to be agog that my friends have no contents insurance

[AdmiralButterfly]

I mean it is none of my business but it came up in conversation. They have buildings insurance but not contents. So if they were burgled they would get nothing and if the house burned down they would not have anything to cover clothes and furniture etc. I am totally agog. They have all the normal laptops and TVs etc and all the usual burglar able things - jewellery, musical instruments, a bit of silverware.

I don't.

Council house. No insurance. I just can't afford it.

For £5ish a month I think it's worth it.

The average home contents are worth about 70k. This is what our insurer told us when we had our fire. I suspect it will have gone up by now.

4 Wilco beds + bedding would soon add up. As would sofas from Ikea, as you’d also need a table, chairs, curtains etc etc

40 items at approx a tenner each from Asda is 400 quid. Would that include shoes, underwear, bags, nightwear? Or would these be extra

40 items for me is tops, bottoms, dresses, skirts, jackets, blazers, bags, pyjamas and shoes. Everything but undies, basically, I don’t count individual pants!

I don’t think I would be buying 40 items in one go, haha! Probably five items, of which I could make roughly ten appropriate outfits through swapping things around.

I don’t care as long as they are not asking for donations because they “lost everything boo boo”. I had contents insurance all my life and currently contents to the value of 40,000 is about £8 a month. No excuses.

I imagine many would move into furnished rented accommodation for a bit, everything can be replaced over time.

Depends how long a time though.

I work for a bank and quite customers for home insurance regularly - contents insurance can be as low as £2.50 a month.

What baffles me is when you talk to customers about their contents and they refuse to add any extra cover - accidental damage cover for example, or cover for taking your belongings out of the home. Taking your stuff outside is surely where you are most likely to lose it/damage it/have it stolen and it literally adds pennies to the monthly price, and the amount of people who roll their eyes like I’m trying to sell them crap they don’t need is unbelievable!

Quote customers**

£8 a month. No excuses.

I don't have 8 a month.

I'm currently £30 into my unauthorised overdraft because my council tax and water rates just came out.

When I get money it's already gone. I'm robbing Peter to pay Paul constantly.

I literally couldn't cut anything else out.

I have contents insurance but if I were short of money, I wouldn’t as I’ve never claimed on it for in excess of 30 years.

I think the house burning scenario Asda shoppers need to think about things other than furniture and clothes that are covered by contents insurance.
Washing machine?
Carpets and curtains?
Kitchen fittings?
Bathroom fittings?
Staying at a hotel rather than imposing for weeks or months on friends or relatives?
When my MIL was flooded her insurance paid for her to rent a house for the 12 months it took to make her house inhabitable again...

Gosh, you are easy shocked.

My mother was once ostracised by many of her work colleagues because she refused to contribute to a collection for another colleague after a fire, she hadn't bothered with insurance. My mother's view was that they, my parents, bothered to pay theirs and the finances of the two familes were fairly similar.

We had an awful fire, no ones fault but it rendered us homeless for 2 months. Buildings insurance won’t replace carpet, flooring, curtains, furniture, suitcases, rucksacks, books, electronics, dvds, tv, kitchen equipment, freezers fridges cookers personal items, bedding, beds, chairs, towels, clothes, shoes, bags, games, presents, bicycles, hairdryers, pictures, desks, I don’t need to go on but even if you live minimally you’d be lucky to replace all that for a few hundred quid. The bloody smoke gets everywhere and the water damage from the fire crews also destroys contents. It’s a low risk high stakes strategy to not have contents cover, and if you have kids it would be a particularly special kind of hell if you’re ever unfortunate enough to need it and not have it.

“ £8 a month. No excuses.”

I can’t believe how patronising and arrogant this post is. Why would anyone need to make excuses to you?

I wouldn’t be without it,, despite never claiming. It gives you peace of mind.

Computers, TVs, cookers, etc all cost money.

“The Association of British Insurers estimates that the average 3-bedroom family home contains items worth a total of £55,000. So if your home's contents are only insured to a maximum value of £30,000, an insurance pay out based on a claim for everything you own would leave you short”

Just found this by googling.

I guess I’m the house-burning Asda shopper, ha! I mean, I’ve had weirder nicknames...

My washing machine was £30 from Facebook marketplace. We have literally never paid more than £40 for a white goods piece! Why buy new when you can buy somebody’s perfectly good second hand piece?

We don’t have carpet. I actually don’t even have curtains now that I think about it! We have a roller blind in the bedroom that we use sometimes. But you can easily hook up an Ikea picture wire and pin fabric to it for less than a tenner if you want to.

I wouldn’t be responsible for bathroom or kitchen fittings, because I have a landlord who is responsible for that in our contract.

My entire extended family and DH’s all live locally, and I can’t imagine my mother letting us stay elsewhere, anyway. But, if we had to book an Air BnB or something, I’d probably book into one of my mate’s for a couple of weeks.

We don’t have contents insurance. We rent and if anything breaks we replace it. The risk of everything being destroyed in one hit is small and we take our chances.

Insurance is something I always prioritise and an happy to pay for. Always get the best cover etc on car insurance rather then the cheapest. Same with the Buildings and Contents, best policy for my needs over price. A lot of people use comparison sites and go with the cheapest without even considering what they get for that price.

As an aside I think a few quid a month for contents is always going to be more cost effective than replacing everything yourself, even if you replace with cheap/second hand goods. Not worth it imo.

You can get enough basic stuff to live with for £2k for a couple I reckon- bare minimum basics from Ikea/gumtree. Say £300 for a sofa, £200 for a bed and matress and allow £500 for other stuff- £10 coffee table, basic crockery and saucepan sets, duvet etc- you'd possibly even have a small amount of change left over for a TV.

Then a very basic wardrobe items from discount/low end shops (say 5 tops, 4 bottoms, 2 jumpers, some pants and socks and one pair of shoes) each- say £400 per person for 10 bigger items plus a pack of socks and pants, and you've got over £30 per item. That leaves £100 each for luxuries like make up, hair make up etc.

We took the decision that we wouldn't be looking to replace all out random tat (books/dvds/ornaments/art/jewellery etc). Most of the clutter would lose its meaning/sentimentality if it were replacememts- and these days there's no need to own a lot of it anyway as we go digital.

We were never thinking we'd replace like for like, but we knew we would have enough to manage while we slowly accumulated new clutter with new memories attached.

Our insurance, once we included bikes, laptop and jewellery was coming in at several hundred per year- so over 10 years in which an unlikely even didn't occur we'd have saved way more than we would have spent on the insurance.

I don't have it either though we have building insurance.
The average home contents are worth about £70k
There's nothing like that in my home. If I had to replace everything my family would help me out and everything would be the cheapest things available anyway, just like I'm used to. Furniture from the second hand shop, a few bits from Primark.

Gah. Typo.

We saved way more than we'd have spent on setting ourselves up again.

YANBU I am the same when ppl don’t have life insurance and when ppl don’t have SOME savings! I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night without at least small cushion in my bank account!!