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

We just discovered our bank was charging us nearly 900 quid a year for buildings and contents insurance. Rolling renewed policy.

I’ve recently moved into my own flat (having previously lived in rented rooms in shared houses, where I didn’t have my own contents insurance). I have building insurance (jointly with the other flats in the building), and researching contents insurance is on my to do list. It sounds as though some people in this thread have found good deals/had good experiences of companies - could anyone recommend a company to go with, please? (I’m in a one-bedroom flat, if that makes any difference.)

We have never had contents insurance. We don't have anything that we couldn't easily pay to replace

I had a jackdaw come down my chimney once while I was on holiday. Just replacing the stuff covered in jackdaw shit came to about £5K.

Yes there were bigger items like carpets but then random stuff like whole collection of cookery books or throws on sofa added up to a lot more than you think it does when you have bought bits and bobs over years.

And then the following year I had a chimney fire due to the sodding nest and contents insurance replaced the carpets again.

Appreciate not everyone can afford it. My mother couldn’t and we got robbed in rented accommodation . If you can I don’t see why you wouldn’t

You mean ‘aghast’ I think

Insurance. It’s cheaper to go without. Until it isn’t.

I am always astounded that people who are comfortably off (ie not on the bones of their arse and choosing food over insurance) don’t bother with contents insurance. Because they seem very laid back at the prospect of living like they did when they left home for the first time - sitting on deck chairs in bare rooms, sleeping on the floor and rewearing the same pair of jeans for weeks on end. Even if you rent and live cheaply, refitting a new home from scratch will add up fast. Cutlery, pots, pans, towels, bedding, chairs, table, sofa, telly, Hoover, iron, ironing board, wardrobe, bed, lamps, basic diy kit (screwdrivers, hammer, pliers, drill, measuring tape), bucket, mop, kettle, toaster. If you own, then add in carpets, curtains, light shades, oven, fridge, washing machine. Buying all of that all at once, even at IKEA starter prices will not be cheap - and would it be the quality you have now?

You’d have to be a dedicated minimalist to be happy to live like that and have no bits and bobs whatsoever. I can understand no ornaments to a certain extent as I’m not a chintzy person, but absolutely no laptop, books, dvds, cds, pictures, photos, hobby items, rugs, throws, cushions, games, plants, vases/flowers...? All the things that personalise a place to make it a home?

@Lemons1571 I hope things are all sorted for you know. Just watching someone go through it was horrible couldn’t imagine how hard it must be

And if you were anything like this family - 5 people plus pets, despite the desire of friends/ family no one was in a position to put them up for the 12 months it took to get back home!

We realised one year that we were under insured for contents. We'd done a rough tot up of what it would cost to replace everything if the house burnt down - clothes, carpets, curtains, all furniture inc. beds, bedding, white goods, replacement kitchen, all the electricals, crockery, cutlery, never mind anything like books - and we didn't count jewellery or the odd more expensive item.

It was scary. IIRC we at least doubled our cover.

@Thisaintphaedra yes we are thanks (well maybe still recovering from the trauma a bit). There were too many of us to stay with anyone (am I your friends??)

We absolutely have it, it costs us £9 a month including accidental damage cover and a few named items (Our phones, our laptops) and it gives me such piece of mind. We don't have much money and the things we do have are very precious to us and we absolutely cannot afford to just go out and replace them, it would take months for us to save for a new laptop for example, and it would be a long time without one.

I also work for a phone company and in my years taking calls, I've seen so many people lose a new, high end phone a few months into the contract without any insurance, they end up paying £50+ per month, for 18 more month without a phone to show for it.

On the “making a house feel homely” front, I’m confused as to why you’d need to do that all at once. Surely you’d do the same thing you did when you first moved into your own place: you buy your decor items and hobby stuff bit by bit as and when you see something you want? I certainly didn’t go out when DH and I were first moving in together, going, “Right, now we’re going to buy every single decorative item for every single room.” It’s been an accumulation over many years anyway.

