Renters insurance can be beneficial for all types of renters. But there are some common misconceptions by groups of apartment renters who may not realize they need coverage.

The safe assumption to depend on is that if you are an apartment renter, you should carry a policy covering the contents of your apartment. Here are a few groups of renters who may not realize they should be insured.

Students – College students living in university-owned or off-campus housing for 9 months of each year are considered apartment renters, even if their college provides the living situation. Because theft can be common in college communities, college students should always carry renters insurance. Though parents may think their offspring are covered by their homeowners insurance policy while they are at college, that policy is likely to cover only about 25 percent of the costs if something were to happen to a students’ possessions. Despite having just a carload of stuff at school, the high cost of replacing electronics – computers, TVs, gaming stations, music devices – is argument alone for students carrying their own renters insurance.

Seniors – The situation for seniors living in assisted care or retirement living facilities is similar to that of students. Renters insurance protects the value of any possessions the resident has brought with them to their new home, as well as any family possessions stored in a storage unit. *Keep in mind that offsite possessions are typically covered only to $1000 or 10 percent of their value by renters insurance.

Military personnel – Renters insurance is especially important for our nation’s military personnel who are frequently traveling away from their apartments for long periods of time. Potential for break-ins and accident damage while residents are away is always higher than with consistently occupied units. Special rates for military personnel on renters insurance policies are easy to find.

Summer is almost here! Time to break away for a week or two of relaxation, maybe even longer if you are lucky. But who will keep an eye on your house, apartment and pets while you are away? Are the possessions in your home protected by renters insurance in case there were to be a break in while you were gone?

The best advice we can offer you for the ultimate security while you’re on vacation is to have a trusted friend or family member serve as a house sitter while you are on vacation. This is ideal especially if you have pets or plants that you want cared for during your absence. Dog boarding can be quite expensive, and most pets are much more comfortable when they are able to stay in their own homes.

If you aren’t able to get a house sitter, take precautions. (Going rate for this service in our area is about $20/day, depending on the number of pets you have and their care requirements, but sometimes you can find a friend who likes your place that might do it for free).

Here are our tips for home safety while you are away on vacation.

1. Have a neighbor check in. Ask them to turn on lights overnight in the home so it looks like someone is present. Make sure you hold all newspaper deliveries and have your mail stopped at the post office, unless the neighbor has agreed to pick it up each day. Perhaps the helpful neighbor can water your plants , too. Otherwise, give them a good soaking before you leave so they don’t die.
2. Make sure your windows, door locks and alarm systems are working properly. Thieves can sense when a home is empty, even when you make an effort to have it looked lived in, so make sure you don’t leave windows cracked or easy access points into your garage or storage shed.
3. Don’t broadcast your plans on social media or to neighbors and acquaintances. It is fine to let close friends know you’ll be out of town, but avoid letting everyone in your neighborhood share the news. This doesn’t mean you don’t trust people, it just means you’re being careful.
4. Turn off and unplug all electronics before you leave, and be sure to turn your thermostat way down. Just a simple way to save energy and come home to a low utility bill. Happy travels!

You don’t need a formal neighborhood watch program in place at your apartment complex in order to keep your eyes open for criminal behavior. There are plenty of telltale signs of crime you may see around your home that shouldn’t go unreported.

Here are some things to look out for:

-Suspicious guests. If you see people at your apartment complex who you don’t recognize as residents, try to determine who they are visiting and that they have a direct relationship with the tenants. If you never see the guests and tenants together, be concerned.

-“Visitors” when you know an apartment is unoccupied. If your neighbor has gone on vacation for two weeks and suddenly there are people in and out of her home, be concerned.

-Inappropriate use of community amenities. If laundry facilities, community gathering spaces like game rooms or business centers, or gyms and pool areas are being used by non-residents on a regular basis, it’s a legitimate concern.

-People who appear to be living in vehicles in your apartment community. If your apartment complex parking area is ungated, keep an eye open for residential vehicles that don’t seem to be connected to any of your neighbors’ homes.

-Homeless residents in the apartment complex. If they aren’t pass through or visiting a resident, notify your property manager or local law enforcement.

-Unattended children. Though usually unintentional, unmonitored children can be a source of crime and mischief during the summer months. If your neighbors are letting their kids roam unsupervised around your complex, express your concerns to their parents.

Can you think of any other red flags for apartment crime? Don’t be caught unaware – make sure your renters’ insurance policy is up to date should your apartment suffer a break-in.

According to the National Fire Protection Agency, every year there are more than 90,000 apartment fires in the U.S., causing over 1 billion in property damage.

Sadly, these fires also cause death, injury, damage to adjoining units, displacement of residents, death and injury to pets, and many other calamities.

One of the most common places for an apartment fire to start is in the kitchen. Forgotten “food on the stove” calls are one of the most common starters for fires reported to local fire departments.

Such fires are usually accidental and can be deadly. A recent kitchen fire in San Francisco caused the death of an apartment resident and injuries to two other men who inhaled smoke from the blaze.

One lesson from this tragic tale is to never leave unattended food on the stove. But perhaps the more important lesson is to protect yourself and your possessions with renters insurance.

