There are no second chances when it comes to home insurance. If you don’t have enough coverage when disaster strikes, you could end up losing everything or almost everything. For this reason, it’s crucial that you have enough insurance to cover all of your personal possessions. Following are a few things you should consider when deciding how much coverage you need for your personal belongings.
Standard Coverage
Most insurance policies offer standard coverage for your personal belongings that hovers around 50 to 70 percent of the amount of coverage you have for the structure of your home. this amount may be enough for you, but you won’t know until you take a complete inventory of your belongings.
Replacement Cost
You can use two vastly different numbers to decide how much coverage you need: the replacement cost and the cash value cost. The replacement value cost is the amount that you will have to pay if you were to go out and buy the item new today. The cash value cost is the value of the item today minus any depreciation. If you want to replace all your stuff, you will have to use the former.
Expensive Items
If you own expensive items, such as jewelry or art, you should cover these via a floater or endorsement on your policy rather than include them in your total belonging valuation. Keep in mind that you should insure expensive items for slightly more than they are worth to account for appreciation. For example, if you have a painting that’s worth $10,000, you might want to insure it for $12,000.
If you don’t know how much your stuff is worth, be sure to hire an appraiser. For more information about how much coverage you should have for your personal belongings, talk to Rodgers-Olver-Polley Inc. today.