The Top 3 Most Popular Home Insurance Myths

When it comes to your average home insurance policy, sometimes the truth is elusive. The fact is, there are many myths out there about home insurance coverage. Here are the top 3.
 

1. The average homeowners insurance policy offers protection against flood. This is one of the most predominant myths about home insurance, and one that’s probably led to an awful lot of rude awakenings from customers who assumed they were covered. First of all, never assume anything with insurance—if you don’t know for certain, call your insurance rep and find out. Second, the fact that they call it “flood insurance” should tip you off that it’s not an inclusion of standard home insurance.
    
2. Filing an insurance claim will cause your premium to rise. This isn’t always the case. Most find that their insurance premiums rise if they’re constantly filing claims, even for minor damage that they shouldn’t rely on the insurance company to care for. While it seems counter intuitive to not call your insurance company when something happens, it makes sense in the long run to keep your premiums from going up—especially if you’ve got a high deductible and the cost of repair is relatively low. However, if you have a genuine claim that well exceeds your deductible and you don’t have a history of filing frivolous claims, don’t let this myth stop you from taking advantage of the policy you’ve been paying into. Your insurance company actually looks at a lot of factors to determine what your premiums will be, and not just whether you’ve filed a claim before.
    
3. Home insurance coverage is a total rip-off. Wrong again. Just because you pay into an insurance policy for years and years and never see a return on your investment doesn’t mean the money’s going to waste, or that you’ve been foolhardy to spend it. In fact, with the desired goal being to never have to use your insurance at all, you should consider yourself lucky if you’ve been paying into a policy for years and haven’t ever had a chance to see how well it works. People have a built-in distrust of bureaucracies. But if that distrust goes so far as to start affecting your ability to make smart decisions about insuring your home and belongings against possible future hazards, that same distrust has become an unhealthy skepticism. Think long and hard on where you stand with regard to paying out for home insurance. You don’t want to find yourself on the other side of a bona fide disaster, staring down the barrel of potential bankruptcy because you couldn’t or wouldn’t spare the monthly premiums to buy coverage.