The old saying goes “you can’t be too careful these days”, how long people have been saying this for we don’t know. What we do know is that this phrase is becoming truer with each passing day, you can’t be too careful. And actually, if something means a lot to you (or will be costly to repair or replace), then you need to protect it. The best way to protect you, your assets and your personal possessions is through insurance. Most people will have contents insurance and think that they’re covered for every eventuality, but this isn’t always the case. So, here we will be looking at the many different ways you can protect you and your assets.
Contents insurance
There are lots of different types of contents insurance plans available and each of them covers people in different ways, so we can’t go into detail here and tell you exactly what is covered. To find this out, you will need to look at the terms and conditions of your contents insurance. However, what we can tell you is that although contents insurance does cover the contents of your home in the event of a fire or burglary, for example, it won’t cover you for everything. For example, if you lose your phone on the bus, there’s a chance your contents insurance isn’t going to cover that because the phone wasn’t taken from your home, you lost it outside the home. Contents insurance should be one of the first things you set up, but it shouldn’t be your only form of protection.
Additional insurance
As well as contents insurance, you can buy additional forms of insurance. For example, did you know that you can protect your jewellery and diamonds through purchasing jewellery insurance? This interesting article has a full breakdown of jewellery insurance if you’re new to this. As well as jewellery insurance you can also buy additional insurance cover for things like your electronic devices. Another good insurance to add would be personal possessions insurance, because this covers your belongings in the event of them being lost, broken or stolen in public, not just in your home.
Technology
Technology offers us an abundance of protection in a variety of ways. By technology, we don’t just mean house alarms, but other, simpler and cheaper solutions too. For example, you can buy a wireless doorbell that accept an SD card and records movement, some of these are expensive, but there are a lot of cheap options too and they all do a similar thing. Even if you never actually set it up to work, just seeing the doorbell is likely to put anyone off entering your home. You can also utilise things like smart speakers. Did you know that with a simple command your Amazon Echo device will sound a dog barking. Most technology, such as phones and computers, come with the option to password protect, utilising these free functions will provide you with some protection. There are lots of little things like this that you can do to protect you and your home.
Fraud and cyber attacks
Don’t forget, you aren’t just susceptible to attacks on your or your property, but you’re also open to attacks online and through instances of fraud. This is why it is important to make sure all your data on your computer is secure, and to be savvy when it comes to things like spam emails trying to get login details out of you. The government have some good guidelines on protecting your property and land from fraud.
Other
There are other things you can do to protect yourself and your belongings. Some houses and businesses decide to use a guard dog, for example. Another idea is to make friends with your neighbours and swap numbers with them, then if you ever need to go away from your home for a few days, you have the peace of mind someone is watching it for you.
Unless you live inside a locked vault and never leave, there is no guarantee you or your belongings are entirely safe. The best and only thing you can do is to plan ahead so that if the worst should happen, and you were to lose/damage or have something special to you stolen, then you can at least replace it easily. With all forms of protection, do your research to find out if it is the best thing for you. To help you get started, here is some advice from law enforcement on how to best protect yourself, your home, your garden/sheds, etc and your local community.
Properly protecting your home and possessions is a feature post
