I want to start being sensible. I haven't ever had contents insurance, and I know how risky that is.
I want to insure contents for $40000-$50,000.
I have had a break and enter in 2016, though I didn't have insurance so there were no claims, and a couple of companies won't even do a quote for that reason.
Any suggestions please? Thank you.
Consider replacing everything at RRP and it adds up very fast.
The resale value of my shelf of CDs is maybe $200, but to buy replacements from JB would be $4000.
My wardrobe has clothes worth maybe $2000, but to buy them all again, including stuff I no longer wear, would be $10k.
If you need to buy a bed from Harvey Norman today to have somewhere to sleep you have to take the prices they offer.
I would like an insurer who would give me a cheque to spend how I wanted, but most (all?) have agreements to give you store credit at Myer or Harvey Norman or Angus & Coote. I have had cash paid for some items where I made a fuss that I wouldn’t be able to get an adequate replacement at their suggested retailers, but that was after a minor break in, not replacing a whole house from flood or fire or something.
We have fights in my house about how much contents to insure. I say there is no need to insure replacement value of clothes you won’t wear again, or to re-buy cds we long ago ripped to disk. But my partner’s family had a house fire that trashed their stuff, and they found they needed much more contents insurance than they had estimated, so she is very cautious.
I think part of it was watching how stressed her parents were by the whole thing, so she figure she can pay a bit more for extra insurance to avoid that issue.
I googled and 61K is average. I don't have as much stuff as lots of people, but I know if I had to replace everything from scratch, from socks to crockery to TV, it would all add up. Most people probably have $5 to $10K worth of clothes and accessories alone. Think of your nice suits and good sneakers.
I believe that there are some Insurance Companies have an content insurance calculator where you enter the contents for each room and it comes out with a calculation.
I can remember that AAMI has one from experience.
Edit: I placed a link but it didn't work.
Cheers
If you go through coles home insurance you earn double flybuys points on your shopping at Coles.
Otherwise, Woolworths quite often have promos where you get a $100 giftcard for signing up with their home insurance. If you're not in a rush it could be worth waiting for that (well, not worth it if you get robbed in the meantime!)
I compared quotes from a lot of insurers and found Dodo Insurance to be the cheapest. $50,000 worth of contents insured for $170/year.
Go though your house and take photos of every room and every cupboard, including serial numbers. If you make a claim you'll have pretty solid evidence of what you own.
Unless the photos are also ruined…
Keep copies on the cloud or in a separate physical location.
Holy moly, you have $50k worth of contents?