Home Insurance: Get a 1st Class Degree in Contents Cover!

Publication Date: Monday, August 04, 2008

Are you flying the bird’s nest this summer to move into your own student digs? If the answer’s a big fat ecstatic YES! then it would be a good idea to sort out contents insurance for your new pad. Confused.com spells it out. 

Picture this...

...it’s Freshers’ week and you’re getting ready for a messy night out. Your laptop’s pumping the tunes as you update your iPod, and you’ve got Hollyoaks on the TV in the background (you switch on for the hotties, not caring that you can’t hear it.) As the taxi horn beeps, you run down the hallway just missing your carelessly positioned bike, looking forward to the night ahead.

And you have a great time – until you drunkenly stumble through your open door, crawl upstairs and realise your house has been burgled. All those gadgets you worked a long, hard summer to afford have been stolen and worse still – you don’t have any home insurance. One word springs to mind and it rhymes with ‘fit!’

Contents Insurance: Help!

 ‘But’, I hear you cry, ‘surely it doesn’t have to be this way?’ And you’re right - it doesn’t! By getting your contents insurance sorted before you leave your parent’s house for the big wide world, you could save yourself a whole lot of dosh. Just think, if your stuff gets nicked in a burglary, a new laptop would cost around £500 by itself. So if the worst should happen and you are burgled adequate contents insurance could mean not having to buy those new gadgets (again!) and more money for beer – woohoo!  

Contents Cover – Better than mum’s cooking

A typical student pad will be stuffed with laptops, flat-screen TVs, games consoles and MP3s. Unfortunately, that makes you lot prime targets for those guys with black and white stripy tops and masks.

Aside from all your yummy belongings, there are other reasons why students can be easy targets for thieves:

• Being in your own place for the first time might make some students quite lax with security, such as leaving windows and doors open.
• Landlords don’t always change the locks on property, so old tenants might be able to worm their way back into your new digs.
• As student areas are well-known in most cities, experienced burglars may know the layout of the houses.

When totted up, the value of possessions that students bring with them to Uni can be in the thousands, so that’s a whole lot to buy back without any help. Home insurance can feature ‘new for old’ cover, where your old item will be replaced by a brand new one, regardless of age or condition. Top stuff! However, some policies will only give you what you paid for an item, which is not always adequate to replace older goods.  

Thinking of relying on mum and dad? Think again.

It might seem easier to just go on your parents’ insurance, but doing so doesn’t necessarily provide the best cover for you. Whilst some parents’ policies specifically exclude student cover, some only provide 90 days of cover in a year, which isn’t ideal for most students.

Also, many parents have a no claims bonus on their home insurance, and with some policies this can be as much as 40%. They risk losing this bonus if their little scamp claims on their policy, and student claims on a parents’ policy may also cause their premiums to increase, or parents could even be refused cover in future if multiple claims are made. Oops!

Seems like a big price to pay for forgetting to close that window... 

Become a contents cover clever clogs!

Here’s a quick fact run-down that’s sure to get you all clued up:

• Find adequate student home insurance – make sure that anything you particularly need cover for, such as that all important computer, is included, and check on what basis claims will be settled.
• If you decide against going under your parents’ policy, you’ll need specialist home insurance for rented accommodation.
• Accidental damage cover is a good idea for you klutzes out there – so no need to cry over spilt milk, even if it does gunk up your laptop.
• Some policies offer cover on items you take outside of your room – very handy for those of you with your mobile phone glued to your ear.
• Study the small-print like you were cramming for finals – look for any exclusions, excesses and the sums insured. For example, some specialist student possessions policies provide full cover for ‘walk-in theft’ (thefts where there was no forced entry).
• Look into getting car insurance – thieves love your four-wheeled friends too 

To get the most out of this info, please remove student beer goggles now...and from all of us here at Confused.com, happy insurance hunting!

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