I walked through every room of our side of the duplex last Sunday with my phone recording, saying things out loud like "couch, bought 2022, about $700," while Tyler held a flashlight up to the top shelf of the bedroom closet. Moose trailed behind us from room to room. It took 40 minutes, and it was the first time I'd ever looked at our stuff as a dollar figure.
We've had renters insurance since we moved in, in January 2022. Kayla nagged me into it, I bought the cheapest policy I could find in about ten minutes, and I never read a page of it. I always figured renters insurance was for people with nicer stuff than ours. Half our furniture came off Facebook Marketplace. Who insures that?
This month our renters policy moved to the same company as our car insurance, as part of the bundle we picked in April. The price stayed at $14 a month. This time I sat down and read the whole thing, which is how I ended up filming my closet.
What our $14 actually buys
Here's how I understand our policy after reading it twice. I'm not an agent, so treat this as one renter's notes and check your own policy for the details.
Our stuff. The personal property part covers our belongings if they're damaged or stolen by the causes the policy lists: fire, smoke, lightning, wind and hail, theft, vandalism and water from something like a burst pipe, among others. Our limit is $30,000, and we pay the first $500 of any claim, which is our deductible. It follows us around, too. If someone broke into the truck and took Tyler's tool bag, that's still our personal property, though some categories have lower limits away from home.
Liability. If somebody gets hurt at our place, or we accidentally damage someone else's property, this part pays for that, up to $300,000. A kitchen fire that spreads to Gloria's side of the duplex is the example our agent gave, and it made my stomach drop a little.
Loss of use. If a covered problem made the duplex unlivable, this pays the extra cost of living somewhere else while it's fixed. Finding a motel that takes a 70-pound hound would be its own project, so I was glad to see it.
There's also a small medical payments piece that covers a guest's minor injury without anybody having to prove fault. Ours is $1,000.
What it doesn't cover
The building isn't ours, so it isn't on our policy. Mr. Dale's insurance covers the walls, the roof and the heat pump. I honestly used to think his policy covered our things too. It doesn't, and our agent said that's one of the most common things renters get wrong.
Floods aren't covered; that takes a separate policy. Earthquakes aren't either unless you add it, which surprised me until I remembered the fault line down in the Bootheel. Damage Moose does to our own stuff isn't covered. And a few valuable categories, like jewelry, have a lower limit for theft. My wedding ring is under ours, but if yours isn't, ask about listing it separately.
How we picked the limits
When I added up the video, our stuff came to about $23,400 if we had to replace all of it new:
- Furniture, beds and mattresses: $6,200
- Clothes and shoes for two people: $4,100
- Tyler's tools and tool chests: $3,800
- Kitchen, pots to plates: $2,700
- TV, laptop, phones and chargers: $2,400
- Bedding, towels, lamps, rugs and the rest: $2,600
- Camping gear, two bikes and Moose's crate: $1,600
Clothes surprised me most. Nobody thinks of their T-shirts as $4,100, but try buying them all again on one Saturday.
We picked $30,000 because I know I missed things, and because going from $25,000 to $30,000 added less than a dollar a month. We also made sure the policy pays replacement cost, meaning what it costs to buy the item new today, instead of actual cash value, which subtracts for age and wear. On a three-year-old couch, that difference is most of the check.
For liability we took $300,000. The step up from $100,000 was about a dollar a month, and we have a big dog, a growing house fund and two paychecks to protect. Moose is a sweetheart, but he's 70 pounds of hound and he greets people with his whole body. Some policies have rules about certain dog breeds, so if you have a dog, read that part of yours.
The $500 deductible was a balance. A $1,000 deductible would have saved a little, but we'd rather keep the policy easy to use if something real happens, and we have $500 set aside.
The bundle helped in another way. Our agent said it took about $11 a month off the car policy. So in a roundabout way, our renters insurance really costs us about $3.
Fourteen dollars a month is $168 a year. After reading the policy, I'd call that cheap for what it would do if our side of the duplex burned on a Tuesday. I saved the video in two places, and I'm going to redo it every spring.
