Home insurance - tips & advice - contents insurance

You may have spent years and years accumulating valuable possessions, from CDs and electrical equipment to jewellery and furniture. Your home could be quite a treasure trove – so it makes perfect sense to get proper home contents insurance.

However, many people don’t seem to realise how much their possessions could be worth. According to the British Insurance Brokers Association, 70% of homes in the UK are underinsured when it comes to contents insurance.

Whether you are thinking of taking out a contents insurance policy or updating an existing one, something which many experts recommend, it’s useful to keep a few rules in mind.

• To work out the value of your home contents – go round your home, room by room, adding up what the contents in each is worth (not forgetting the loft or outbuildings!)
• When putting a value on items, use the figure it would cost to replace them at current prices.
• Make a note of higher value items as most insurance policies have a single item limit – Direct Line ask that you specify any valuables worth more than £1,500, to help ensure you are fully covered.
  

The Direct Line contents calculator is a really useful tool that can help you work out how much your contents are worth and the level of cover you need. And you can get a quote online to find out how much it will cost to be covered.

As an added bonus, you can get cheaper home contents insurance with our online discount.