Could you get PAID to take out home insurance?
How much are you getting paid to take out home insurance? That's right, PAID! The record so far this year from following our Money Saving Expert Martin Lewis’s system is £23 – and the all-time record is £67 profit. So can you beat it…?
A couple of weeks ago I asked people if they could beat the current cheapest home-insurance cost of £3, then Ian came back saying he could beat it: “Paid £32 and have £55 cashback confirmed, so I should have £23 profit”. So here’s how to play to see if you can beat it.
You can read about Martin’s full ‘Cheap Home Insurance system’, but here are the key points...
Step 1: Know how much cover you needThere are two elements to home insurance: buildings and contents cover. An easy way to work out what’s covered is to imagine you can turn your home upside down: everything that stays put is buildings, if it falls it’s contents.
With buildings insurance, which is only usually needed by freeholders, many people tend to make the mistake of overinsuring. You only need to insure the rebuild cost – so how much it would cost to rebuild your home should it get knocked down – not the market value (the amount it might sell for).
With contents cover, don’t underinsure thinking you’ll never claim the full amount. If you do underinsure, it could mean you’re then paid less when you go to claim.
Step 2: Don’t just use one comparison site – combine themNever auto-renew. Comparison sites search a wide range of offers from insurers and brokers. Yet they don’t all search the same deals, or even have the same prices for the same deals. So use two or three for the widest spread.
Step 3: Then check insurers that comparison sites miss Big insurers Aviva and Direct Line are not included by comparison sites, so check them too. Comparison sites also tend to miss out special promo deals that insurers offer, so it’s worth checking out if there are any of these as well.
Step 4: If you want to stay where you are, haggleOnce you’ve found your cheapest policy take the price to your existing provider and ask them to see if they will match it – they often will. In a recent poll I did, 78% of customers who haggled with Direct Line said they had success, while 81% did with Admiral and 80% with Hastings Direct. So it’s worth a try.
Step 5: If you’re moving, once you know what you’re getting, check for cashbackOnce you know your cheapest policy and crucially you’ve checked IT’S RIGHT FOR YOU, then check if you can earn cashback using a cashback site such as Topcashback or Quidco – these sites pay you if you click through them.
This usually works, but there can be tracking issues, so always ensure you’re getting the right policy. See this as a likely added bonus. If you’ve got time and your top three policies are all much of a muchness, it can be worth seeing the cashback on offer for all three.