The new year is coming around again, and just like changing the batteries in your smoke detectors, it’s time to review your insurance coverage to make sure that you are covered for any changes in your status, or just to shop around for better rates. Here’s a little checklist to keep you on track!
- Homeowner’s/ Condominium/ Insurance: Homeowner’s insurance covers the house, the garage and other structures on the property, while condo insurance covers everything from the drywall in. Your homeowner’s policy can be bundled with other policies such as car insurance to save you some money. These policies cover fire, theft, vandalism, and weather hazards such as hurricane, wind, hail or tornado, and even some that are wildly unlikely – such as aircraft crashing into the home. You will need to purchase flood and insurance separately.
- Older Homes: If you own an older home, you may want to look into law and ordinance insurance in the event that your home needs to be rebuilt, and must be rebuilt to the current building code.
- Flood Insurance: If you think that you can live without this kind of coverage, we ask you to think again. Matthew is set to be one of the costliest storms on record, Hermine’s flooding caused massive damage, and king tides are rising to record levels.
- Replacement cost on your dwelling and its contents. These are two policies you do not want to miss. Both pay to replace your property at the current prices, instead of giving you compensation for the current value – a big difference.
- Protecting your art, jewels, and other valuables: Scheduled or high-value personal property insurance covers property in excess of the policy’s limits. In particular people use this to insure jewelry, art, antiques, and other valuables that are best off scheduled and insured separately.
- Car: Auto insurance is another annual to look at, especially as cars depreciate with time. Most common types of insurance are liability, collision, personal injury protection, and uninsured motorists. You may want to add a comprehensive policy to protect from hazards not covered in your basic policy. If you have an older car that has appreciated in value, you can look at dropping this type of coverage.
- Gap insurance: In order to protect your investment in your car you may also want to add gap insurance to cover the cost of replacing your car in the event of an accident that leaves your car a total loss versus getting only the depreciated cash value of your car.
At E&L Insurance, we are independent insurance agents with access to a wide variety of policies from a number of insurance companies. We can custom tailor an insurance package to your needs by picking and choosing from a wide variety of policies that will help you to protect your home, your family, and your property. Give us a call and talk to one of our independent insurance agents, and we’ll get to work on getting you the best coverage possible for the best rates possible. From E&L, have a very happy, safe, and joyous New Year!