Best Renters Insurance – Every Renter NEEDS This!

Best Renters Insurance – Every Renter NEEDS This!

RENTERS INSURANCE

All right, so let’s talk about renters insurance. It’s coverage that everybody needs if you rent the place you live. So let me just tell you a bit of it. The first question is, do I need it? I already said, yes, you do. You need renters insurance if you rent the place that you live in. So if you rent a mobile home, you rent a house, you rent an apartment, you rent a condo, whatever it is if you don’t own it and you’re paying rent to live there, or even if you’re working out some sort of deal, you need renters insurance.

Now, many people think that their landlord, their roommate, or whoever else will take care of that, and that’s just not the case at all. Let’s first go back and talk about what renters insurance is. So renters insurance is like a homeowner policy, but it’s for the place that you rent. Now the big difference there is that, remember, you’re renting this place rather than owning it. So you don’t own the actual building, but you do own everything that’s inside of it. Then also, there are some other things that you just need to make sure that you’re covered for. It’s like a homeowner policy, but it’s for a rental property, meaning that you rent it. Not that you rent it out, but that you rent it to live in it. So if you reside there, you need a renters policy.

Some of the different things that will be taken care of there are going to be things like your contents. You’ve got stuff, right? You work, you’ve got a job, you acquired a lot of property, and that property is inside of whatever that apartment or condo or whatever it is, the house that you’re renting, it’s inside of that place. Well, if something happens, you need to make sure that that stuff will be covered.

What could happen? Well, you could have a fire, you could have a storm, you could have a vehicle run into your house. I mean, all kinds of things could happen there to your home or your apartment that would cause damage to the property that you own. What’s in there? You’ve got your furniture, you’ve got your clothes, you’ve got the different appliances that may belong to you. You may be into music or art or something like that and have those sorts of things too. You may also have collectibles, maybe the stuff of some value that you’ve been collecting that are essential to you. You want to make sure that they will be protected if something happens to those things.

Now, what are those things protected for? Well, there’s fire, there’s windstorm or some sort of storm damage. Maybe you have a hurricane or tornado or hail damage, and somehow another damages the roof and causes leaking inside the apartment or condo. It hurts your stuff, maybe damages your dining room table, or perhaps the furniture you have or your clothes or something like that, that can be covered underneath a renters policy.

Well, what else could happen? Well, somebody could break into your home and rob you and take the things that are inside of there. Well, that can be covered under a renters policy. You may have something like a ring. Maybe you’re married, and you have an engagement ring that’s worth a lot of money; you can have that covered underneath your policy by scheduling it underneath that policy. There are all kinds of different things that can be hidden there that would not be otherwise.

Well, you may say, “well, won’t my landlord take care of that for me?” The answer is no, absolutely no. Their policy is not going to provide that for you. They’re not going to provide property coverage for the things you own; their approach will only take care of the building itself and that structure. But depending on what your agreement is, especially if you have a condo, you may have to have a condo policy that’s going to cover a part of the building so to speak, depending on what that contract says, and you need to be aware of that. But if you’re renting, still that landlord policy is not going to take care of your contents at all, not a single bit.

LIABILITY

What are some other things that are covered underneath there? Well, things such as liability. That’s a big word that we throw out, and you hear the word liable and slander and other words like that, well, all that stuff falls underneath this word called liability that’s covered underneath a homeowner policy or also under a renters policy. If you don’t have a renters policy and you rent, your landlord’s policy is not going to take care of you, you have to have your own.

When you say, “Well, Beaux, what could happen? Why would I ever need liability insurance?” Well, here are some different scenarios that maybe can help you to understand why you would need it. Let’s say that someone comes to visit you and somehow or another they get hurt. They’re coming in through your door, the carpet is slightly loose or the threshold from one doorway to another is maybe slightly loose and they trip over it and they fall and they hurt themselves pretty seriously, potentially you could become responsible for their lost wages, their injury, their time off from work, also their medical bills and rehabilitation. All those different things can really add up a lot. You will have to pay that out of pocket if you don’t have liability insurance, so your liability insurance can take care of that for you.

Another situation is you go on vacation and something similar happens there while you’re on vacation in your apartment, your condo, your hotel room, or maybe you’re just out on vacation just out in the public somewhere and something happens. Let’s say someone says, “Well, he said something to me that hurt me. Hurt me physically, hurt me emotionally,” and they bring some sort of action against you, your liability policy can respond to that. That’s called Libel and Slander. Your policy can take care of that for you.

Not only will it pay the claim for you, but it also will represent you. It’ll take care of providing you with an attorney to make sure that you are represented in court, so if someone brings some sort of accusation against you, they will come in and take care of that for you. That way you’re not having to defend yourself personally because I could promise you, they’re going to have an attorney. That attorney, that’s what they do for a living, they argue, they bring an accusation against other people for their client’s benefit. You don’t do that for a living. No matter how good you may be at arguing, I promise you cannot out-argue an attorney. That’s why you need your liability insurance through your renters’ policy to provide you with an attorney that also is trained to defend you against those accusations.

