What type of insurance for your house to you have? Do you know your deductible? Can you afford to pay the deductible should you need to? Do you live near water? Yes, these are a lot of questions to think about, but having the answers to these questions is just as important.

When it comes to protecting your investment in your home insurance should be at the top of the list. There are other things also, but insurance should be your first means of protection. Making sure your insurance will cover a natural disaster, fire, flooding, tree falls, and even break-ins. Think about all aspects of insurance and all possible outcomes. Create a list and compare it to your policy. It is always good to have a “checkup” with your insurance agent.

I have a few different scenarios which have happened to us. A few years ago, a tree fell on our garage after a windstorm. This was covered under our insurance. The reason it was covered was a few years prior to that a large branch fell on our car and because we had recently had our trees trimmed it was covered. This was the first time I realized the importance of having your trees trimmed. An adjuster actually had to come out to see the tree had been serviced. After that, I have the trees checked out every couple of years. The second incidence was about a decade ago. We live on a septic system and the old cast pipe started caving in. The pipe clogged and needless to say, our basement started filling with shower and toilet waste. We had a $1000 deductible. It was tough to gather it at the time, but well worth it.

Several years prior to the septic, we had another flood in the basement. Living on a well, it is important to kill any bacteria from time to time. Simply solution was bleach poured directly into the well. We decided to do this when we were heading out on vacation for a week. This was ideal to let it settle and sit for the week and planned on flushing it out when we returned. Instead, we came home to the smell of bleach. When you have copper pipes, they can develop pinholes in them. Often times what happens is the pinholes plug up from grit in the pipes. Well, the bleach cleared out the grit and our pipes sprinkled bleach water all over our basement. It was covered by our insurance, after the deductible.

The reason for the different scenarios is to show you things happen. I would have never predicted any of this happening. I thought about obvious things like a fire. Learning about insurance helped us to tweak our policy to accommodate other possibilities.

Consider an insurance check-up with your agent. You can also ask the agent about regular home maintenance recommended by the insurance company. I am pretty sure tree trimming will be part of your conversation.