Tips for Making Sure Your Home Is Fully Covered With Home Insurance
Storms and fires can destroy homes, but fortunately most people have homeowner's insurance to protect themselves, their things, and their homes in the event something like this occurs. Unfortunately, there are many people who are underinsured, though. If you want to make sure you are fully protected with insurance, you should look into the following factors about your policy.
Is Your Policy Replacement Coverage or Actual Cost Value?
The first thing to find out is whether your policy offers replacement coverage or actual cost value coverage. If your current coverage offers actual cash value, you may want to change it to replacement coverage. With replacement coverage, your insurance company will reimburse you for the cost of replacing everything that was damaged.
With actual cash value, you will only be reimbursed for the actual value of your things. This method takes into consideration the depreciation of the things you own, which means you will probably not receive enough compensation to replace all the things you owned and lost.
Does Your Policy Cover Valuable Items You Own?
Most home insurance policies offer coverage for belongings; however, there are limitations with this part of home insurance coverage. For example, if you own an expensive collection of jewelry that is worth $50,000, your insurance company probably will not compensate you for the full value if you lose all of your jewelry to a fire or theft. Instead, you may only receive a small amount of money for the jewelry. This same principle is true for any type of asset you own that is worth a lot of money.
To make sure you are fully covered, talk to your insurance company about adding riders for the valuable assets you own. If you do this, they will be fully covered for their actual values.
Are Your Coverage Amounts Sufficient?
Finally, you should make sure that the amounts of coverage you have for your home and your belongings are sufficient for your situation. For example, if you only have $30,000 coverage for your personal belongings, this might not be enough. If you went through your entire home and added up the costs you would spend to replace everything, you may discover that you would need $75,000. If this is the case, bump up your coverage to a higher amount to protect yourself. The same is true for your actual home. If your home would cost $300,000 to replace, having a policy with $250,000 coverage would not be enough.
These are three good things to look into with your homeowner's insurance, and they will help you determine if you have enough coverage. If you have questions or would like a quote for homeowner's insurance, check out insurance companies' sites like http://www.normanheilinsurance.com.
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