The first house that my husband and I bought was a little cottage in a country lane surrounded by fruit trees, wild flowers and tons and tons of fresh air. It was not an expansive place or particularly fancy, but it was cosy and sweet and just perfect for two innocent idealistic newly-weds who thought that life was wonderful and they were untouchable. We bought it only a week after we got married. We were both past 25 and were determined to finish paying for our first house by the time we reached 40 so there was absolutely no time to waste at all as far as we were concerned. We raced through all the procedures and application forms as though our lives depended on it, counting off the days until we could nestle ourselves into our little cottage, walking up and down the cobblestone path to the front door in our minds until we knew each brick on sight. We decided not to bother with house insurance, after all we had insurance for everything in the house, including each other, and we wanted to use the extra money we had to open up the fireplace again so that we could snuggle in the glow of the fire together. The woman in the bank may have raised her eyebrows at our short-sightedness, but I didn’t notice, I was staring adoringly at my new husband.
The cottage really was everything I had imagined and more. The first few months were bliss. We had everyone around for dinner as soon as we were settled and we sat in the farm style kitchen chatting about how wonderful it was to own our home. One of our friends asked us how much were paying for house insurance, what with our cottage having at hatch roof and all, and seemed rather amazed when we told him that we hadn’t bothered with house insurance as there really wasn’t any need. He was adamant that it was vital but we both felt certain that it was just another way for the bank to make money out of people. After all, neither of us had ever heard of anyone who had actually had to claim from house insurance. I mean houses don’t burn down anymore do they?
We finished eating our hearty supper and then everyone got together in front of our spectacular new fire to get all warm and toasty with jugs of warm home-made apple cider (yes from our very own apple trees) and tell a few more jokes before we bid goodnight. After waving them all off, we did a quick tidy up and decided to take a stroll before settling down to bed. On our way back home a mere 30 minutes later we both stopped dead in our tracks, our precious cottage was up in flames, blazing away in the night. And at that moment we both wished out loud that we had listened and bought house insurance instead of a new fireplace.
Author Resource:
Danny Aaron manages the website http://www.isureins.co.za , a site devoted to providing you with the best information about house insurance