DD is going to be a freshman in a month and I am looking for suggestions on where to buy the various insurance, pros and cons etc.
a. renter’s insurance - she is going to live in the dorm, I know I should not use my home owner’s insurance. Where do other parents buy the insurance
b. insurance to cover unexpected withdrawal - If she were to withdraw mid semester, do we have to pay the full COA ? will she still receive financial aid for that semester?
thanks
Check with your home owner’s insurance. Our daughter’s possessions are covered under our policy as long as she’s in university housing. If she goes off campus, then we’ll need renter’s insurance.
My kid’s school uses GradGuard for dorm/renters insurance. They seem to be popular at a lot of campuses.
You can use your homeowners insurance since presumably your DD is your dependent. However, two things to think about - 1) the likelihood that a claim might be needed for your DD will be a lot higher than for you, so if you have a high deductible that may not work well and 2) in the case of many homeowners insurance you only get two claims in your lifetime. This is why it probably is better to get separate renter’s insurance.
I’m sure rates vary depending on location but for State Farm, my homeowne’s insurance company, they offer renter’s insurance for $130 for a year, $500 deductible, up to $40K coverage. The cost can be split amongst the roommates. I think GradGuard is around the same price and coverages, with a lower deductible.
I think GradGuard is going to be more expensive that if you get separate renter’s insurance through your homeonwner’s or car insurance companies. GradGuard does offer tuition withdraw insurance as well.
Make sure you do an inventory first before you spend a dime on insurance.
You may already have insurance if you purchased a laptop or bike with certain credit cards. Eyeglasses may already have a “free replacement” deal depending on where you bought them.
Everything else? Unless your kid is a musician with a valuable instrument, what is a kid taking to college which is worth insuring? Bed linens? clothing?
Not worth it. Most people over- insure for relatively trivial losses. Agree that tuition insurance is worth looking into though…
One kid wanted to take the graduation watch (a family gift). We bought a $12 timex at Target which is STILL working, a decade later. Our philosophy was that if it cost money to replace, it wasn’t appropriate to be living in a dorm.
4 things for my kid - laptop - $1700, phone - somewhere close to $1000, headphones - a ridiculous $350 and bike, probably $500. I’m not sure how justifiable insurance is, I’m sure most kids have something similar to what I listed above. Maybe nowhere as expensive though.
If you run a quick google for “tuition insurance” you should start to find options for that.
I have used College Student Insurance (CSI) for both of my kids while they were at college. To cover $4,000 worth of belongings with a $25 deductible it costs around $105/year for my daughter who’s currently a UCLA student. The policy for my son was slightly more expensive for the same coverage at a different university. I have never had to make a claim, but I’ve heard from others that it’s very easy.
We used CSI. They replaced my DDs laptop after she spilled coffee all over it. All we paid was a $50 deductible. (This was years ago, the amounts may be different now. ). There’s no way we would have filed that with our homeowner’s for a $1600 laptop with our $1000 deductible.
We used NSSI. It covered everything in her room including IPhone, MAC, etc.
One food for thought item. Avoid the temptation of trying to put multiple people on the same policy, in order to save on costs. In this scenario, If your roommate makes a claim, the claim will follow you for 5 years even though it wasn’t your claim. That affects your rates. As you can see, the premiums are pretty negligible to begin with.
We used CSI. They replaced my son’s bike after it was stolen. That paid more than we had paid in. Easy company to work with.
We’ve used NSSI for both kids but never had to make a claim. It does cover their property if they study abroad as well. I hear of so many people with damage to laptops and phones which is covered by dorm insurance. Good to have, and it’s not expensive.
As some people have already suggested, I recommend first deciding whether insurance is needed at all. In retrospect, it might have been a good idea for our older daughter to have had insurance for her dorm room: someone stole several items two days before she was scheduled to move out at the end of her senior year. But even in her situation, the emotional cost was much greater than the financial cost. Her computer was taken and it contained irreplaceable creative work and personal mementoes. And she felt violated by the crime, regardless of the value of the things stolen.
Same here, but then I run a high deductible on our homeowners. NSSI was a bargain for the kid who loses stuff. They replaced cell phone due to water damage (who texts in a thunderstorm?), and a couple of jackets left in lecture halls.
I frequently have clients that ask if their homeowners coverage will cover their childs belongings at school and in almost every case the answer is yes. Even in an apartment most homeowners policies give you 10% of your personal property limit at a residence not listed on the policy so unless your child is taking more than 10% of everything the family owns to school they are covered.
The next statement inevitably is “but my deductible is $1,000 and his bike (or computer, or gaming system, etc.) is only $500. My answer to this is always “you are comfortable having the bike at home where it is under your deductible, what makes you less comfortable when it is away from home?” My advice to clients is if you can afford a deductible for a loss that happens to any family member when living at home why should it be different when they are at school, same person, same property, why is a larger deductible a problem?”
My advice is almost always to forgo student insurance since you are already paying for the insurance through your homeowners policy. Not only is it the more economical route but as was mentioned above losses on the student policy are not “free” they will follow your student for 3-5 years and multiple claims can make gaining insurance difficult/expensive to obtain once they are graduated and on their own.
make sure you understand what tuition insurance does. If you just quit, it doesn’t cover it. if you have depression or somesuch, then you have to be medically diagnosed.
We did get tuition insurance for my younger DD to tends to have more medically things happen to her.
Several parents on the list for DD’s college have reported good claim experiences with NSSI.
Thousand dollar phone and 350 headphones?
I guess I’m out of my league. And my kid took my old college bike (cost maybe $80 back in the 1970’s although I sprung for a new seat when I gave it to my kid).
One advantage to not living large- not worrying about insurance.
@iaparent IMO, there is a difference between feeling comfortable of having the electronic at home vs having the same same electronic at college. There is less a chance of a kid losing stuff.