To not have home insurance.

[PiperIsOrange]

I am renting, so any damage on the house is covered by HA.

I just don't see the point.

My parents have just moved and asked what my insurance is like, I said I didn't have it and they read me the riot act.

I havent had insurance for a few years, but on the back of this, I now have.!

SaucyJack - OK, I accept your point that you wouldn't replace everything - but could you afford to replace the essentials all at once?

In the kitchen - washing machine, fridge/freezer, oven, pots, pans, crockery, cutlery, toaster.

Lounge - a basic suite, a table, a TV, some toys for the children.

Bedrooms - a bed each, bedding, clothes, a wardrobe/chest of drawers.

Technology - laptop/tablet/PC, games console, Sky box/freeview box/dvd player.

Carpets and curtains throughout the house.

Dh and I tallied it up in our heads last night and reckoned, that, just to outfit a basic household with the essentials, you could be looking at several thousand pounds - maybe £10,000 or more.

And don't forget, in the event of a catastrophe like a fire or flood, you would probably have to move out for some months - so you would need a hotel initially and then rental accomodation - could you afford several months of whatever is normal for a rented, furnished house in your area?

Could you afford all of that, out of your savings/investments/whatever? I know we couldn't - even though dh is on a very good salary - and that is why we have adequate household contents insurance.

And even if you can, why would you want to spend all that money replacing stuff, when it could be the insurance company's money you are spending?

ApocolyseNowt

Being on low to middle income is a vicious circle. You end up having to pay for all kinds of insurances, debt repayments, mortgage interest repayments etc so across the working life probably about a third of what you have earnt has just been to service your own lack of capital. It's a tax on the poor if you will

There are no quick solutions, but I have always been aware not to "play the game", otherwise you are being a slave and handing over your time, money and freedom to someone else

Of course I am going off topic, but insurances and debt are part of the same thing. They are ways to keep you chained to the daily humdrum of servitude

Instead, I try and stick to the rule of "live on a third, spend a third and save a third" of our income. It means we live in relatively modest accommodation but have no financial products (other than savings accounts) or insurances, no debt and plenty of savings.

However, to get back on topic, given the OP's situation, she should probably take out contents insurance!

With any insurance I would ask yourself

1. Am I required to have it?
2. What is the worst case scenario here I am insuring against?
3. Can I afford to take the hit on the worse case scenario?
4. Are there any other good reasons for buying it?

So for a few examples

• Third party car insurance is a legal requirement so I buy it
• White goods extended warranties/insurance not required and worse case is I need a new machine. I can afford to buy a new machine so have never bought the cover.
• Boiler/pipes repaid cover not required and I could afford repairs but could be attractive if I am guaranteed a certain response time rather than having to get out the yellow pages when standing in 3 inches of water, I might consider that convenience/assurance worth the cost.
• OPs example loses everything in a substantial house fire and she cannot afford to replace them. Insurance therefore makes absolute sense.

OP if you go to the National Housing Federation website they offer affordable insurance to social housing tenants and those on low incomes. Worth a look.

then your approach is strange. If you can afford the insurance and you couldn't afford to replace everything you own in the event of a fire then the logical approach is to insure your possessions.

For those getting really cheap insurance do be careful. My DSis had a claim after an incident and had all sorts of hassle from the insurance company because they were under insured. She wasn't trying to claim more than the value they were insured for either.

Even your possessions can cost a lot more than you think to replace after a flood or fire.

We had a small electrical fire and we had to claim for £19k of building work (only one room, a cellar, actually damaged by small fire, rest was redec work) and almost £14k of 'stuff' that had to be replaced due to smoke and soot damage. Beds, furniture, pots, plates, every item our toddler wore or owned (due to risk of toddlers putting things in their mouth and toxic stuff in soot), £7k was paid to specialist dry clean ever item of clothing we owned (washing not suitable apparently). And the really expensive bit - 9 weeks in a hotel (inc. a meal allowance as unable to cook so this offset extra cost of food/takeaway we would have had) plus NINE MONTHS in a rented house (£13k) - plus the extra £152 pcm we had to pay in council tax for the rented house (insurance paid the difference as we had to rent that house due to them having a contract with that particular letting agency and it was the cheapest suitably sized property), extra petrol costs to get to work (never recouped)...

If I'd had no insurance, we had nowhere to go. I would have thought a the time oh we can stay at my parents, assuming work would take a couple of weeks.

