4 Winter expenses that could freeze your budget

Homeowners are no strangers to unplanned expenses when common household equipment – from geysers and fridges to door locks and alarms – go on the fritz. This can easily derail the most disciplined and carefully planned budget and add unnecessary stress at a time that every penny counts.

This is part and parcel of owning a home and often happens unexpectedly. Savvy homeowners recognise that frequent maintenance and health checks on crucial equipment can go a long way to avoid nasty, expensive surprises.

A good starting point, however, is to check what is covered under your home insurance policy. You would typically have insurance that covers the building, and then also insurance for household contents.

Whilst building insurance is important, it does not mean that cover for household contents can be ignored as this insures your household belongings against fire, explosion, theft, acts of nature like wind, thunder, lightning and storm damage.

With that in mind, here are some top tips for homeowners on how to avoid unplanned expenses if something goes wrong around the house:

• With winter on our doorstep, it pays to check that your geyser is correctly covered as part of your homeowners’ insurance. Geysers are exposed to far greater extremes in colder temperatures and therefore are more at risk of failure than other times of the year when temperature swings are less extreme.
• Water pipes are also at risk in sub-zero temperatures because they can easily freeze up and cause property damage and/or mould damage. Repairing such breakages can become very expensive very quickly, so make sure your insurance policy covers such events.
• There is a high chance that should your geyser or pipes burst, the damage will extend to household contents like furniture and carpets. It pays you to check that these are covered by your policy.
• Homeowners in low-lying areas close to the water – whether a river or the ocean – should also be considering their insurance options more carefully given the impacts from changes to global weather patterns.

Don’t run the risk of being under-insured or not insured at all. Doing so means that you are at far greater risk of unexpected expenses, possibly at a time when you can least afford it.

[By: Hannes Oelsen, Head of Claims at MiWay Insurance]

MiWay is a Licensed Short-term Insurer and Financial Services Provider (License no: 33970).