Contents Insurance Value Calculator NZ
This calculator helps you build a realistic figure for your home contents sum insured by adding up the value of your belongings category by category. Contents insurance in New Zealand is almost always replacement value, meaning it pays to buy your things new, yet most people pick a round number off the top of their head and end up badly underinsured, only discovering the gap after a fire or burglary. The cure is an inventory, and breaking it into categories makes the job far less daunting and far more accurate. You enter an estimate for each group, furniture, whiteware and appliances, electronics and technology, clothing and shoes, beds and bedding, kitchenware, tools and garage, and jewellery and valuables, and the calculator totals them into a contents sum insured. The figures add up faster than expected once you picture replacing everything at current shop prices, including the dozens of small items that quietly cost a fortune to rebuy. Remember that high-value items such as jewellery, bikes, art and collectibles often carry per-item limits and may need to be specified separately on the policy, so note them and check those limits. Use the total as a sound basis for your cover, and review it whenever you make big purchases.
Estimate replacement, not second-hand, value. High-value items may have per-item limits and need specifying. Estimate only.
How it works
The calculator adds together your estimates for each category to produce a total contents sum insured. Working category by category captures the long tail of small items that a single guess always misses, which is why room-by-room inventories almost always come out higher than people expect.
Worked example
Adding 12,000 for furniture, 8,000 for appliances, 9,000 for electronics, 10,000 for clothing, 5,000 for beds, 4,000 for kitchenware, 6,000 for tools and 6,000 for valuables gives a contents sum insured of about 60,000 dollars.
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