"It Had Never Occurred To Me To Protect Myself As A Renter"

November 4, 2011

If I knew then what I do now, I never would have been without renter's insurance. I had rented my first apartment in East Rutherford, New Jersey. I was twenty three and I had no idea what pitfalls could become of a person. I had a very small four room apartment that sat above the laundry facilities for the complex and below another larger apartment. I didn't have much, or so I had thought at the time. I had no idea about how to pay bills yet, manage money or plan for misfortunes. There isn't a class in college to help you with practical life.

One evening, the fire alarm sounded. There was no smoke in my apartment, but I gathered my cat and my purse and headed out the door in my bed clothes. There had been a small kitchen fire in the apartment above me. The fire department needed to use water to put out the fire and this resulted in leakage into my own kitchen. I was appalled by how much water was used in the process and even more horrified that I had to find a place to stay for the evening until the building inspector deemed the apartment safe.

When I returned, I found an unspeakable mess. Just about everything in my own kitchen that was electrical was destroyed. The water had leaked right through the floor into my kitchen. The microwave, the toaster, the toaster oven, a clock and my food in the pantry had been destroyed. At first, it looked more like a mess than a problem. I set to work to clean it up and make some sense of it. Only after I started adding up what all of these items cost did it hit me that I would not be able to afford to replace all of this at once.

It took about four months to make enough money to replace the appliances. The groceries were dry goods and they were also slowly replaced. In the end, I had spent nearly $1,250 replacing the food and appliances. I had learned a very valuable lesson. I could not control the environment around me and I had to plan for the unexpected. I didn't know that such insurance existed for renters. I knew my parents had insurance on the home they owned, but it had never occurred to me to protect myself as a renter.

The next apartment that I occupied was with my future husband. At first, he didn't want to purchase renter's insurance as an added expense. After explaining what had happened to me, we made an inventory of our contents. At the advice of the insurance agent we worked with, we also took pictures of big ticket items (televisions, stereos) and kept receipts in a safety deposit box for them. Surprisingly, renter's insurance turned out to be inexpensive, as compared to what we stood to lose if there was a disaster. I realized as we looked over our inventory that there would be more than $8,000 of personal property that would need to be replaced if we had a loss. I'd never make that mistake again.

- Gioia from New Jersey

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