Protecting your peace of mind

How much value do you place on peace of mind? If you really stop and think about it, you might be surprised by just how much it matters to you. For example, knowing that your loved ones will be protected in the event of your death can bring you peace of mind. Knowing that you and your loved ones (including your pets) will receive the best, possible healthcare if you need it, can bring you peace of mind. Knowing that you can replace your key possessions if you need to can bring you peace of mind. All in all, peace of mind can be a huge benefit and it’s a benefit we can all enjoy with the health of the right insurance cover. Here are 3 points to creating the right form and level of insurance cover for you.

Integrate your insurance cover with your overall financial plan Your insurance cover should form part of your overall financial plan and thus help you to move towards your life goals. Looking at your insurance from this perspective can make it easier for you to deploy your finances effectively. Specifically, having insurance gives you a clear idea of your potential exposure to any given hazard. Basically, instead of your liability being potentially unlimited, it becomes limited to the premiums and one or more instances of the excess. Knowing this, you can then make better-informed decisions on how much money you need to allocate to protecting yourself against the hazard and, by extension, how much you can allocate to another purpose, such as saving and investing for your future.

Aim to insure everything you value and if you can’t afford this, prioritise effectively In addition to thinking about insuring anything you can see (like your house, your car and/or your pets), think about insuring intangible assets such as your income, your health and, in particular, your peace of mind. Even if you are in full-time employment, you may want to look at forms of income-protection cover and health-related cover. Basically, an employment-linked benefits package may not be as generous as you might hope and neither may any state benefits for which you may qualify (if you qualify for them). You may also wish to give serious consideration to anything which could potentially leave you exposed to liability claims, even if they are totally unjustified. Two obvious candidates for this are pets and bicycles, both of which could potentially leave you open to expensive claims for damages to other people’s person or property, including nuisance claims. Having legal cover could be very reassuring and save you a lot of potential stress.

Ensure you have the right level of cover It may be fairly obvious that you want to avoid having too little insurance. After all, while having too little protection may be better than having none at all, it does rather go against the principle of ensuring that you are protected against whatever life can throw at you. It may, however, be rather less obvious that you also want to avoid paying for excessive insurance cover. Basically, insurance companies will only payout to the extent of the damage caused, they will not pay more even if you have paid for a higher level of cover. In addition to ensuring that you have the right level of cover at the time you make the initial purchase, you need to ensure that the level of cover is updated with your changing circumstances. For example, if you simply have life insurance to cover your mortgage, you may be able to reduce your level of cover each year as you pay back your mortgage and increase the equity in your home. For pets insurance, we act as introducers only.