5 STEPS TO ASSESSING THE RIGHT LEVEL OF COVER FOR YOUR POSSESSIONS

As well as insuring the building where you live, don’t forget the importance of the contents within it. Contents insurance provides you with adequate insurance cover if something unforeseen happens and your possessions are lost, damaged or stolen. Calculating the cost of your contents insurance can be a challenge, particularly if you have lots of rooms, an endless stream of collections and personal belongings. So how exactly do you calculate your worldly possessions? Here are our top five tips.

• Home Valuation: When people are calculating the cost of their possessions, they often only make a rough estimate, thinking about the most obvious items such as computers, jewellery and home electronics but often overlook other things such as carpets, furniture and kitchen equipment. The cost of a carpet or flooring for your home can be expensive, particularly if you need to replace the carpets or flooring in every room. The best way to accurately calculate the cost of your insurance is to think that your house has been completely gutted with the rooms stripped back to just the floorboards and brick walls. Then imagine putting it all back together right down to light fittings.
• Create a plan: One of the best ways to calculate the cost of your insurance is to start on the ground floor and go through your home room by room, making a list of all the contents including those outlined earlier in this guide such as carpets, curtains, blinds and light fittings. Calculate the cost of each item as you go. A spreadsheet might be helpful for this task. Remember don’t write down how much the item cost to buy when you bought it, you will need to find out how much it costs today.
• Make Detailed Lists: Create lists for each of the rooms in your home, living room, dining room, kitchen etc and include everything that you can physically remove from the room from carpets to bed linen.
• Don’t Forget Outside: If you have a garage or a shed don’t forget the items in here too. Garden tools, washing machines, bikes and more all need to be factored into your calculations. Garden furniture, plant pots and other outdoor tools should also be included.
  Re-Calculate Your Contents: Contents insurance policies usually run annually so it’s good practice to do this every year because things change. You might buy a new piece of fitness equipment that wasn’t included the year before or you might replace something that was more expensive than the year before. It can be useful to create a new spreadsheet every year and add any new items to your list so you know that when it comes to renewing your home contents insurance your policy will adequately cover all of your belongings.