Safegaurd your safe place

What does home mean to you? Everyone has a different answer to this question, but the one common meaning is that, for most of us, a home is a safe place. A place to relax and be ourselves. A place where we get to spend time with our loved ones.

Here are a few answers to this very question:

• "Home is seeing my daughter play in the garden." - Bernise Games
• "Home is where the WiFi is." - Sebastian Swart
• "Home is the place registered on my Uber Eats and Mr D app." Reabetswe Kekana

If something had to happen to your safe place, do you have the correct type of insurance to make sure that you would be able to restore it for it to feel like home again? Home insurance is the broadly used term to protect your home, but there are three different types of home insurance cover to consider: building, household contents, and portable possessions cover.

Building vs household contents insurance

An easy way to understand the difference between building and household contents insurance is that if you could lift your house and turn it upside down, everything that would fall out of it would be covered by household contents insurance. What remains would fall under building insurance.

Both building and household contents insurance cover you for loss or damage caused by natural disasters and theft.

Household contents insurance

Whether you're a home owner or renting property, you will need contents insurance. This is type of insurance covers everything you have in your home: from appliances and furniture, to clothing and pots.

To calculate what you should insure your household contents for, consider what each item would take to replace new. In other words, even if your couch cost you R1 000 five years ago, that doesn't mean that is what you should insure it for. If the couch would cost you R5 000 to replace today, that is what you should insure it for.

Portable possessions insurance

Part of household contents insurance, this type of insurance covers the items that you carry outside of your home. These would include clothing and personal items, jewellery, and electronic devices like cellphones and laptops.

Building insurance

If you are a homeowner, you need building insurance. It covers the main building and any outbuildings on your insured property. It also includes the fixtures and fittings in your home, such as a geyser. It is, in essence, the insurance that covers your home as you first got it before you moved your belongings into it.

Contrary to popular belief the amount you insure your building for is not the market value of the property. The insure value of the property is calculated on what it would cost to rebuild the building completely, including architect's fees and debris removal.

Tips to make sure you get the most value from your home insurance:  

• Choose an insurer that offers tailored cover according to your lifestyle.
• Choose an insurer that offers you value through their benefits and services, like access to emergency electricity, plumbing and locksmith services with Home Assist.
• Choose an insurer that has a good claims history and process. Auto Claims, for example, enables you to upload a photo or video quickly and easily of the incident.
• Look for excellent excess benefits with an insurer. An example would be paying no excess if you have a valid claim for damage caused by theft, hijacking, hail, storm or fire if you are covered on the Classic or Purple Plan with Discovery Insure.
• Ideally, you should review your insurance cover once a year to make sure that you have the correct cover in case you had to claim.
• Be sure to immediately add big purchases to your insurance cover
• If you insure both your car and home with Discovery Insure, you will get double the rewards.