Know what you own & know if it’s covered
If you had a major fire that destroyed most of your home and garage, would you know what was in it? Would you be able to sit down and easily put together a list of contents? In the digital age that we live in, may I suggest taking just a few minutes with your cell phone, or any camera you have, and go through each room of your home, closets, garage, shed and other areas. Get the pictures stored on the cloud like you do photos of your vacation, or have your kids do it for you! That way you have a reference in case the worst happens. Hopefully you will never need it. The bottom line is that making that list can be very difficult after a crisis. We ALL have more things than we think we do! Go make your inventory, or just take some pictures.
What are the few items that if you lost them in a fire, or they were stolen, would be devastating to you, like family heirlooms or antiques? Do you have work-related equipment or inventory stored at the house? Have you had a conversation with your insurance agent about them?
We had a client who had an in-home business making quilts. She had two very large pieces of equipment in the garage, one worth $5,800 and the other $15,300. She had a fire that started outside of the garage and burned all of the contents in the garage and created damage even into the kitchen. Smoke also damaged other areas throughout the house. Our agency did not know about the home business or the equipment! Had we known, we would have told her that there would only be $1,000 in business property on their home policy and no other coverage. Unfortunately, the equipment was not fully covered under their policy. It would have been quite easy to insure this equipment had we known and the cost would have been reasonable, and worth it in the end.
Do You Own Items That You Hope Are Covered but You’re Not Sure?
Small in-home businesses are very popular, many people have daycare, preschools, hair-nail-lash salons in their home. Many insurance carriers won’t allow it, or have size restrictions. Others flat out exclude coverage completely. So if you have a daycare, your policy will likely exclude anything that relates to that daycare, though you may think otherwise, putting all that you have at risk.
As agents, we can only insure those items we know about, so please call us and let’s review your questions and concerns. You can always give us a “what if”, or “I have a friend” scenario, I promise we will try to help and give you straight answers on what is covered and what is not.