10 tips for insuring your home

Insuring your home can be a long and complicated process.
Have a look at this brief but informative guide for 10 tips
that could make the whole experience a little bit more
bearable.

1. It's worth making sure that your house is fully
protected with a pretty comprehensive range of security
measures. A basic requirement is a mortice deadlock or
rimlock that conforms to British standard 3621 but you
should also seriously think about installing a NACOSS
approved burglar alarm and joining a neighborhood watch
scheme. The more secure your house the better chance you'll
have of getting a 5-10% discount.

2. Don't let your home become one of the vast majority of
houses in the UK that are underinsured. One of the key
measures you can take is to make sure your contents
insurance is up to date, this means taking into account any
new purchases like expensive electrical equipment or even
pricey designer clothes.

3. Make sure you know what isn't covered by your home
insurance policy. Although building insurance should cover
more than simply the main building and potentially include
any outbuildings such as garages as well as gates, patios,
sheds and fences any of the above might not be incorporated
so you'd be well advised to study the exclusions in your
policy.

4. Lengthy periods away from your home might not be
covered. Find out the number of days your insurance allows
you to be away without losing your cover and let your
insurer know about any significant travel plans.

5. Find out if your home is at risk of flooding and make
sure your home insurance policy offers adequate cover if
you are. Writing this in the summer of 07 we've recently
witnessed the havoc flooding can wreak and recent flood
maps show an additional 300,000 homes in England and Wales
are at risk, so do a bit of your own research to find out
if you're affected.

6. The 'reasonable care' clause means just that so do take
care to look after your possessions by locking doors and
windows and trying not to advertising your valuables.

7. Take note of your maximum single-item cover. It's likely
to be something like £1,000 or £1,500 and essentially
represents the most your policy will pay out on a single
item. You'll need to insure anything worth much more than
this individually.

8. Look out for combined building and contents policies.
Sometimes using the same insurer for both will mean some
sort of discount package is available and will obviously
save you time and hassle. Don't just plump for a combined
deal for convenience sake though; a good policy for
contents could be teamed up with a less impressive deal for
the building or vice-versa.

9. If you're after a quick money saving tip, think twice
about paying for your home insurance with a direct debit,
it's entirely possible you'll be charged up to 30%
interest. A good alternative is to pay using a 0% purchases
credit card. 10. Don't over-insure yourself; the sum
should be the cost to rebuild rather than what the property
is worth. In certain cases the insurer will only pay out
the cost to rebuild anyway. A rebuild cost estimate should
be pretty cheap and easy to come by so make sure you get it
right.

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For peace of mind from a name you trust get an online home
insurance quote at
http://www.asdafinance.com/home-insurance.html yoday