Wednesday, July 21, 2010

8 Easy Tips for Cheaper Home Insurance

Nobody likes paying for home insurance, but is a necessary evil for most of us. This does not mean you have to pay through the nose for it, though - try these 8 easy tips for cheaper home insurance and see how you could reduce your premiums.

- Shop around

By comparing prices from several insurance companies, you may be able to reduce their premiums by a substantial amount. This may seem obvious, but research has shown that surprisingly large proportion of people either just renew their current policy or to obtain only one or two appointments. Many websites automatically compare dozens of insurance policies for you, making it one of the easiest ways to reduce your insurance bill.

- Buy online

If you buy your policy online you can often get a discount of up to 20% off the normal price, because there are fewer administrative costs involved and the savings can be passed on to you.

- Combine your buildings and contents policies

Many insurers will give a discount if you take the two types of home insurance with them, and it works usually cheaper than getting the two types of policies from different companies.

- Prepaid

Although most insurance companies allow you to pay your premium in monthly installments, many charge interest for it. If you can afford to pay the premium for a full year in advance, then this will be cheaper in the long term.

- No claim for small amounts

Making many small claims can increase your insurance costs because their insurance can be seen as a greater risk and increase their premiums. He also lost no claims discounts of its policy has. Of course, you are entitled to claim for anything that your policy covers, but ask yourself if you make a small claim is really worth the trouble and possible future expenses.

- Voluntary excess

This relates to the last point. Insurance policies have something called "excess", which basically means that the policy will not pay claims below a certain value. In some of the policies, if you choose to increase your excess to a higher level, then the premiums will be lower.

- Increase the security of your home

Reinforcing the security of your home with better door locks, window locks, exterior lighting, alarm systems, can cause lower premiums. Ask your insurance company what you can do to get additional discounts.

- Reduce indoor

Many policies have benefits that might need, such as coverage of personal belongings during the trip, or 'free' legal advice. Look through your policy and see what parts of it that really needs - to reduce coverage to a size that may be able to reduce your premium.