•S t e p 3 —Contact your insurance company and let them know what has happened.

•S t e p 4 —Try to collect any information, or even evidence, that you think might be useful to your insurer.

Things like any clues as to why a fire may have started, or who may have burgled your home. If you are burgled and there is damage to your house, like a broken door or window, you should tell your landlord or real estate agent ASAP.

Back to my friend Toby—when he and his housemates moved into their place at Newcastle, one of their mums reminded them that they had better get home contents insurance. They had to sit down and work out not how much all of their stuff was currently worth, but how much it would cost them to replace it—which ended up being quite a bit because of their three expensive computers.

The good thing was that they could all be on the same policy, because they only had to get one policy to cover the whole house. This made the cost of the policy heaps cheaper for them, since they could split the premium three ways. They ended up taking out a policy from NRMA, paying around $350 to insure the contents of their home for the whole year!