There may be a Santa Claus, but young Virginia would have been in for a rude awakening if she had moved in with a friend and tried to buy a joint home insurance policy.
It just doesn't work, and counting on your roommate's home insurance to protect your "stuff" is just an instant recipe for disaster over the holidays.
Or any other day of the year.
With the economy being what it is, and young twenty somethings finding it harder and harder to get a job after college, more people than ever are choosing to bunk with roommates rather than take the plunge and try and swing rent/mortgage payments on their own.
And really, who could blame them? That's a lot of money to pay out of one paycheck (have you seen what housing is going for in D.
C.
or Los Angeles these days), and quite frankly it's just a little too much for anyone not living on a government salary.
Living with a roommate comes with its own series of catches and quid-pro-quos, however, and we're not just talking about who gets first dibs on the bathroom in the morning.
How much do you know about home insurance? Hopefully you did your research before moving out of the dorms and discovered that home insurance is a necessary evil that anyone not still living at home with their parents needs to add to their monthly expenses.
Why? How much would you say your electronics are worth? Furniture? Books? Replacing that could get really expensive, really fast if the house burned down or someone decided to walk in and liberate your belongings from the tyranny of ownership.
(Most people don't give a stereo much say when it comes to working conditions.
) Your home insurance is there to help make sure that you never find yourself having to start from scratch.
While the owner of your building is responsible for insuring the property, what's inside the house is all yours.
And most insurance companies don't consider two friends (or even a young, unmarried couple) to be eligible for joint coverage.
That means that if your roomie has a home insurance policy and you don't, you're going to be completely out of luck if your room is the one destroyed when the bathroom pipes break.
The good news is, whether you're renting from a friend or the two of you are going in on an apartment together picking up a renters home insurance policy to cover your stuff isn't hard.
Just pick up the phone and dial any one of the over fifty homeowners insurance companies doing business in the U.
S.
(Most companies operate nationwide rather than in a localized area.
) Tell them you need a home insurance policy.
They'll help you itemize what's yours and what's not, set your coverage limits and send you on your way safe in the knowledge that this really is going to be a holly, jolly Christmas.
Even if Uncle Louis decides to stop by for the holidays.