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Bizzy 
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Joined: 01 January 1900
Location: New Zealand
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 Topic: Low or High?
Posted: 22 November 2010 at 6:58pm |
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Excess on house insurance i mean...
My BIL was skiting how low his house insurance is cause they have a $1000 excess on it... and now i am wondering if that is a good idea or not...
If you dont mind would you share what kind of excess you have and what your thoughts are on having it lower as opposed to higher...??
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_SMS_
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 7:28pm |
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Ours is $200 on most things but $100 on a few things to claim.
I think this is better, since owning our home we have had to claim on insurance 3 times. Someone crashed into our fence/house. The house has flooded. And the tap burst flooding the house again.
None of these things were our fault and there would be no way we could have afforded $1000 per claim.
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High9
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 9:13pm |
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Ours is low. I fell down the stairs with my mac laptop - paid $200 excess and they replaced it (but because I had the old model and they had literally just stopped selling it and released the new model I got the new model so basically an upgrade for $200!)
Also paid $100 when DPs phone fell in the toilet.
Although both of those we did have to pay extra (about $50 each) to get evaluations done so for the laptop a detailed description of the damage and how much repair would be (in the laptop case repair bill was 6k and the laptop was 4k so hence a new laptop and not repairing) same with the phone.
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HuntersMama
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 9:21pm |
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Ours is $100
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cuppatea
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 9:28pm |
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If your excess is a $1000 then it just means that in effect a lot of stuff in your house isn't insured so it's not really that good a deal when you look at it that way.
Our buildings is $100 and has just gone up to $200 when we renewed, I think the contents is $100 too.
We haven't needed to claim until the quake and now it's good having it low as we can get the damage not covered by EQC (fences/paths) fixed for a small excess, if we had to pay out a $1000 we probably would leave them bowed and cracked.
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BeLoved
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 10:00pm |
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Our excess is $500 to bring our premiums down, it was advised to us by our mortgage broker to do, and it made a decent difference to our premiums for it to be worth it.
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NovemberMum
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 11:12pm |
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our is $100 if it was anymore then it would not be worth making claims on a lot of things.
for eg our camera which got water damage to it if our excess was $1000 then it would have been cheaper for us just to go out and buy a new camera.
we would also be reluctant to make claims on things eg our tv blows up as it isnt somethign we need and we coudlnt justify spending $1000 besides I am pretty sure you can buy tvs new for less than that?
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emz
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Posted: 22 November 2010 at 11:13pm |
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Same as two_boys, if our excess was $1000, we wouldn't be getting our driveway, paths and fences fixed (well not in the near future, would have to save for a while!)
Our excess is $250 on both house and contents, the lowest we can get. We've had to claim 3 times on contents in 3.5 years (2 burglaries, 1 carpet damage due to a child who shall remain nameless!) so it was worth it to not have to pay a huge excess.
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Kazzle
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 7:43am |
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ours is 200 i think and we complete coverage
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mummy_becks
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 8:41am |
ours is $300. I have a nil excess on my health insurance and pay a little bit more than someone else on the same plan just to not have to worry about the excess when claiming.
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I was a puree feeder, forward facing, cot sleeping, pram pushing kind of Mum... and my kids survived!
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clover
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 8:57am |
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I actually can't remember but I think it is $250. Insurance is all about risk. If you're willing to take the higher excess to bring down the premium the risk is that you'll have to pay more if you need to make a claim, or not claim on things that won't be worth while like a camera or tv. The flip side is that if you don't make claims at all you've not "wasted" so much dead money.
Insurance coverage basically comes down to a persons risk tollerance, some people will be heavily insured, some will have limited or no cover. You really just have to go with what you are comfortable with.
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MyPeas
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 10:30am |
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Ours is also quite low, not sure exactly what it is but only a couple of hundred at the most, think it was the standard option.
I think it also depends on the insurance company and type of insurance as I think I've seen car insurance quotes where the premium doesn't really reduce much for an increased excess.
As others have said you'd need to weigh up the risks and benefits of any possible premium savings vs increased excess.
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Bizzy
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 1:50pm |
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cool - thanks for sharing guys. after thinking more about this i definitley dont think that a $1000 excess is something i would be comfortable with...
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GuestGuest
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 2:34pm |
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Just as an aside, if you go with State they offer a pay out in their house policy at full market value if it's a write-off, others don't. That has been invaluable to us after the quake but you don't tend to look for things like that in your policy when signing up because you think nothing bad is ever going to happen.
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amme_eilyk
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Posted: 23 November 2010 at 3:22pm |
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an easy way to think about it is that if your house burned down tomorrow, how much do you have sitting in your bank account right now that you could use to make a claim. With the insurance excess, you really need that money sitting in your bank account at all times.
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Low or High?
