The smoke alarm went off in the stairwell on a Sunday evening in March 2024, and for about ten minutes we stood on the sidewalk with Olive yowling in her carrier while the fire department went up to a unit two floors below ours. It was a kitchen fire, contained to one stove and one very scorched cabinet. Nobody was hurt. But the neighbors whose things got soaked by the sprinkler water were the ones I couldn't stop thinking about, and by Wednesday we had a renters insurance policy.
Two years later, I reread the policy this month because a friend asked what it actually covers, and I realized I only half knew. So here's a plain walkthrough of ours. I'm not an insurance expert and this isn't advice on what anyone else should buy; every policy and every insurer is different. This is just what we have and what I learned reading the fine print.
The basic numbers
| Item | Ours |
|---|---|
| Monthly cost | $15 ($180 a year) |
| Personal property coverage | $30,000 |
| Liability coverage | $100,000 |
| Deductible | $500 |
The $30,000 felt high when we picked it. Then I did a rough inventory, walking through each room with my phone camera, and it added up faster than I expected: the couch, the bed, two laptops, Sam's bike, a decade of clothes, the kitchen stuff, the books. It wasn't $30,000, but it wasn't far off once I counted what it would cost to replace everything new.
What it covers (as far as I understand it)
Our stuff, for a list of named problems
Fire, smoke, theft, vandalism and certain kinds of water damage, like a pipe bursting inside the walls or an upstairs neighbor's overflowing tub, are covered for our belongings. That's the scenario that pushed us to buy it in the first place: someone else's accident ruining our things.
Things outside the apartment
Our policy also covers belongings away from home, up to a limit. If Sam's gym bag were stolen from a locker or my laptop were taken at a coffee shop, that would count. I didn't know that until I reread it.
Liability
If a guest trips on our rug and gets hurt, or if we accidentally cause damage to someone else's unit (say, our bathtub overflows into the apartment below), liability is meant to help with those costs. In a 12-unit building where everyone's plumbing is stacked on top of each other, this part feels just as important as the stuff coverage.
Somewhere to stay
There's a section for additional living expenses if the apartment becomes unlivable after a covered event. Hotel nights, extra meal costs, that kind of thing.
What it doesn't cover
- The building itself. The walls, floors, cabinets and appliances that came with the unit belong to the landlord and are covered by their insurance, not ours.
- Flooding from outside. Water coming in from a storm or rising groundwater is generally excluded. We're on the third floor, so this worries me less, though I think about it every time I carry laundry down to the basement.
- Earthquakes, unless you add a separate rider.
- Pest damage and wear. If Olive shreds the couch, that's on us. (She has, a little.)
- Anything under $500. With a $500 deductible, small losses aren't worth a claim. If someone stole a $300 bike, we'd just be out $300.
- High-value items above certain limits. Jewelry and some electronics have sub-limits. We don't own much that's fancy, so we didn't add anything extra.
Things I'd tell my 2024 self
Take the inventory video the day you buy the policy, and redo it once a year. Ours lives in a shared folder with a few receipts for the bigger items.
Read the declarations page, not just the summary the insurer emails you. It's two pages, and it's the part that lists the actual numbers.
And talk to your partner about it. Sam and I split this bill the same way we split everything else, and it was worth sitting down together for half an hour to agree on how much coverage we actually wanted. At $15 a month, it's one of the smaller line items in our budget, and it's the one I think about every time I smell smoke in the stairwell.
