Your Home Insurance And The Finer Things In Life
· by Matt Fox · posted April 18, 2008
· filed under Homeowner, Personal Insurance category.
The traditional home insurance policy covers things most people own: the home, furniture, clothing, etc. It’s a nice package policy with very basic coverage. If you own things like jewelry, guns, art, silverware you may have a shortage in coverage.
The traditional home insurance policy (which most people carry) has the following special limits on these common items (these can vary from one company to the next but this is a good guideline to refer to):
- $1,500 for theft of jewelry, watches, furs, precious and semi-precious stones
- $2,500 for theft of silverware, gold ware, platinum ware, pewter ware
- $2,500 for theft of firearms and related equipment
There are eight other items with special limits but these are three the most common we find people inadequately covered under. And, the most common of these is the wedding ring!
If you have items worth more than these there are a couple ways to increase coverage.
The first is to schedule the individual items. When you schedule an item you are separating that one piece out for its own coverage. You can give it its own deductible and it is covered for “all risks.” This increases the coverage not only for theft but many other risks that would traditionally be excluded in your homeowner policy. Most companies require an appraisal less than two years old in order to schedule the item.
The second way is to increase limits for that class of coverage. When you increase the limits you’re simply doing just that, increasing the limits of coverage. However, it doesn’t always change the coverage unlike scheduling (read your policy because this varies from company to company).
How do you decide which is best? It’s almost always better to schedule because of the appraisal and “all risk” coverage. However, if you have many smaller items that exceed the limits above and don’t want to appraise all of them you can increase the coverage for a small fee and have the peace of mind knowing you have better and adequate coverage. And, for some people we’ve done a combination of the two by scheduling a large item (wedding ring and band) while increasing the limits to increase coverage for the many smaller jewelry items that didn’t have appraisals.
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