your house, make sure that they are covered by the policy you are intending to buy. If your policy provides limited coverage for these items, you can buy additional coverage for them.

 
Home content insurance are available for two kinds of coverage – for actual value or replacement cost. Depending on your content and their present values, you can insure your home content for one of these types. In case of actual value coverage, you will get your claims after deducting the depreciation value. In case of replacement cost you will receive the full value of lost items that will be required to get replacement. Replacement cost is given without deducting depreciation, and comes at higher premiums.

It’s always better to live a secured life where you don’t have to bother about unwarranted loss of your belongings. Therefore, if you have homeowners or other insurance policy while your home content are left out, it’s better to pay a little extra premium and get home content insurance too. You have accumulated all those precious content over a lifetime, and should there be any accidental damage or loss due to theft where you lose your precious content, replacing each and every item at one go will be almost impossible. So why not have a home content policy and live peacefully while your content are being protected against the perils!