How much do you insure your contents for?

pinkwitch_2

We had a mortage appointment and they asked us to take our buildings and contents insurance policy with us, to see if they could offer a cheaper deal.
And she told us the contents amount was too low and now looking at it i totally agree with her.
We have household goods £13,600
high risk items £ 6,800

What amount would you insure?

Thanks

clear_blu

Normally you should insure for the full replacement cost of all items in your home. The best way to do this is sit one evening and total up what it would cost you to buy everything on a room by room basis, an ARGOS catalogue is great for this. Dont forget clothing. There is no 'set' amount everyone varies but I promise you will get a shock.

courtjester

I used to do insurance assessments on household values - most people that have never reviewed this properly will be under-insured, simply because you don't appreciate the quantiy and value of what you possess.

The only really safe way to go about this is to create an INVENTORY of everything in each room of the house, methodically, and put a (new-for-old replacement) value on it with the exception of clothing which you value at second-hand pricing.

If you ask anyone to guess the value of all contents in the lounge or kitchen say, I guarantee they will under-value it. The value tends to be in the smaller less significant items, not the biggies like TV's, washing machines and carpets.

Look at your bookcase for example - how many books in there? At a cost of say £7 for a paperback and £15 for hardback? 200 paperbacks would value at £1,400! What about CD's - 300 of those at say £10 each = £3,000! Now look at your garden shed and the garage for tools, bikes, etc. What about the pots and pans in the kitchen, crockery, cutlery, kettle, toaster, baking tins, cleaning materials, wall clock, window blind, glasses, scales, etc.

We have a fairly large 4-bed family house, no valuables, jewellery, paintings or antiques, ordinary TV, camera, nothing particularly special. Minimum contents value to replace all the knicks and knacks is probably in the order of £30,000-£35,000, but we have a fixed cover policy with a minimum sum insured of £50,000 (because it costs no more than a smaller amount) which also saves us bothering with updating the inventory to frequently.

Do the inventory and really surprise yourself.

ravenfire_2

I work for a Loss Adjusters and agree with the last post. So many people do under insure and then when you claim that has to be taken into account and you could end up with a lot less than you thought.

I actually have an unlimited policy with accidental damage - which again not everyone realises that it doesnt come part and parcel, you often to have to request that as well.

regularsaver1

They say an on average £44k on a 3 bedroomed house

you have to be careful with the law of averages:

say you had £10k contents cover, but the assessor felt that you should have had £20'000, so you are 50% under-insured, and therefore they may only pay out 50% of your claim - ie £5000. making you in fact a loss of cover of £15000

unlimited cover avoids this problem