After 10 days of being car-less (after our wheels were stolen) we finally got Paj back from the insurance company this week.  All shiny and clean with four brand new wheels and tyres 🙂 .

In light of this event we thought it might be timely to run through insurances we have in place to deal with unexpected situations during big lap. As we’re not actually leaving the country ‘travel insurance’ isn’t required, but there’s a raft of other insurances that we need. Emma is the ‘admin guru’ of the household so she’ll be phoning around to make sure we get the best prices possible and bundling deals where we can.

House

As we’re renting out our house to cover the mortgage costs we will have house insurance and landlord insurance.

House insurance will cover any damage to the property – walls, carpets, or fire.

The landlord insurance covers us if we have any problem with the tenants not paying their rent or other issues.  Although we are employing a local real estate agent to manage the house for us so they should be screening the applicants to make sure we get reliable tenants.

Furniture

All our furniture and belongings will be going into storage with the exception of a few documents that we will leave with relatives.  We have checked with our existing insurance company and so long as it is a commercial locked storage facility they will continue to cover our belongings against damage.

Car

Having a car is vital on a road trip!  We’ll be reviewing and reading the PDS for a range of insurance companies to make sure we’re comprehensively covered for any theft or damage to our car.

Although it hurt to shell out the $700 excess on our recent claim, it hurt a lot less than the $5000 +  towing we would have had to pay for four brand new wheels.  Deciding to increase the excess to reduce the ongoing payments is is going to be a tricky decision.

Trailer

Our trailer will also be insured for damage or theft, it will be our home after all.  We’ve also done as much as we can to install locks and other theft-prevention measures to our equipment.  If they’re determined they will always get it, but we’ll deter those opportunistic ones as much as we can.

Roadside Assistance.

We have only basic roadside assist with RACV at the moment, but will definitely be upgrading to the top level of cover.  This will cover us for additional towing, transport and accommodation costs during any repairs to the car and/or trailer.

Health

Having no income for the year we are looking to keep regular costs low so will be dropping back all our existing ‘extras cover’ on our health insurance. We’re making the most of our current coverage and seeing dentists and opticians now while we’re still covered – preparing ourselves to make sure we’re fit and healty to travel.

We will keep our basic hospital and ambulance coverage as we’re over 31 and don’t want to incur the extra tax that the government would levy on us. Also, we definitely don’t want to be up for the thousands of dollars that an ambulance may cost if needed from somewhere remote so that is definitely worth it.

Fortunately neither of us need any on-going medication so don’t need to have check-ups with our doctors to sort out letters and prescriptions to carry with us.

Life Insurance & Income Protection

We also both have life insurance and income protection insurance.  Whist we can save automatically by getting ride of the income protection (we won’t have an income to protect!) we’re still debating whether to keep the life insurance.  We’re still going to have a lot of debts to cover if one of us were to meet an untimely end so we will keep it if we can squeeze it into the budget.