I will say, with reference to people who have done without for a long time as above - if people then take out insurance and then coincidentally have a break in a couple of weeks later (as a colleague of mine did), the insurance co, will be very, very suspicious!

Yes, if you underinsure yourself the insurers can get very unhappy about this and can end up taking legal action against you to recover costs etc. if it's a building issue and the proprty needs making safe (as told to me by loss assessor)

if you want to minimize the cost you can lower your total insurables to say 10K or 20K.

Bless you, but we could probably replace everything like-for-like twice over for 5k. We have tonnes of cheap, pointless crap but readin this thread has made me realise just how little of real monetary value we actually have. The joys of poverty :-)

Buy anyway....... I've just gone on Confusef.com and we can insure the lot for six quid a month, so I probably will. That includes accidental damage to mobiles, so if we'd had it last year when DP dropped his smartphone in the road it would have paid for itself already.

I don't have contents insurance for my second home. I have made a calculation that I can self-insure: I could replace everything immediately from savings if the worst happened. Ultimately, self insuring is cheaper as nobody else is taking a profit. What really settled it for me is that I made a couple of £200 claims on my first home insurance last year (lost iphone and damage to a door) and they put my insurance up by £2,000 pa so I reckon that it's never really worth claiming unless you lose everything and that is vanishingly unlikely.... YANBU

I am glad you are getting insurance, SaucyJack - as FruitbatAuntie's account shows, there are some very significant costs involved, over and above replacing the basics - like housing whilst your property is being rebuilt/dried out/whatever.

We're in a cahncil flat SDTG- so if the place floods/burns down due to their dodgy plumbing or wiring then it would be their responsibility to house us in the interim. But I will get insurance anyway.

Ah - well that does remove one worry, then, SaucyJack!

for some insurances, it can make sense to self-insure. Critical illness insurance and boiler cover are two examples.

buildings (which the OP doesn't need as in a rental) and contents are two where it makes no sense not to insure. Here in my living room almost everything is second-hand/ebay, including the two sofas which I bought for £50. But I'm getting too old to sit on the floor now and if I lost everything here, I wouldn't want to wait ages for another ebay bargain. I'd also want things to cook on and with, a bed to sleep in, etc etc. So I need insurance.

glad car insurance is legally required, as there have been several people on here who don't realise that it is there to cover the damage you can do to others, not the baggy old car you drive. Or indeed the flashy new car.

Up to you really.
You're in a rented house so that's covered by the landlord and what you do regarding your contents is up to you.

Personally I think you're crackers, if you add up what everything in your house would cost to replace in the event of (say) a fire, you'll probably be quite shocked at just how much it comes to.

If you own a property and it has a mortgage then usually the bank will insist on the property being covered by suitable insurance as a condition of the mortgage.

Got it all sorted today, I asked for £70000 worth of cover, it does seem excessive but better to over insure than under.

Well done! I bet your parents are pleased now
Do you feel like sharing how much that costs monthly? (Don't worry if you'd prefer not too, I'm just nosey curious.)

SaucyJack - OK, I accept your point that you wouldn't replace everything - but could you afford to replace the essentials all at once?

Yes. In rented accommodation so white goods aren't mine. It was furnished but we've slowly swapped the LL's stuff for ours.

For £1k we could replace furniture. It's mostly ikea or gumtree. Or just ask the LL to put his stuff back in. And in that I'm including cost for bedding and a towel each.

Probably have to spend £500 on clothes for work immediately.

Then the next month I would spend another £1k on clothes and £500 on a TV.

My kitchen stuff is probably a good £750 maybe even £1k when you add up food processor etc. So that's month 3.

I wouldn't replace CDs books

I would be upset at the loss of my snowboard clothes and equipment mainly.

whois You'd rather pay out £4k in 3 months to replace, than £100 a year for a basic policy?

Maidof but it's definitely £100 for insurance and only £4k in rare circumstances. Insurance isn't a "good deal" in a strict money return sense. It's only a "good deal" in the sense of saving you from catastrophe. If you can manage to survive a catastrophe without insurance you are financially better off not having it.

Or rather, if you can survive damage to/loss of all your property without it being a catastrophe, you are financially better off without contents insurance.

Insurance is betting really.
You are gambling on needing or not needing it.

been thinking about getting insurance for a while- putting it off and finally got round to it just now after reading this thread.
peace of mind is mine . I feel very grown up!

Pipbin that makes me think of Ned Flanders from The Simpsons who refuses insurance because it's 'gambling' then loses his home in a hurricane!