Homeowner’s insurance is a necessity for anybody who owns a home or has a mortgage. The policy will protect you in the event that your home is damaged from any number of factors beyond your control, including storms, fire, falling trees, wind damage, and more.
Your home is a huge investment, and it’s important to protect its value. If a storm damaged your home so badly that it would cost you a fortune to fix, not only would you have lost the value of the home to the storm, you’d still have a mortgage on a property that is no longer worth what you owe. For all of these reasons, it’s important to have homeowner’s insurance.
An HBF homeowner’s insurance policy not only protects the physical structure of your home, but also its contents. Policies differ on what they cover—you always get what you pay for—but for the most part, your home’s contents are covered in the event of a storm or similar event damages the home so badly that valuable possessions inside are also damaged. For instance, if a tree smashed through your roof and allowed rainwater to pour in, damaging expensive electronics, you would likely be covered.
So your homeowner’s policy would be pay for a new roof, new flooring, and a new TV to replace the one that got washed away. Insurance companies encourage the insured parties to keep a detailed list of valuable items in the home along with receipts so there’s no question about what is in the home when it comes time to file a claim.
But does your homeowner’s insurance policy cover the belongings of visitors to your home while they are staying with you? Let’s say you have friends or family staying with you for the weekend, and a burst pipe floods the guestroom soaking everything on the floor, including your brother’s brand new laptop. Can you get your homeowner’s policy to pay for a replacement? In general, yes, your brother’s computer is covered under the policy and is eligible for a claim.
However, to make sure there are no hiccups in the claim process, it’s important that you contact the insurance company to request this coverage to begin with. Some policies may include coverage for guests and other visitors by default, but many policies will need to have this coverage added to it as a separate rider.
So you’ll have to decide if visitor and guest coverage is worth it to you to pay a little bit more. If you frequently have guests over that tend to bring expensive items like electronics or jewelry, it might make sense to make sure you have the proper coverage. Covering your visitor’s possessions would certainly put your mind at ease if you’re worried about theft, for example. However, it might also be redundant if your guests already have their personal belongings insured by their own policy. Your choice depends on how frequently someone visits your home and what they tend to bring with them.
The rental car company we used said any damage smaller than the size of a quarter, they would let slide. Anything bigger than that, and it needed to be repaired.
I was proud of my penny pinching ways until our first night on the road. We were driving along a desolate stretch in Oklahoma; it was dark, and we were ready to stop for the night. A semi was in front of us and swerved at the last minute. We had no time to wonder why; a deer carcass was straight in our path. Even though my husband swerved, he still hit it. We felt the thump under our car and feared the worst.