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.

@SansaStarkers do your council offer a tenant scheme?
Low weekly payments and no excess can make the council scheme really useful. No ncd to lose either.

When a pipe burst and flooded a flat below us, it was our contents insurance that paid for their contents that were damaged.

I would have thought it was your buildings insurance that paid that, not contents. I live in a flat, below other flats, and I wouldn't want to think that my cover from flooding depended on whether people upstairs had bothered to take out contents insurance.

Actually, I have had water damage from above, and it was the buildings insurance that sorted it out. (But it wasn't exactly the fault of upstairs, there was a crack in the main soil pipe that had to be repaired. Upstairs got a new bathroom out of it, as they had to demolish her bathroom to repair the pipe.)

Having said that, there was no damage to contents to sort out, so useless example.

@BlueSkiesLies yes, thank you, I do . The point I was making was that without my insurance I would have had an uninhabitable house I could not ever have paid to repair. What is your point?

Are you in a different country then ememem84? Contents is of no concern to the lenders- they only want to protect the asset they have a Financial interest in, can’t think why they’d give a crap if one of their customers lost all their contents

Yes the pipe situation would’ve been buildings insurance. I actually think a few people on this thread are mixing them up.

Just another thought to throw in... the other problem with insurance if you are poor is often poor credit. If you are struggling financially you are far more likely to be unable to pay upfront and need to do it monthly (which also ends up costing more in the long run) and in order to be able to pay monthly, you do have to have a certain level of credit rating, so for those struggling to make ends meet, it becomes even more difficult.

Thanks Buzz. Obviously every insurance policy and company is slightly different but I don't believe it's pointless asking for recommendations because some people (like myself) have been burnt by some companies. Like all businesses, some are better than others even if it's only the customer service side. And believe me, the customer service side actually makes an ENORMOUS difference when the shit hits the fan and you are needing all the help you can get.

The few people I have known who claimed on contents all went out and started buying their idea of minimum, at brand new retail price, and all of them ran out of money long before they actually restocked their house. They then were stuck with cheap stuff to fill in all the gaps of their initial shopping sprees.

OTOH, I know one couple who took their windfall and put half into a retirement savings account, and spent the rest at the same sorts of thrift shops/ebay etc. they always had shopped at. given their age (50s) they also took the chance to down size from the family house. They bought the minimum amount of stuff and took about a decade to reestablish their household on their new terms. In that decade, their own kids moved house, replaced furniture and their parents took on their discards. Likewise, one of their parents passed on and that household's goods were redistributed around the family. Partly they did it this way because that's how they'd always gotten stuff, thrifting and hand-me-downs. Partly they did it this way because the chance of a late in the game improvement of their later years was more valuable to them than a new sofa.)

@silvercuckoo I'm sorry but I find it impossible to believe that you and the children only have £2-3k worth of stuff! Add up every single thing you own: televisions, computers, printers, ovens, washing machine, dishwasher, phones, beds, wardrobes, chests of drawers, sofas, tables, chairs, rugs, bedding, towels, jewellery, clothing, toiletries, curtains, cushions, bins, kitchen utensils, pictures etc, etc, etc! Unless you are in dire straits the cost to replace your items will be way more than £3000!

My aunt actually did lose her home in a fire and luckily had excellent insurance which did make a huge difference. I think psychologically more than anything else. However that's so rare that if you can afford to replace things it's really not an essential.

We don't have many expensive things other than specific electronics (tv, laptops, kindles and Apple products) which I know add up to a lot, but the rest of the house is filled with second hand worthless stuff. Cheap ebay beds, my fridge cost a tenner for delivery only as a friend gave it to us. My slow cooker was a tenner and most of my clothes are from the £1 charity shop or Primark. But the thing is, even if we were loaded and could afford to replace the big stuff, the thousands and thousand of very little insignificant stuff from toothbrushes, sewing kits, baking trays to the bloody tin opener would come to tens of thousands of pounds to replace. Never in my life will I pay out that much money in insurance premiums.

For anyone interested I have been with More Than insurers for 15 years and they were fantastic with my two claims. Premiums never went up as a result either, just in line with inflation. Comparison sites have never beaten their quotes by more than a couple of quid each year and I know this company isn't a dodgy cheapo one.
Do your research and see what's available in your budget.

To the pp who said they’re at home which lowers the risk, we were at home in bed when our smoke alarm went off. We’d only been in bed for about 30 minutes. We had heat sensors in our kitchen linked to one in the hall, the latter woke us up. We had a fire extinguisher accessible but even in the short time it took to get to the fire, we realised we couldn’t deal with it ourselves (all we could see was black smoke, the fire service said we wouldn’t have managed it and the smoke would have made us pass out). The fire service were there within 7 minutes but it still took an hour to put it out. The kitchen was devastated by fire, the whole bungalow was smoke damaged. Sometimes even when you’re there it’s still devastating.

