Receiptify , get into a receipt routine.
At www.insurance4everyone.co.uk, we strive to provide you with useful lifestyle tips that make buying home insurance that little bit easier and quicker.
Our latest tip is; that if you buy something don't just keep your receipt, keep it organised.
It’s simple advice, but an area that many of us are loathed to doing properly. It sounds obvious, but having a receipt shows when you bought an item, what it was and how much it cost.
It will not be the most interesting task, but it could save you money and time for your home insurance activity. The initial plunge is always the worst part!
When you buy something that you might want covered under your home insurance, we suggest you make sure that a record is kept and you have a routine you stick to.
'Why should I bother?' we hear you ask. If you needed to make an insurance claim, you need to support what you are claiming for. This is particularly the important if you are claiming for higher value items, such as jewellery, a watch or an item of electrical equipment in the home such as a TV.
You get your cover right
For your home contents renewal each year, you need to decide whether or not you should keep the same level of cover you have or change it. Home contents insurance pricing takes this level of cover into account.
If you have roughly guessed the amount your personal and electronic items cost, you may be under-estimating your coverage. Equally, if you over estimated the amount you needed it could result in you overspending on premium cover. A good knowledge our your purchases is therefore essential.
Besides receipts, don’t forget to go round each room in your house once a year with a pen and paper and estimate how much you would need to spend to replace everything in the room. Do this for every room and the tot up the total; you may be surprised how much you own.
Don’t forget to include things such as carpets & curtains and free standing items such as wardrobes, cookers, etc (that are not built in) as these are classed as part of your contents cover.
If you own items of expensive jewellery (diamond rings, watches) why not take a close up picture of them and one of you wearing it? It might help get a more exact replacement if the worst case scenario were to happen.
Receipts & the “would I insure this?” test:
Obviously, grocery, coffee and take-away bills are not things you need to keep unless you are super-organised and run a detailed budget. The ones you want are those that record items of value, be they personal or financial.
Tip! Don’t forget, a trip to the garden centre is worthy of record, some home insurance products cover malicious damage to shrubs and expensive garden plants as well, although it does add to your premium.
Some of us tend to hoard receipts until we can tolerate no more, however not all receipts are worth keeping. Try to clean out your wallet or purse once a week and put them somewhere safe. Then once a month (perhaps around payday) organise them as you see fit.
Our useful tip would be to keep the section for “receipts” in a cheap expandable file; a simple or nice moleskin notepad; or in some C7 envelopes. You’ll then be able to pop the receipts into “categories” and keep them together with your other records.
Using a separate envelope for each one, you may wish to use categories like; to do (for the weekly receipt dump), electronics, furnishings, white goods, clothes, jewellery, gardening, kids or anything else you see fit. When disposing of receipts that include personal details or credit/debit card details, ensure you shred these to help prevent someone trying to steal your identity.
Each time you run the housekeeping for receipts; pop each receipt that passes the “should I keep it” test into the relevant envelope. Make a note of the item, date, price and category in your moleskin notepad for future reference.
Tip! You could of course use an excel spreadsheet, as in the modern IT age the computer is king. Likewise, if you have a scanner, why not scan the receipts and save these on your computer. Just make sure you back up these items and keep a backup safe away from the home.
Being organised is worth it:
Whichever method you prefer, it is worth having a rolling total as this is what is relevant to your home insurance. This would be especially useful if you have replaced an item, as you don’t want to double count it. Find the item, cross it out and deduct the price you paid, then simply dig out the receipt and discard it as you see fit.
When your home insurance renewal approaches, take a look at your records and check the running total of items against the amount of cover you are considering. Neatly, this will give you a more accurate picture. You may then want to “load” a little more cover onto your account for any anticipated growth in your purchases over the coming year.
Tip! If you purchase something during the year that is expensive, its best not to wait until the renewal date to increase your insurance cover, make sure you tell your insurers straight away, otherwise it may not be insured.
With this organised stockpile of receipts and notes you could quickly check to ensure you had covered the really important items or dig them out if the worse case scenario happens.
There are lots of uses for this, it would help your monthly budgeting as well as home insurance renewals and home insurance claims. It will also help you establish whether or not you need a lower home insurance excess, or a higher one. If most of your “insured items” lists are of a higher value, you could consider increasing your excess to reduce your premium.
Robbery anguish
Obviously, things like DVD’s and clothes are small in value but if you were robbed and they all disappeared, the receipts might be a useful way of proving you had as many as you said you did.
When you need to make a burglary claim on your Home contents insurance, you will need a crime reference number. Unless you are concerned that you are in immediate danger, it is best to contact your local police station directly, more information is available on the Directgov website.
A police officer will be dispatched to your property, it’s likely your mind will be all over the place and a question to recall all the items missing is tough to answer. This is the time to bring out your records to help you through.
Online receipts:
Make sure you include your online receipts in your new regime. Every E-commerce site will be able email you a receipt or show you a screen with a reference number. Make sure you print these off and run the same drill, that way you know where you stand online and offline.
Tip! If you are an avid user of music and video downloads, make sure you keep a record of these too. If your laptop were to break or get stolen - you might lose your entire cache if you haven’t got a back-up solution.
We hope this helped:
Saving money is of course about the insurance premium you pay, but its also about getting the right cover.
If you under-insure your home contents, you lose peace of mind, because if you need to claim you will have a shortfall.
We'll be tweeting a few of these tips and bringing you more useful articles soon.
James*
Marketing & Branding team
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