Insurance of contents valuables and vehicles: valuation & under insurance

BrenOzUK

Insure a car and the default maximum payout is the current second hand sale value. Domestic and personal items default (contents insurance) is the new price less a proportion for under insurance. Values using new for old includes say £180 for one's old Brasher boots that one now only use for gardening or a couple of thousand for an old almost useless laptop. I have loads of old bits and pieces that probably need sorting and dumping but in the meantime I don't want to be underinsured - do I need to throw out 'rags' kept for painting decorating etc. or expect to replace with new sheets, curtains etc? What of little or no value items can I ignore when valuing my contents for insurance? What will a claims adjudicator ignore or include?

DullGreyGuy

Loss Adjustors won't ignore anything but a rag will be valued as a cleaning cloth (say 25-50p) rather than a LV T-shirt it once was before it got damaged and you cut it up into rags. 

Your boots are a bad example because clothing is one of the few items that is rarely covered on a new for old basis. 

An old almost useless laptop as a brand new as close to useless laptop you can buy not a brand new top of the range laptop. Its like for like in terms of an old i3 processor, 4gb of ram, 1gb physical HD not where it was in the scale of performance back in its day.

Most technology is the same, its new value goes down each year because the latest processors are released at last years prices and older tech shuffles down the price scale. 

Your "issue" is your falling apart sofa that the company still makes and now sells for £5,000


Alternatively buy a bedroom rated policy like M&S Premier which gives you unlimited contents and £50k of jewerly, art and watches.