Cleaning Up For My Parents by 2024

kylos

Thanks Skibunny, I already considered this. Apparently you can get up to 25% off your pension tax free? That could serve in an absolute, dire emergency.


As for the answer to my question, thanks! It would be great to see if we can shop around and get them a cheaper deal. I believe they only had the building insurance which was over 500 pounds a year. I'll get on one of these online comparison sites to see what I can find. Cheers! I'll probably be back here after we done our SOA in the debt section.


Edit: I checked just one of these comparison sites and found something for £82 a year. Whoa, that's quite a drop lol, and I got letters of the current provider literally begging them to shop around. It's maddening. Will keep shopping around though, maybe we can find something even lower. :rotfl:

elsien

£82 a year probably isn't going to be worth the paper it is written on. Cheap and value are not the same thing. Are you sure you're inputting the proper rebuilding value etc?

Get the current policy out, see what it covers, then decide what out of that is the essential bits and find equivalent but cheaper cover.

kylos

When using several comparison sites last night they were predicting the rebuild value at 195,000, but this could be wrong as I may not have used all the correct details (I assumed they only had buildings insurance, which is false).

Luckily I found something today with all these details, but it's dated from between March 2017 to February 2018; not sure if that will matter.

We know that buildings and contents policy will expire on February 28th. I determined from Martin's tips in the Home Insurance section that we'd likely get the best deals if we agree to something by this Friday.

They receive discounts for combined buildings/contents discount. It states their standard policy excess is £100 for each claim, $1000 for subsidence. Their annual premium that year was 543 (last year it was 579). Here's where we get the gritty details.

Buildings cover is for sum insured amount: 113,519*
*adjusted in line with a recognised index

Extended accidental damage cover is applied (its optional), and it includes the Standard policy and subsidence excess.

For the contents it covers up to 50,000. Again, extended accidental damage to contents apply. It has a standard policy excess. These features are covered: New For Old, Freezer Food, High Risk Items, Money/Credit Cards, Home Emergency cover, Legal Expenses cover. High risk item limit is 11,500.

There's a following optional cover of Personal possessions, 5000 in total with a single item up to 2500. Also Pedal Cycles while in or away from home. 50 excess for those. There is another sheet detailed each of these further, but I'm guessing that's enough. I'm guessing much of this stuff is optional, while others not so much.


Edit: New Information. Turns out my Mother is also paying for British Gas Homecare 400 Insurance, which covers a range of things as well. Details can be found on their site.

Not sure if that would affect anything to do with the new Home Insurance. If we keep the Homecare 400, several things may not be required. Bit of a headscratcher which may take some time to go through. :think:

elsien

Homecare is different. It normally covers things like servicing and boiler breakdown (for example), whereas home insurance for is more for damage caused by accidents. Worth checking the overlap between that and the home emergency cover though.
Do they have any high risk items worth 11.5K?
It's worth playing around with the figures and seeing how much having the extra cover adds to the premium before deciding if it's worth it or not.

kylos

Ok cool, what I like about my Mother is she did actually fight British Gas over the fact they were about to up the price and negotiated a better deal. We sometimes get to watch the show with Martin Lewis so she gets that sometimes it's about ringing them and having a good nag at the supplier. My Father is the opposite, he'd only ring if he absolutely has too (or even then, he doesn't). Perhaps we can find a better deal on this boiler cover, but it's not a priority.


In an update, I started a new thread in the debt section as I believe I finally have all the numbers together to do an SOA calculation. The ball is rolling nicely, but there's still some question marks. The main thing that confuses me when I go on these comparison sites is how much I put in for market value (Zoopla said the property ranged between 152-195k). I've looked around on the original mortgage statements but can't find an outright value. When I look in other places online.. it states the properly was bought for about 35k in 2000, which sounds extremely low. Starting to see why my Father got so confused and just let things slip.


Edit: Nah, there's nothing here worth anywhere near that much. Couple of desktop computers and a laptop. A new-ish mobile which cost 440. LCD TV (but it's not massive and only cost couple hundred). There's a PS4 as well and a bunch of video games. Outside of that I don't think anything else is worth more; aside from standard kitchen appliances etc.

edinburgher

elsien wrote: »

£82 a year probably isn't going to be worth the paper it is written on. Cheap and value are not the same thing. Are you sure you're inputting the proper rebuilding value etc?

Get the current policy out, see what it covers, then decide what out of that is the essential bits and find equivalent but cheaper cover.

I'm not sure I agree. We're over-insured with a decent insurer (similar rebuild value and quite high insurance for contents to allow for something catastrophic that wrecked the kitchen and all contents or similar). Paying about £100.

kylos

Interesting, I did a house price estimate with Zoopla, but it's listing the house as terraced. It's one of the middle houses of a semi-detached block of four, so does that mean it's terraced or semi-detached? Just want to confirm this for when I use the comparison sites again, because I assumed it would be semi-detached.

enthusiasticsaver

I am not sure from your description. If it is a middle house and attached to houses both sides then it is terraced.

kylos

Thanks. I was always taught in school that houses in blocks of four were called semi-detached, while houses all joined together down one street were considered terraced. My teacher was wrong! Lol. I'll make sure to pick the right one next time.

enthusiasticsaver

No semi detached is joined on one side only so blocks of two. Detached stands alone and terraced are blocks of four or more with the ones on the end called end terrace.