To think what is the point of insurance at times?

[girlfriend44]

You have insurance for the house and Contents and the car etc. What is the point there's is always an access to pay and it keeps going up every year anyway?

Because a £250 excess or whatever is a lot cheaper than rebuilding your house/re furnishing your entire house/repairing a car etc etc etc than financing it yourself.

My car is worth £32k and my insurance is £280 plus I paid £99 for a gap policy when it was new.

My contents and building insurance is £150 - my house is worth £150k and the contents I couldn't even begin to guess.

The maths speaks for itself.

What is the point there's is always an access to pay and it keeps going up every year anyway?

You can always pay a higher premium if you don’t want an excess but if you’re complaining about paying an excess I’m assuming you would complain about paying for fire damage or a leak yourself so you’re ‘what’s the point?’ is stupid.

This. Plus it doesn’t necessarily go up if you shop around instead of sticking with the same provider each year.

Insurance is difficult as in the main it’s not the kind of thing you get any benefit from, unless you claim, and even then it’s hassle and your renewal price will go up. For buildings and motor you have to have insurance for the mortgage or legally.
The point is having insurance to pick up the prices of the worst happens. It will be much more expensive so re-build your house after a fire than pay insurance premiums, or say if you had a burst pipe in your home. What you’re hopefully paying for is peace of mind.
The biggest claim I ever made was £3.5k when my dog needed an operation, the premiums I paid were tiny in comparison. But on home I’ve paid a lot more in premiums than claimed.

You can't keep shopping around for car insurance can you?
You build up your no claims bonus?

The buildings insurance for the building I live in went up 1000% (that’s not a typo: a thousand per cent) to more than £250,000. And yet it still didn’t cover us for cladding remediation work to make the building for safe. Go figure 🤷‍♀️

Well I'm pretty sure of my house were gutted by fire then the cost of rebuilding would be more than the excess.

Plus insurance meant that when our car was written off just a handful of months after buying it we were able to go and buy a new one. A new car cost rather more than the insurance premiums.

If you are able to have saved up at any one time enough money to buy a new house, new car and pay for a lifetime of care and housing for anybody you might accidentally injure or have your own body repatriated after dying abroad on holiday then go ahead and forget about insurance. But don't start a go fund me after losing everything to flooding.

Of course you can. You just provide proof on no claims to the new insurer.

A few years ago I had my almost brand new car stolen, it was a special edition civic type r, so it was very pricey, fully comp insurance meant not only was I able to buy a replacement, I was provided with a car until it was replaced, due to having to order it etc it took almost five months until my new car was delivered. Five months of a hire car would have been very very expensive.

The excess for the insurance on our holiday home is I think £200, it would cost a lot more than to re-build, repair after a flood etc.

That said, I don't insure phones because mathematically it isn't worth it. And I, perhaps controversially, don't insure the cat. Even with some surgery I've still paid far less to the vet than I would have paid in premiums.

This. My home has to be underpinned due to subsidence, thankfully I've only got a £1k excess to pay. If I had to pay for the full works, it would be a hell of a lot more. You can never tell when you'll need insurance.

We had an escape of water last year our excess was £350. The total cost of removal of damaged items, drying out and putting it right was close to 30K.

Friends house burnt down while they stood in the street in their PJs house to be rebuilt, temporary accommodation and replacing everything it ran to hundreds of thousands.
Wouldn't without insurance.

You can at renewal, you provide prove of no claims and transfer them to the new policy.

Of course you can!

dh accidently putting a nail through a water pipe and we didn't realising until the next day when water was coming through the ceiling and the living room wall was saturated/swollen and carpet ruined. It was well worth the £250 excess!

We only claim for big things - 3 times in 35 years and all three were dh accidents! 🙄

Because of you crash into someone and cause a serious injury to the occupants, or your house burns down, it will cost a six figure sum more than your £250 excess.

If you caused someone an injury and you didn't have insurance, how would you pay themtheir X-thousand pounds off compensation and legal costs, OP?

I have a ridiculously expensive piece of irreplaceable gold jewellery which I inherited. I was wearing it and shaking down an old mercury thermometer when the bulb broke and sprayed mercury all over the jewellery. Mercury wrecks gold. The insurance paid out over £16000 to restore the jewellery to its original condition. That’s why I pay £500 per year to insure it.

I work in insurance.

Take the example of motor insurance. One of the many points is that if you were to lose your concentration and be found at fault in hitting someone who then sustained serious injury and then required lifelong care, your insurer (not you) would pay the medical bills for this unfortunate soul for the rest of their life, not to the mention the probable £millions in pain, suffering and other damages.

Your insurer may even provide you with legal cover so you don’t end up going to jail for the incident.

And of course you can shop around for car insurance!

All (optional) insurance is a gamble. You're essentially "hoping" that at some point something will go wrong and the payout will be more than the premiums you've paid plus the excess, while the insurance company is hoping the opposite.

Sticking with one company and just accepting the renewal price won't get you the best rates. Even just calling them up and saying you won't pay that much is usually enough to get something of a discount.

My car was written off by thieves. We’d already had to make claims before for previous attempted thefts but not only did the insurance pay out generously, allowing us to clear the finance with a bit left over, but our premium only went up by a few pounds the following year.

It’s definitely worth it.

As others have already said, you certainly can shop around for car insurance and retain your no-claim bonus!

House insurance - like other 'optional' ones like pet insurance - if often seen by some people as a "waste of money' because nothing has happened to them (or nothing big enough to claim on because of the excess on the policy). We've always had home and contents and so far never been burgled but have had cause to claim once a number of years ago when the boiler leaked and caused significant damage while we were away (the company - their logo is a telephone - dealt with everything within a week, decorators engaged, etc by them, new carpet and so on laid). About 3 years ago, a massive storm tore apart our (quite old) car port. The same insurers again sorted the building of a beautiful new one that the contractor told us was about £4K worth of work and materials.

Pet insurance: we've made a lot of claims over the past 2 rescue dogs and in one year alone - when the policy cost us all of £350 - they paid out more than £9K.

Insurance is predicated on you not wanting the risk of a massive expense that you might not be able to afford. THAT is the "point" - as others have said, it might one day be your entire house.

Having pet insurance has enabled me to keep my dog alive as I couldn't afford the monthly vet's bill otherwise.

She has Cushings disease, arthritis and now a slipped disc. Her meds are expensive and most importantly she's not in pain, 80% of this is paid by insurance every month

Are you age 44, or someone’s 44th girlfriend?

Google will sort you out on that, and if you’re really 44 you should check that out.

YANBU
When I first "set up home", I took all sorts of insurances out
Never been able to successfully claim for anything
Now I get the cheapest crappiest insurance, just to keep me legal
The whole thing is ridiculous IMHO