5 Insurance Policies You Should Review

Since little Nora’s arrival in January, I’m confident we’ve doubled our possessions due to all the baby stuff that vomited all over our home. We only spent $150 to prepare for Nora’s arrival but we inherited a LOT of toys and clothes from family and friends. We recently met with our insurance agent to review our policies and to make necessary changes now that life looks a little different with Nora in the picture. One of the significant changes we made was increasing our property coverage in case a fire destroyed everything we have. We lean pretty hard on the minimalist side so we originally had only $25,000 coverage if we lost everything in our home. That probably seems way low but this might put into perspective how minimalist we were: When we moved to Calgary for 6 months we each packed one suitcase with clothes and then fit every single thing we owned in the smaller bedroom of our condo (minus a couch we sold before we left) since we were renting out the rest of our home to friends. We didn’t have much then and we still don’t have a ton now but it’s more than what we used to have. Here are a few areas we’ve reviewed and I have added a few more that you may want to look into to make sure your insurance policies are up to date and are covering the appropriate amounts.

Auto Insurance


What’s your current deductible? If you have a gem like our ‘99 Honda Accord that’s maybe worth a couple thousand then why would you pay hundreds of dollars if you’ll end up paying more for insurance than the car is even worth? If you’ve recently added another car you can qualify for discounts for having more than one car.

Property Insurance

Do you have any jewelry like wedding rings or other prized possessions insured? I didn’t realize this existed but if you have a significant amount of expensive jewelry you may want to consider covering it. Often insurance companies will offer another discount for bundling multiple types of insurance. We get this overall discount by having our car, homeowners, and property insurance all insured by the same company.

 Homeowners Insurance

The total worth of items in our home has definitely gone up over the past few years. We’ve added new furniture, electronics, and our beloved deep freezer over the past year. Do you have appropriate coverage? If you haven’t taken pictures of your house in awhile now may be a good time to do it assuming you got all of your spring cleaning done. If a fire occurred and your insurance gave you a blank piece of paper to write down all of the possessions you had in your home (toothbrushes and all), having pictures of your closets, kitchen cupboards, rooms, etc will be very helpful. We more than doubled the amount we’d like covered and it only added $15/year to the cost of our policy. It won’t break the bank to make sure you’ve got the appropriate amount of coverage.

Life Insurance

We recently bought term life insurance for my husband and are in the process of getting me covered. In my mind I’m not “worth” much since I stay home with Nora and only work a couple days each month but I have to consider the cost of daycare and a few other factors if Dave were to be on his own with Nora. Life insurance is the cheapest it will ever be for you TODAY because today is the youngest and likely the healthiest you’ll ever be. Getting coverage now can lock you in on a lower rate.

Health Insurance

Do you know what your coverage includes? You might be missing out on some benefits if you haven’t taken a look at what you can have covered. For example, I almost added a breast pump to our baby registry (those suckers can cost $100-$400!) until a friend told me to check if my insurance covered one. I ended up with a free electric pump! Another thing to re-evaluate is your deductible. It might be worth it to pay less money for the higher deductible if you never get sick or need any medical attention.

If you have an insurance agent and they haven’t reached out to you to review your policies, now may be the time to reach out to them. You could save money by cutting unnecessary expenses and you’ll have peace of mind knowing everything is up to date and accounted for.

source: lifeandmyfinances.com