Your landlord covers the insurance on the home or apartment that you live in but you need renters insurance to cover your personal property.
Renters insurance may also pay for accidents that happen on your property or damage to others' property.
You can carry different levels of coverage however, there are limits paid for specific items such as computers, jewelry etc.
Additional coverage (floaters) can be purchased for items not covered in the basic policy.
Separate coverage is available for natural disasters such as earthquakes, floods etc.
Do an estimate of what your possessions are worth.
That indicates how much coverage you need to replace the contents if everything is destroyed or stolen.
You must also decide if you need supplemental insurance for natural disasters or floaters to cover additional items.
A decision must also be made on the amount of deductible.
When making a claim, a deductible may be a percentage of the claim or a fixed dollar amount.
The lesser the deductible the higher the premium cost.
There are two basic types of renter policies.
Actual cash value pays for the cost of the losses at the depreciated value.
Replacement value will pay full replacement costs for new items lost.
There will be a deductible for both actual and replacement coverage.
The important considerations when getting renters insurance are, how much coverage, how big a deductible, whether supplemental coverage and floaters must be added to the policy.
Last but not least is to decide to purchase actual or replacement value insurance.
Renters insurance is relatively inexpensive.
You are only covering personal possessions like clothes, furnishings, appliances, electric components (stereo, TV, computer,etc).
If you shop around you should be able to get a very good premium price as the insurance industry is very competitive.
Depending on the insurer you select you may be able to pay yearly, quarterly or monthly premiums.