Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

Tips to Find Cheap Home Insurance

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Finding cheap home insurance
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Home insurance is essential to protect your investment against unforeseen disasters and losses. Of course, it’s not something you want to skimp on. But are you paying too much for your home insurance policy? Navigating the home insurance market can be difficult without proper guidance. There are many affordable ways to lower your rate without sacrificing coverage. Here we’ll help you explore ways to find cheap home insurance with appropriate coverage.

1. Bundle to Save

Bundling your insurance policies can help you get cheap home insurance. If you have a car, boat, ATV, or vacation home, those policies can be bundled. According to Progressive, customers can save an average of 7% on their auto policy when they bundle home and auto insurance. New customers can save over 20% on average. 

2. Don’t Ignore Discounts

Home insurance discount for first time homeowners
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Insurance companies offer discounts for many things that you may not even think of. Are you retired? You may qualify for a discount. Other discounts may be given for home improvements, being mortgage-free, or not having any recent claims. Additional discounts will usually be given for paying for the policy in full versus monthly. Other things to ask your insurance agent about include discounts for living in a gated community, having an HOA, being a non-smoker, or being a new homeowner. These small discounts can add up quickly helping you to get cheap home insurance.

3. Add a Home Security System

Typically, if you have a home security system installed, you can receive home insurance policy discounts. The amount of the discount can vary by insurance company, but some can offer up to 10% off. Other prevention measures that could get you a discount are smoke detectors and fire alarms. If you have leak alarms, make sure to disclose that as well, as it could get you additional savings.

4. Stick with One Company

With most insurance companies, the longer you have a policy with them the more loyalty discounts they will offer. If you haven’t received a rate reduction and you have been a policyholder for over a year, try and call your insurance company and see if they will lower your rate. Sometimes bringing up switching companies can also work in your favor. Ultimately, they don’t want to lose your business.

5. Determine What You Need

Being underinsured can have catastrophic consequences. But being overinsured could cost you thousands of dollars a year. First, make sure that you have enough dwelling coverage so that you can rebuild your home if needed. Make sure enough dwelling coverage is extended to any other structures like detached garages, sheds, or barns in this number.  Next, make sure that enough is allocated for your personal property and you can revise the personal property limit up or down accordingly. You should also take a look at personal liability limits within your policy. Lastly, make sure that your loss of use coverage is appropriate if you need to rent another place to live in your area. You may also want to include flood insurance or earthquake insurance depending on where you live.

6. Shop Around

Home insurance agent helping find cheap home insurance
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Don’t commit too early to a home insurance policy before weighing your options. You can use online comparison websites to find the best rates in your area. Additionally, you also can reach out to independent insurance agents that work with multiple insurance so they can offer you several rates. However, independent insurance agents are harder to come by so this may not be an option in your area.

Finding Cheap Home Insurance

Finding the most affordable home insurance will take some research. But by asking the right questions, utilizing discounts, and bundling other insurance policies, you can find cheap home insurance. There’s no reason to overpay if you can find a reasonable policy with appropriate coverage. Do you think you are paying too much for your home insurance policy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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3 Ways to Record Your Stuff for Personal Property Insurance

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So, you’ve got auto insurance for your car, health insurance for your health, flood insurance for your property, and home insurance for your house.  Everything’s covered!  Yay!  Whoa there.  Not quite.  These days, it seems like you’ve got to insure everything if you want it covered in case of loss.  There’s pet insurance.  Celebrities are insuring their body parts.  And, while you probably don’t need to insure those killer legs, you probably want to check to make sure you have some sort of personal property insurance (or personal belongings insurance).

Despite what you may think, your home insurance doesn’t necessarily cover your personal properties.  They might have some small rider that will pay out a small amount to replace certain essentials like clothes and such, but if you’re ever in need of it, you’ll quickly find that it will fall far short of replacing much of the personal property that you owned.  Some of the things will have caps on them for value.  Got a killer gaming computer?  Not covered to it’s full value.  Many people are choosing to add a personal property policy to their list of insurance policies.

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Part of getting a personal property policy is being able to identify the item, it’s value, and prove both.  Here are three ways you can use to record the property that you own, and do it easily.

  • Spreadsheet — Create a spreadsheet for each room and list the items you are insuring from that room.  Be sure to record any serial numbers and model numbers that you can.  A short description can also be helpful.
  • Take Pictures — Combined with a simple spreadsheet, take pictures of the items that you own in each room.  This can help identify the items, and act as proof of serial and model numbers as well as condition.
  • Contents Video — Take a camcorder (or any device that records decent quality video) and walk through each room of your house, recording each item that you’ll be insuring.  Again, be sure to record serial numbers and model numbers.  You can use the ability to record voice to add in descriptions as you go.

Properly recording and keeping track of your property can make purchasing your personal property insurance a much easier task and make sure that you’re insured for the proper amounts and items so that you don’t find yourself trying to replace expensive items that you though your home insurance would cover.

photo credit: 111 Emergency

Adjustments to Make (Price Checking)

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I’m making this post in part to share with you, but also to make a reminder for myself of the things that I need to look into.  One of the mistakes that I and many other people make is not shopping around enough.  While you may have found the best deal when you bought something, if you are still paying for it, you might not be getting the best deal still.

The most obvious place where this could be true is with insurance.  I’ve been with my insurance company for about 10 years.  When I first purchased the insurance, I did a fair amount of shopping around and comparing and bought the insurance that was the best fit.  Since then, many things have changed.  I got married.  We’ve had two children.  We bought a house.  We both turned 25 several years ago.  All of these things could easily cause some drastic changes that really warrant a new comparison.  But, we never did that.  It’s time we did.  Over the next few weeks, I’ll be doing a bit of shopping around for better insurance rates and coverages.  In particular, our home owners insurance seems much higher than it should be, and consequently, I am now in the market to find cheap home insurance cover.

The other thing that I really need to look into (and should have a while ago) is the mortgage on our house.  We managed to buy our house when rates were good.  We’ve since added a second mortgage that is about 25% of the original mortage’s size.  The rate on that is not as favorable.  (9% ish)  So, I need to look into whether refinancing the whole thing and rolling the two together might help us out with a lower overall rate and maybe even a lower payment.

That’s just the two things that came up recently.  I’m sure there are plenty of other things that need to be checked regularly that I and others do not.  What are the things that you check regularly to save money?