Review (and boost) your insurance

Mother Nature could be excused if she wondered, “How much more prompting do you people need?”

This year delivered epic wildfires, devastating hurricanes, massive floods and some pretty horrific earthquakes. Yet many people still haven’t taken a few critical steps to protect their financial lives from such disasters.

Consider these four essential tasks:

Most renters don’t have renters insurance, but they need it since their landlord’s policy won’t cover their stuff.

The vast majority of homeowners do have homeowners insurance, but often not enough — especially if their policies haven’t been updated regularly to reflect rising construction costs or improvements. Ask your insurer to rerun the numbers to ensure you have enough coverage to rebuild your home completely. United Policyholders, an advocacy group for insurance customers, recommends adding as much “extended replacement cost” coverage as you can afford. This add-on boosts the policy’s coverage limits by 20 percent to 100 percent if costs run unexpectedly high, as often happens in disaster zones when rebuilding costs soar. Another smart addition: “building code upgrade” or “ordinance coverage” to pay the higher costs of rebuilding to current standards. Other key points: • You want “replacement cost “coverage for your home’s contents, not “actual cash value,” which will pay only pennies on the dollar to replace your stuff.

• You may need extra coverage if you have certain valuables, such as jewelry, collectibles, guns or computers and other home office equipment.

• Opt for generous “loss of use” or “additional living expenses” coverage, since that will pay your rent and other costs while your home is uninhabitable. United Policyholders recommends having at least two years’ worth of additional living expense coverage.

“You want it out of the area,” says Wright, a certified public accountant and personal financial specialist who contributed to a detailed disaster guide that the American Institute of CPAs created with the American Red Cross and National Endowment for Financial Education.

Disaster survivors say the following documents can be particularly important, according to United Policyholders: • Insurance policies • Passports and birth certificates • Family photos • Tax and loan documents • Stocks and bonds • Wills and trusts • Home blueprints or surveys, if you have them your smartphone’s video camera and storing that video in the cloud.