Many people confuse home contents insurance with with buildings insurance, but the two are quite different. Buildings insurance specifically covers the structure of your home and doesn’t include the items which fill it. Home contents insurance on the other hand is concerned with exactly that: covering your home’s contents.

Have you every truly considered the value of everything that fills your home? It’s not just the obvious larger pieces, like your fridge, couch, and television. The contents of your home are also made up of multiple smaller items, which cumulatively work out to be worth a lot of money. The cost of replacing and repairing even just a handful of these items could amount to more than you can afford, but that’s precisely why home contents insurance exists.

Many people confuse home contents insurance with buildings insurance, but the two are quite different. Buildings insurance specifically covers the structure of your home and doesn’t include the items which fill it. Home contents insurance (also known as household contents insurance) is concerned with exactly that: covering your home’s contents.

The easiest way to work out exactly what it covers is to imagine that the roof of your home has been removed. Then imagine that your home has been turned upside down. Everything that falls out is what makes up your home contents.

Once you start the process of insuring the belongings in your home, it’s important to make sure that you do so for their proper replacement value. There’s almost no point in paying for a household contents insurance policy if it doesn’t adequately cover what you own.

For instance, if you over-estimate the value of your possessions and over-insure these items then you’re throwing money away on a monthly basis. Of course, the opposite reality of being underinsured is equally problematic. Those who have covered their home contents for less than their replacement value won’t be paid out should they claim.

For these reasons, it’s very important to not only have household insurance, but to make sure that you have specified the correct replacement value for the items covered by your policy.