Top Insurance Moves to Consider in 2022

If you're working on your checklist of financial goals for the new year, getting quality insurance coverage should be at the top. In this segment of Backstage Pass recorded on Jan. 7, Fool contributor Toby Bordelon discusses some of the types of coverage to consider for 2022. 

Toby Bordelon: I think it's a good time, we're still in the first week of the year, so a good time for people just sit to down, maybe make sure all your boxes are checked.

You got everything in order. If you remember the Rule Your Retirement service, that's a great one to check out too, they have a lot of checklists and stuff that can be helpful.

I want to highlight the insurance angle too just to make sure we got that covered. Following off of these fires. Make sure your insurance coverage is sufficient. 

Sometimes you have a dollar amount, for your homeowner's insurance, and that might go up a little bit every year, but make sure it's enough in your area, and you can get a sense of that.

Just figure out what the average cost per square foot to build is in your area right now. Compare that to your coverage versus your house and if it's not there, if it's too low, get that bumped up. Maybe a little higher, just to give yourself some cushion there.

Some policies will have riders that will cover just automatically full replacement costs to rebuild. That could be something good to look at if you don't have that. I think it's also good too, if your family situation has changed over the past year. See if your insurance needs are sufficient.

Do you have a new baby? Maybe people got a new baby in 2020 pandemic lock-ins, 2021 year babies, maybe you had a new baby. Life insurance, check out life insurance. Make sure that it will cover the new addition, to your household.

Do you have a kid that went to college, last year? Just make sure that your homeowner's insurance and auto insurance, if that's applicable, actually covers them where they are. What Rachel said you need insurance if need to travel internationally.

The same could apply for students. Many homeowner's policies will cover loss of their items in dorm room, make sure that's the case for you.

Or if they're living off-campus, make sure they've got their own renter's policy, sometimes that gets lost, and all the things we're getting ready for college, make sure that's there. If you got some new stuff, last year, make sure, that's expensive, maybe you might want to see if you have a personal articles policy and that is actually in there, sometimes we forget to update those things. That's something I have on my list to do, soon.

Hey, maybe you cashed in Bitcoin. You cashed in some Bitcoin, you've got new art or maybe you got some NFT, you got some crypto assets out there. That's very fascinating to me, because we have seen cases recently, I think very recently, about some NFTs is being stolen. So that's possibly getting coverage for that, covers that might at least help you navigate the legal issues and getting it back or what not.

See if your insurer offers that some might be on the cutting edge, some might be doing that, or other digital assets. It's something to think about, we're getting more and more digital.

So if you're going to have a significant amount of cash in digital assets, insurance might be something you want to look at. I'm not quite sure how that works it's so new, but it's definitely something you don't want to ignore.

I think it's worth looking at. That's going to be fascinating guys, I think as we go through the next couple of years with the NFTs and crypto insurance.

Rachel Warren: Like insuring digital assets?

Toby Bordelon: How do you insure that? What does even mean?

Rachel Warren: I don't know. [laughs]

Toby Bordelon: Someone's going to figure out a way to underwrite that, because that's going to be a demand.