Since you don’t own the place you don’t have to pay for the insurance to cover it. Home contents insurance basically covers the likes of clothes, furniture, appliances and personal items in the event that they are stolen, or damaged in the case of fire, burglary or natural disasters— floods, earthquakes and storms.

No, a major party is not considered to be a natural disaster and any damage caused by one won’t be covered! When you take out a home contents insurance policy, you have to work out the value of the contents of your home—this is the amount that you want covered by the policy. Estimating the correct amount can be a big problem for lots of people, and it is so important that you get this figure right.

If you undervalue the contents of your home you could be in real trouble—what if you lost everything in a fire and couldn’t afford to replace it from the insurance agency’s payout? Here are a couple of ways of working out the value of the contents of your house:

• To estimate the current value of the major items in your house, have a look through the Trading Post and see how much they or similar models are selling for.