(As a very tenuously related aside, who on earth still buys DVDs and CDs?? This is what I mean when I say we don’t have much stuff. I can’t imagine owning half the things people are going on about here!)

I am agog at this too. I am single parent/carer on a low income, the one thing I make sure I have is contents insurance and my goodness was I glad when I had a flood last summer. What appeared to be a simple case of the water softener bursting a pipe, actually ended up with my entire water tank draining throughout my ground floor. You couldn't see it though! I thought I had mopped up and minimised the damage as I acted very quickly but once the dehumidifiers had been in place for two weeks, and I watched the cupboard corners start to curl up and my flooring bubble, I realised it was a much bigger issue. I ended up with approx £20K of repairs including the entire flooring throughout being replaced, a new kitchen (in terms of replacing all the units and carcasses), entire ground floor redecoration and some replacement furniture. You would not believe the amount of "unseen" damage there was. You are very lucky if you have enough money lying around to be able to carry out that sort of repair. I would have been screwed without my insurance and my house ruined. I would never have been able to afford to do the work that was carried out. It's so vitally important! I was paying £14 a month for it (that is building AND contents) and managed to get a cheaper premium when I shopped round at renewal because obviously my premiums shot up afterwards. I don't think you can afford not to have it.

@Sachastark I don’t think anyone would manage to make the place homely all at once. But it does make you feel slightly less shit when you are trying to claw back some sort of life for your family.

So for example, we bought the kids really nice throws and bedding sets of their choice the day before we moved back in (23rd December). Rather than have them sleep on a bare mattress in coats on Xmas eve. Just to make it less shit.

There’s an awful lot of emotion connected with losing your home, your security, your safe place, and basically you just want it back.

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?

All the more reason to have insurance.

Ah, I don’t have children to consider, Lemons. Like I said up thread, when we have a baby, we will get contents insurance.

Larry, I’m sorry, I can’t understand your argument (my apologies, late in the evening, we’ve had sports day, and I’m mn-ing whilst marking end of year exams- very naughty). Why do my cheap second-hand goods merit more insurance?

I would never ever go without insurance. I see it as a necessity.

I know I would never be ok with a hand out, begging post on facebook or gofundme because I left it for others to take care of things.

A lot of my stuff is old and second hand.

But it would cost to replace it. My living room chairs and sofa were hand me downs, I won't get that for free again. Even Ikea prices would be several hundred quid.

@Sachastark because they’ve had more use, likely to be older and therefore likelihood of catching fire / causing a flood is higher. Electronics inner workings are more knackered, chargers might not be original, are burning out or might overcharge Li-Ion batteries, washing machine / tumble drier parts are ageing. Obviously there are exceptions when you find a never used bargain but in general there is more risk of an incident with older equipment. Particularly if you don’t know the full history of an item.

@LegoPiecesEverywhere our premium didn’t go up, but our insurers did end our policy after payout. We got new insurance from a different company with no issues and no extra costs.

Why do my cheap second-hand goods merit more insurance?

Because they are more likely to catch fire.

If you don’t want home insurance then that is your lookout, carry on. Others are just trying to point out why it’s a good idea.

@Lemons1571 I absolutely agree with this. You can’t make it homely again straight away, but you do want to do your best to make it feel like home again after months of living in hotels and rentals. We could have moved back to mattresses on the floor but we had insurance so we didn’t have to. The trauma of losing everything is hard enough, feeling safe in your home again takes a long time without feeling like you’re squatting.

who on earth still buys DVDs and CDs?? maybe not many people these days, but we still own the ones we have bought over the years and to replace them either as a CD or download version would cost several thousand £.

Ah, I see! Sorry, like I said, v tired! My line of thought was purely in replacing of items in the event of a fire, not the source of the fire itself.

Well, it’s a risk we’re going to have to take. I’m not going to start spending hundreds on new appliances, and they must catch fire sometimes as well.

But you wouldn’t need to replace them, funnel, YouTube has music for free you can listen to.