Mother Nature could be excused if she wondered, “How much more prompting do you people need?”
This year delivered epic wildfires, devastating hurricanes, massive floods and some pretty horrific earthquakes. Yet many people still haven’t taken a few critical steps to protect their financial lives from such disasters.
Consider setting aside a few hours this week to take care of these four essential tasks:
REVIEW (AND BOOST) YOUR INSURANCE
Most renters don’t have renters insurance, but they need it since their landlord’s policy won’t cover their stuff.
The vast majority of homeowners do have homeowners insurance, but often not enough—especially if their policies haven’t been updated regularly to reflect rising construction costs or improvements. Ask your insurer to rerun the numbers to ensure you have enough coverage to rebuild your home completely. United Policyholders, an advocacy group for insurance customers, recommends adding as much “extended replacement cost” coverage as you can afford. This add-on boosts the policy’s coverage limits by 20 percent to 100 percent if costs run unexpectedly high, as often happens in disaster zones when rebuilding costs soar. Another smart addition: “building code upgrade” or “ordinance coverage” to pay the higher costs of rebuilding to current standards.
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