Do you have renter’s insurance? Renter’s insurance costs between $150 and $200 a year, a small price to pay for a lot of coverage. First, you also get personal property insurance with worldwide coverage. That means that if your stuff gets stolen from your home, your car, or your luggage while you are traveling; you can get reimbursed. Second, you get personal liability insurance. That protects you in case somebody slips on your porch or trips over an extension cord and breaks his clavichord. I always advise tenants to buy renter’s insurance whenever I sign a lease, and tenants invariably tell me that they will do that, but sadly, a lot of them put off making the purchase until they have suffered a loss, and then it’s too late. That sounds a lot like the unvaccinated people in hospitals who say to the doctor just before they die from Covid19: “Okay doc. Give me the damn vaccine”, and then the doctor has to tell them that it’s too late for that. Sadly, that happens many times every day. It seems hard to believe that there are still large numbers of people in the United States who don’t know the difference between a vaccine and a cure. But I digress. Don’t wait until your stuff is stolen before buying renter’s insurance. If you don’t know where to get renter’s insurance, just go to Google, and type in ‘renter’s insurance’ and the name of the city and state where you live, and you’ll get lots of results. Renter’s insurance is not hard to find. If you are a tenant, you need renter’s insurance!

What about the landlord’s insurance? Doesn’t he already have insurance on the building?
A lot of tenants don’t buy renter’s insurance in the mistaken belief that they already have coverage because the landlord has insurance on the property, but that is just wishful thinking. Sometimes a tenant will ask me: “Do you have fire insurance on this building?” I tell them: “Yes, I have fire insurance.” However, my insurance only protects me from loss, not you. If there is a fire, my insurance policy will pay me for the damage to the building and the personal property that belongs to me, like the refrigerator in your apartment. However, my insurance policy won’t pay you for the loss of your property. If there is a fire and your computer is reduced to a pile of melted plastic, you need your own insurance policy to get reimbursed for that. As I said, imagining that you don’t need renter’s insurance because your landlord has insurance on the property is just wishful thinking. Insurance doesn’t work that way.