MEDICAL PAYMENTS

Some other things that you can get under that policy are medical payments. They are a kind of like no-fault liability coverage, so, if someone were to get hurt, they don’t have medical insurance of some sort to take care of whatever the medical bills are. This part of the policy can take care of that. Usually, that’s lower limits than you would have under your liability.

Your liabilities usually going to be $300,000 or half a million, or even a million for your liability limits. Whereas medical payments, it’s going to be something more similar to maybe a couple thousand, $5,000, or maybe even $10,000. Because remember, this is a no-fault coverage to just kind of help fill in the gap if someone is injured. It’s not your fault, but they just don’t have other resources to go to. Now, it’s not for you or for your family or the people that reside with you, it’s going to be for people outside of your immediate family or that reside with you.

How much does it cost? Well, here’s the fact, it’s not very expensive. Look, between you and me, sometimes I’ve ever seen when you’ve paired it with your auto insurance, it could cost almost nothing because of the discounts you get by pairing those two policies together. I can’t promise that’ll be the situation, but we can certainly help make sure that the costs are minimized, but typically $100 to $300 is what a typical renters policy will cover, depending on the limits that you request and also how much coverage you need on your contents.

How much do I need? You’ve probably got all kinds of different numbers flying in your head right now, but the best way to do it is really to think about this. One, when it comes to your personal property or your content limit is just do a simple inventory. Walkthrough your house, maybe take some pictures of each room, kind of look at all the stuff and just start adding those numbers up in your head or start writing them down. You’re soon going to find out that you’ve got more stuff than you thought you had.

Don’t short yourself on that, because if something happens and let’s say that you have a fire and it completely takes everything out, you want to make sure you got enough to get all those things back. Do yourself a favor, do an inventory, see what you have, put some value to those, how much it’s going to cost you to replace those things. Make sure that you’re using that number, what it would actually cost to replace those things, and not just what the depreciated amount would be, because you want to make sure that you’ve got replacement costs in the policy.

Take an inventory, go around, take some pictures and keep that somewhere. Probably have some sort of a free storage device online somewhere. Maybe if you have a Gmail account, it comes with a little bit of online storage. If you have an iPhone or an Android, all those come with some sort of online storage that’s free. Upload those things to that place so you have them, so if you have a claim, you can go back to them and be reminded of what you had. That will help you significantly with your claim if you have a claim.

LIABILITY INSURANCE

So, let’s talk about liability insurance. That’s the second piece. Remember, that’s the really important piece and this is a little bit more complicated. Really, this is probably more important, because again, remember, this is the piece that could really become a really large number if something happens and someone brings suit against you because they say you did them wrong.

You want to make sure that you got an attorney and it’s got enough money in there to take care of that, and also whatever potential claim may actually be paid. Because remember, in those situations, we may be talking about a claim that’s paid not at a single time, but over years that come potentially, depending on what happens from that claim, because we could be talking about rehabilitation, mental anguish, and all kinds of other things. So, what do you need to think about? You need to think about yourself, what type of career you have, how much you earn in the career that you have, how much property you have, what the size of your estate or your assets is. If you’ve got a lot of money saved and invested or also you have a large earning potential, you need to go with higher limits. The fact is it’s really easy and really inexpensive to buy half a million in liability limits. It’s just not going to cost you much more to buy that versus $300,000 or $100,000, so I suggest going ahead and buying half a million.

The next question’s going to be what do I need even more? If you’re a business professional, some sort of other professional and you’ve got a large earning potential, you know that you need to protect not only your current assets but also your future earning potential. That way some sort of situation that happens does not become a burden to you and to your family down in the future, so you may want to entertain buying an umbrella policy.

UMBRELLA POLICY

An umbrella policy is simply a policy that adds another layer of liability coverage over the top of your renters’ policy. It’s like a second layer. So you got $500,000 in your renters’ policy, you may buy another million, $2 million, or even $3 million, or even more above that policy to make sure that you don’t run out of limits for a severe claim that you could potentially happen.

Again, yes, the recap. Everybody needs a renters policy. If you rent a home, a condo, a mobile home, an apartment, whatever it is, yes, you need a renters policy, for both yourself, for your contents, as well as also to protect your assets. Will your landlord’s policy protect you? No. Absolutely positively no. If you have a roommate, will theirs protect you? Again, emphatically, no, it will not. The cost is really inexpensive. $100 to $300, maybe a little bit more depending on how much coverage you want if you have to schedule some things. Things that it covers are going to be your contents, your personal property, your liability to protect your assets, and then also I did cover how much that you need to cover for yourself.

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Thank you,

Beaux Pilgrim, CEO

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Beaux Pilgrim
Reed Insurance