How I made $5,728 dollars from renters insurance and why you should get renters insurance

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This goes back to a little over 2 years ago when hurricane katrina “ravaged” the town of new orleans. I was living there at the time and I didn’t go back home or to see what was left of it until around november. I had been out of town for 3 months. During this time, not only did everything in my fridge end up rotting, people had been through my apartment to take some things that were not theirs. I was a victim of looting! What pissed me off was that they ripped open my plastic piggy bank and took everything except my pennies and nickles and dimes, they took my bills and my quarters. My flat screen was too heavy to take so it was moved around, my nike air jordans were gone (the ones I used during surgery), my collection of used colognes, my bath robe, my ophthalmoscope (yes I got the pan optic), and pretty much everything that wasn’t tied down that had some value to them.

The messed up thing was that supposedly there was security there at all times because I lived in an apartment complex. The door wasn’t broken into which meant someone used a key. The only people who had access to this was the people that worked at the apartment complex, the security guards, or the police. When no ones watching the entire city, and no one planned to be back for months, its obvious that people in authority like the police can get tempted by my ophthalmoscope (it retails for > 500 dollars). Anyway, the guys downstair didn’t take any responsibility for this so a lot of my neighbors got jacked. I had a sigh of relieve because I had rental insurance. Why did I get rental insurance? You are probably thinking that the finance physician has always been frugal and careful with his money but at the time, the only reason why I got insurance was because my car insurance there was crazy. I was paying almost 4 thousand dollars a year on insurance, I just turned 25 at the time, and I was due for a rate change. My insurance guy told me that if I had renters insurance, the combination of car insurance and renters insurance would actually be cheaper than if i had just car insurance alone.

This sounds crazy right? Insurance companies are crazy like that. But the crazier thing about this was that I bought this insurance 2 months before the hurricane hit. Who would have known. Talk about luck. Not only did I qualify for getting monetary compensation for my stuff, I also got “emergency cash.” I went to hawaii and stopped by the state farm office and told them I was a katrina evacuee. I qualified for 2500 dollars in emergency cash. When I got back home, when I found my stuff looted, I got covered for the stuff that rotted in my fridge and the amount of miles that I drove to evacuate and relocate in my car.

This is why I need to convince you that you NEED renters insurance. It only costs 200 dollars at most for decent coverage a year. I had coverage for 10 thousand, now I have coverage for 30 thousand dollars of stuff. What it also covers is liability. Meaning that if you invite someone to your house and they hurt themselves, they can get compensated. If you live in an apartment complex and you have a plumbing leak and it was your fault, your insurance pays for it. Here is how renters insurance is broken down:

Residential insurance policies are broken down to what are known as HO’s or homeowners - and is numbered. HO-4 is designed for renters vs. HO-6 is for condo owners. You are normally covered for things that include fire, lightning, windstorm, hail, explosion, civil commotion, aircraft, vehicles, smoke, vandalism, theft, falling objects, electrical surge. Floods and earthquakes are sometimes covered but you need to read your policy to find out. You also need to ask if it is replacement cost or actual cash value. You can submit a claim and they require that you list the price, any paperwork to substantiate that you own these items and for actual cash value, they depreciate a lot of things. Get the replacement cost because it would suck if they only paid for half your couch. Also remember to keep receipts or manuals or anything to claim these things. It sucks to have a policy and not claim anything when the time comes because you don’t have the paperwork. If all else fails, take lot of pictures.

I talked to my insurance agent and I found something interesting, if you have a TV and you can’t claim that the TV is a certain brand b/c you have a crappy photo of it, then you will get something to “make you whole” but end up with the cheapest priced item in that general category. Read your policy carefully because some items have a cap. If you have a gun, you are covered for a certain monetary amound and a limit to the amount of guns that are covered. Same thing with jewelry, there is a set limit on coverage unless you individually cover these in a separate policy. Cash lost is also limited to a few hundred dollars so don’t leave all your hard earned money under your mattress or else you’ll lose it in a fire and can’t get it back. They also foot your bill if your home is unlivable. This is why I got the 2,500 dollars.

Liability is another big issue. I am covered for up to 300,000 dollars in liability if anything goes wrong that someone will sue me for. In a highly litiginous society, you can never be too careful. My cap for my liability in car insurance is also 300,000 dollars but I’ll raise it to 500,000 in a couple of year. You should also think about this too instead of saving a few buck here an there. It is even truer if you are a future doctor or a resident or a private practice physician. People love to get their hands on all the things that we worked hard for so protect yourself with insurance. So who do I insure with? I used to do it with State Farm. They are great but I went with Allstate when I moved to atlanta.

bottom line: renters insurance saved my ass when my ass needed saving. Go and find out more and get renters insurance. Don’t go for the cheapest company, go with a national brand company like Allstate, Farmers, State Farm etc. You want to make sure that you can make a claim when a claim making is needed.

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