Home insurance costs, along with many other services and goods over the last several years have soared, across the board. You will often hear that this is partly because building material has risen in costs, causing the costs of building a house from the ground up to rise, consequently causing your insurance premiums to rise (as they would have to cover the cost of rebuilding your house). Insurance is a complex and multi-faceted industry that I am not going to pretend to know a lot about.

What I do know is costs are going up, it’s getting harder for small insurance companies to stay in business, and therefore it’s getting harder for people to find insurance. This brings me to my point that many people are not privy to, it’s that once you file a claim, it could cause your insurance provided not to renew with you, and make it even harder to find home insurance in the future.

This makes no sense, what is the point of insurance if you get dropped for using it? Well, that is a fair point, however, that is not how insurance companies see it. When it comes to insurance, it’s all about liability. If you insurance company’s think you are more likely to file a claim (because of a history of doing so) then it’s riskier for them to insure you, and therefore they won’t, or they’ll charge a lot if they do.

I would never discourage anyone from having home insurance or filing a claim, As a matter of fact, having home insurance is vital and most banks require it to give you a loan on a home. That being said, it’s good to note that when you do file a claim, it could make life harder for you down the road in terms of finding affordable coverage. Sometimes you really don’t have a choice, but sometimes it’s worth doing a cost/benefit analysis to determine what would be the potential pay out on a claim, the deductible you’d have to pay, and if it’s worth the potential headache of having to find new coverage down the road. Sometimes you just have to do what you have to do, but it’s always good to run all the numbers and make an informed decision, Thanks for reading