Fact. Accidents happen. We naively think they’ll never happen to us, yet for many of us, at some point in our lives we will be rudely woken up from this fog of naivety and have to face a challenging crisis. We’ve established that accidents happen and it’s pertinent to note how many of these accidents happen whilst driving.
Fortunately, the majority of road traffic accidents are resolved with a sugary drink to get over the shock and a minor stay in an auto repair shop for our beloved vehicle. This leads on to the importance of having a safety net, as whilst insurance is a basic legal requirement it’s also there to protect you should you have an accident.
In this article, we’re going to look at a number of key valuables to protect ranging from your car to your mobile device and home.
CAR
There are many insurance products out there, and with regard to car insurance, a popular trend is that of short term insurance which can be helpful if you’re using a car just for a few days, but would prove to be a very expensive way of insuring your vehicle sporadically throughout the year and an annual insurance policy would likely provide much better value.
It can be tempting to misrepresent your position somewhat when it comes to car insurance, as it’s such an expense many people try to mitigate the cost by ‘adapting’ their details to get a lower premium; a common example is to say their car is parked in a locked garage or that they live in a better neighbourhood than they do (e.g. a relative’s house) in order to knock a substantial chunk off the rate.
This practice might seem like a good idea at the time, but when it comes to making a claim, the insurer will understandably check up on the facts you provided and if there is misrepresentation they will likely deny the claim and potentially cancel your insurance.
HOME
If you agree with the popular phrase that states a person’s home is their castle, then like a castle, you’ll want to fortify the property against the risk of invaders. However, short of digging out a moat and erecting a drawbridge there are many simple adjustments that can be made to reduce the risk to your home.
It really comes down to taking sensible precautions such as protecting your home from intruders by ensuring you have robust locks on your doors, that you keep windows closed, and if you’re out for a long period of time (or a couple of days) have internal lights set to come on via a timer to give the impression that people are in the property.
Insurance is a great safety net, but prevention is often better than cure and one of the best ways to protect the safety of your home is to install a sophisticated smoke detector and fire alarm.
GADGETS
Gadget insurance is becoming increasingly popular as we collect more and more items in the form of smartphones, tablets and laptops. We take these items everywhere we go yet we have a naive trust, that nothing bad can happen to these fragile devices – yet, all it takes is a sudden brake with your phone on the passenger’s seat to send it flying to the point of smashing the screen. Gadget insurance is a great way to protect your much treasured devices yet one of the most important safety nets is to make regular back-ups to the cloud in order to protect and conserve your precious data should the worst ever happen.