Someone asked if premiums went up - legopieces? Not the first year but next time it did, we shopped around and got a much better deal.

We have contents insurance, one which includes cover for items frequently taken outside the home. Our considerations are:
Accommodation - if our house was unliveable after a fire we have no-one who could put up all 5 of us for more than a few nights so we need to cover somewhere to stay.

Children - if all belongings were gone as often in a house fire even replacing their essentials would add up. My priority would be in ensuring they had all the things they need to provide some comfort and continuity if they'd lost everything.

We do have savings but not enough to cover a full loss. And of course, once we've spent them, they're gone so if something else came along that we would normally use savings for (car broke down, for e.g) we'd not have it.

For us it makes sense to have the insurance. When younger, I didn't always have much stuff, and couldn't always afford it. There was also a point at which neither DH or I had life insurance and I must say I felt quite uneasy about that. We have 3 policies between us now!

It's obviously very different to replace things after a fire compared to a burglary. As you'll need all new clothes, furniture appliances, kitchen stuff etc. For most people even replacing the essentials would probably be at least £5k.

@TheFormidableMrsC my point is your content insirance is nothing to do with the repairs to your house.

You would have had a repaired and inhabits house through buildings insurance.

It is typical to have buildings insurance as a mandated condition for having a mortgage.

No one here is saying ‘don’t get building insurance’ They are discussing the merits of contents. Therefore your comment about having repairs to the house is irrelevant in this context.

*repaired and inhabitable house

We have contents insurance. But we did not when everything would have cost about a £1k to replace. We lived in a furnished place, and were very poor, and had very little. And yes £1k would have covered incidentals such as cutlery and sewing kits etc. In fact £1k is being generous.
Now in our fifties we have lots of stuff.
But remember some people are on an incredibly tight budget. And lets face it, a fire that destroys everything is very rare.

If you had a fire and needed to be put up in a hotel that would be buildings insurance not contents

After our fire, we were very careful with what we bought. Our claim came to 80k.

We refurbished the entire house with new stuff. This came to about 55k. We spent the rest on an extension, although we could have saved it.

Still wouldn’t want to live through that trauma again

Emoji we were similar. We couldn’t quite believe a. How much stuff we lost but b.how much we had in the first place. We replaced a lot but some stuff wasn't needed and some was irreplaceable so we spent maybe half our claim money on replacement items and bought a newer car too.

pass Channel Islands resident here. So things are a bit different. I questioned contents insurance too. Buildings made sense. But they needed contents too. It was no big hassle - we got an indicative quote and went from there and formalised everything once the purchase had gone through. But yeah still baffles me. But if thems the rules....

Similarly you can’t go to court if you’re not wearing a tie. Dh forgot his tie and had to borrow one from the lawyer. Who kept a stash just in case.

Re the flooding pipes situation when we lived in our apartment we had a similar issue. Building was covered so we asked buildings manager for the insurance details. They said no as pipes were considered contents. Our contents insurers said buildings. I don’t think we ended up claiming as it wasn’t as massive a job as we thought (in that it only affected us luckily). And we were going to re do the bathroom anyway (ended up doing it a bit earlier than we’d planned..)

One thing we have done (at dads request given his previous employment) is male sure that all passports and important docs are in a fire proof box. And that copies are kept elsewhere. So in my drawer at work I have Copies of docs (passports birth Certs marriage certs) and also at dparents.

I’m not sure that a fire that destroys everything is that rare. It can be only a small fire, but it’s the smoke damage that destroys everything.

So even a small fire can cause everything to be written off because of smoke damage. Our fire was contained in kitchen, back room and hall. But all the contents upstairs and in the loft were smoke damaged

@HairyMcWary
Not poor, just don't have a lot of stuff. No TV, no jewellery or handbags, no car - just don't see any reason to have these. Replacing my wardrobe (m&s basic office wear and a couple of jeans and tshirts) is £200 max, all tablets and laptops not more than £1K, phone is insured separately, all domestic appliances are of age where they wont be covered under the contents insurance anyway. Furniture for the whole house is under £400, all second hand - and I won't be buying new anyway, I like recycling.

I have had a small fire when I lived in a furnished place. Cost me £80 to replace damaged stuff.

Also insurance writes off smoke damaged stuff, because it is not 100%. But I have bought cheap smoke damaged goods at auction.