The Real Estate Browser Volume 9, Issue 4 | Page 10

10 — Say you saw it in The Real Estate Browser of Lynchburg — Volume 9 Number 4
www.LynchburgRealEstateBrowser.com
To Buy Or Not To Buy???
by Janese Rowe, Baughman & Associates
Buy what? Renters
insurance of course! Unlike
auto and home insurance,
some people think they don’t need it because it
isn’t required in their rental agreement. I was
one of those same people up to about seven years
ago.
My husband, daughter and I lived out in
the country in a small trailer. One night my
husband was grilling out on the deck and I was
inside cooking dinner. I turned a burner on to
boil a pot of water for tea. I took a break and sat
down in the living room. My husband came in,
I looked up and behind him I saw smoke coming
up from the stove. We ran into the kitchen and
by the time we got to the stove it erupted into
flames!
You see, I had turned on the wrong burner.
Instead of turning the front burner on under the
pot of water, I had turned the burner on under a
pan of grease. As we had no fire extinguisher, we
tried moving the skillet and my husband burned
his hand. We then tried pouring salt on the fire
to no avail. The flames became so high that
they caught the curtains on fire; that’s when we
realized we needed to get out of the house! All
we could do was wait on the fire department to
arrive. They were able to extinguish the fire but
we still lost a large portion of our kitchen wares.
Even more was lost to smoke and soot damage.
We had to throw away our mattresses, living
room furniture and some of our pictures.
This was one of the worst experiences I have
ever had. Even after enduring the initial shock
we still had other obstacles to overcome. We
had to ask our family if we could stay with them
while we looked for another place to live. We
had to replace all of our belongings that we
lost. We had to rely on help from a community
service organization, our Church, our family and
friends to help us get settled into a new place. I
will always be grateful for the help they provided.
Why do I feel the need to share my story? I
share it in hopes that it will keep someone from
making the same mistakes we did. Besides
making the obvious mistake of turning on the
wrong burner, I feel we made two other errors in
judgment. First of all we should have purchased
renters insurance and secondly we didn’t own
a fire extinguisher, a situation that we rectified
after the fact.
The renter’s policy benefits would have given
us money to replenish our belongings and have
provided us with means to stay somewhere while
we looked for a new place to live. For as little as
fifty cents per day, the policy would have given
us the peace of mind we really needed.
So… this brings me back to my original
question. To buy or not to buy? As an insurance
agent I will always advise you to purchase renter’s
insurance. Not so I can sell another policy, so I
can help you provide your family with the peace
of mind we did not have.