April Fools Day — a day to play practical jokes and tease the ones we love. It’s all fun and games until the egg on your face is the loss of coverage or a rejected insurance claim. Make sure you don’t look foolish after an accident. Review your insurance coverage today.
Home Insurance
Most homeowners select their home insurance when they buy their home and don’t think of it again until they need to file a claim. This can become a costly mistake once values and replacements costs change, but your insurance policy hasn’t kept pace. Whether you’ve made additions or the replacement value of your home has increased, you need to have enough insurance to cover you in the worst situation — a total replacement of your home, including contents.
You also want to review your homeowners insurance for coverage on valuable jewelry, art you’ve collected, and other higher value items you may have acquired over time. Your basic policy will cover some of these things, but may not cover everything. Checking in annually can save you a lot of heartache later.
Auto Insurance
We all know to update our auto insurance when we get a new vehicle, but a lot of other circumstances go forgotten — which means you could be paying too much for insurance or not have enough coverage. Updates you might need to make include:
- Updating drivers after your young driver moves out of the house
- Updating driver information after a divorce
- Changing your commute miles after getting a new job
- Updating the reason you drive your vehicle — switching from leisure to commute or vice versa
- Increasing liability coverage over time, especially as more people in your household become drivers
You may also qualify for new bundled discounts that you didn’t before, so it’s worth a phone call to your insurance agent.
Life Insurance
Not enough people have life insurance, but those who do have a tendency to forget to update it when their life changes. If you don’t have life insurance yet, consider this a good time to buy coverage. But if you do have life insurance, an annual review is a good time to adjust things based on recent life changes.
- Adding a spouse or new children as beneficiaries.
- Increasing your policy amount as you take on new expenses like college education or owning a home.
- Updating your life insurance policy after a major life change like the birth of a child, divorce, or retirement.
Life insurance isn’t exactly set it and forget it. You always want to make sure the correct people are named and that you have enough to help your loved ones in the event of your death.
Ready to schedule your annual review and avoid looking foolish when it’s time to file a claim? Contact Charlotte Insurance today.