Contributed Post
The key theme throughout this article is that of protecting your valuables, in particular your car, electronic devices, and your home. In addition to having adequate insurance there are a number of practical things you can do to protect yourself from damage or theft, and that’s what this article covers – but before we go into that let’s touch on insurance.
If you’re taking out insurance it’s a good idea to purchase multiple insurance products with one insurer, as in the event of a claim, insurance companies often look to negotiate with other insurance providers to settle the claim – and having everything under one roof, so to speak, will make the processing of your claim much more streamlined.
Some insurance companies will not just cover your car, but also your home, contents, and even your caravan… by going with a company such as Youi Pty Limited, you won’t have to worry about who insures what, and have the administrative headaches of managing a number of different policies with different providers. You might even be able to haggle a better price if you insure many things with the same insurance provider.
That said, insurance is there to be called upon in the event of an accident or theft taking place – this article is more about prophylactic measures you can put in place to protect the three common valuables of your home, your car, and your gadgets.
YOUR CAR
Whilst you can enhance your skills by taking something like a defensive driving course in order to avert disaster, sometimes, you’re not in the position to respond – as the incident is someone else’s fault and you just don’t see it coming. For this reason, it’s particularly important you maintain the safety of your car (e.g. seatbelts) and invest in a car with a high safety rating that has decent airbags, crash barriers, and a strong safety record such as Volvo, who tend to perform exceptionally well in safety tests.
YOUR HOME
If you agree with the popular phrase that states a person’s home is their castle, then like a castle, you’ll want to fortify the property against the risk of invaders. However, short of digging out a moat and erecting a drawbridge – what can be done in today’s world to reduce the risk to your home.
Firstly, there are a number of risks that have nothing to do with burglars such as the fire hazards caused by leaving candles burning, smoking, or even cooking; in addition to this there are natural disasters that can cause havoc on our homes. It really comes down to taking sensible precautions, but one thing you can do in this vein, is to protect your home from intruders by ensuring you have robust locks on your doors that you keep windows closed and if you’re out for a long period of time (or a couple of days) have internal lights set to come on via a timer to give the impression that people are in the property.
YOUR GADGETS
If you consider that many people today, particularly business people walk around with a smartphone ($500+), a laptop ($1,000+) and some decent headphones ($200+) it’s clear that many people are walking around with close to $2,000 of gadgets on a daily basis. Then, when you consider how integral personal computing devices are to our lives today, particularly in terms of the data that’s stored on your device – it’s incredibly important to maintain the security of your gadgets.
Gadget insurance is becoming increasingly popular as we collect more and more gadgets in the form of smartphones, tablets and laptops. We take these items everywhere we go yet we have this innate albeit somewhat misplaced trust, that nothing bad can happen to these fragile devices – yet, all it takes is an accidental spillage whilst eating lunch at your desk, a quick sleight of hand by a pickpocket on a busy train, or a sudden drop to the ground and your precious device is destroyed.
The majority of gadget insurance covers against most risks and provides much needed peace of mind. That said, when someone loses their gadget, it’s often not the gadget itself they are most upset about – it’s the data; and most the time insurance companies are unable to recover data that hasn’t been backed up. The best type of insurance for this, is regular back-ups to the cloud so that even if you lose your piece possession, the data, that is often much more valuable and far less replaceable will at least be able to be recovered with ease.