Damages in the San Francisco fire amounted to about $600,000 in damage — $500,000 to the structure of the building and $100,000 to its contents.

Structure damage will typically be covered by the property owner’s insurance policy on the structure. But the damage to the contents? Unless the renters had renters’ insurance, they will be responsible for replacing their items on their own.

So before you head into the kitchen for your next culinary experiment, be sure to make sure your renters insurance is up to date – and make sure you turn off the stove when you are done!

If you’re getting ready to entertain friends or family members – and their small children – for the first time, it’s probably a good idea to take a look around your place at least a week before they arrive for their visit. If you’re childless and don’t have friends with babies or toddlers who visit you regularly, there may need to be some changes you make in order to help everyone have a safe and happy visit to your home.

Start the process of child-proofing by giving your home a rigorous cleaning. Most small kids are apt to put anything that’s at their eye and reach level into their mouths, so during your cleaning process, start putting away objects that could look like tasty teething items for babies or toddlers.

Next, assess your living spaces from the eye level of someone who is just a few feet tall. What can they grab, get their hands on, or might confuse for a toy when it’s actually a piece of art, knick-knack or edible substance? To be very safe, remove everything that’s within grabbing distance on shelves, tables and from open cupboards. If you don’t have baby locks on your low-level kitchen cabinets, consider installing them. Kids who bang pots together are only cute if you are deaf.

Now that you’ve dealt with the most likely rooms you’ll be hanging out in, don’t forget that kids can travel, fast, especially if they’re left unattended. Check the places you might not expect them to be – like bathrooms, laundry rooms, even offices, removing any products that a child could grab and try to eat or grab and break.

Next, it’s time to think about sharp corners. Do you have any furniture in your home that is truly dangerous? It may not be dangerous to you, but what if a running two-year-old fell toward it and hit their head? Watch out for glass pieces, coffee tables, lamps and any modern furnishings that could result in a trip to the emergency room.

When your friends arrive, be sure to alert them to potential danger spots. If there’s a room in the house that kids could do major damage in, be sure to close it off and let the parents know it’s off limits. But remember, it’s your home, so if the baby gets into trouble while exploring, it’s probably ultimately going to be your fault.

With Hurricane Sandy winding up to the hit the East Coast soon, it’s a good time to remind all of us about emergency preparedness. We designate the person to contact In Case of Emergency – ICE – at the doctor’s office, in our employee records, and at our children’s schools.  But does your apartment complex know who to call if something should happen to you at home?

Check with your property manager to make sure they have the most up to date information for you on file. Be sure to provide them with your personal cell and work phone numbers, as well as with contact information for a third-party source who should be notified if you should be injured or incapacitated at your apartment.

Another good thing to do is to save an ICE number in your cell phone, as well as on a card in your wallet. It may not get a rescuer far if the phone is password protected, but listing at ICE in your contacts is always a good idea.

While you are making plans for a potential emergency, don’t forget to make sure you have current renters insurance. If something happens to your apartment while you are not home, like a fire or a theft, you’ll want to have a policy that will allow you to replace your possessions.

I’ll never forget the day my college apartment was robbed. It started off just like any other regular school day around the end of the semester. I had several final exams to prepare for so I was busy studying and stressed out about my grades.

Plus it was the end of the year so there was a lot of excitement around the house about celebrating the end of the year and the approach of summer. Despite the stress everyone was in a really good mood. Summer was just a few exams away.

That all changed when one of my roommates arrived home that afternoon and realized that our apartment had been broken into and ransacked. All our stuff had been dumped out of drawers, and everything we had that was valuable – TVs, laptops, a new PS3, jewelry, some petty cash, my roommates’ boyfriends’ Air Jordans – had all walked out with the thieves. Other apartments in the neighborhood had been hit as well, but no one seemed to have seen a thing.

We called the college police and made a report right away, and they came to our apartment to take pictures. They didn’t seem optimistic about finding the guys who had broken in. (Our doors were locked, but a cracked window had allowed them easy access. Then one of the police officers asked the question that changed my outlook on this topic forever: “Do you have renters insurance?”

I was just an ignorant kid, so I was like, “What’s that?” My roommate, the economics major, made a snotty face and said “That was the policy I told you we should go for when we moved in here because we knew that this neighborhood was not very safe.” I quickly realized that if we’d been spending just a little bit of money each month – probably not even more than a single dinner out at a decent restaurant or even just cutting down our beer intake – we could have had all our stolen possessions replaced at their approximate value.

This was one of those “Why am I such an idiot” moments. I’ve carried renters insurance ever since. And of course, I have never had to use it since then. But if something unexpected happens, it just seems like the most foolproof way to be able to get your life back in order, quickly. And by fool proof, I mean I won’t be a fool ever again.

When planning for the safety and security of your family, keeping your personal, social and financial data safe and secure should be one of your most important priorities. You want to protect the contents of your home with renter’s insurance, but some items are irreplaceable – like birth certificates, passports, marriage and divorce paperwork, home deeds and many other documents.

One of the best practices you can put into place for document storage is to scan and virtually (but securely) store copies of all your vital personal documents – including but not limited to your driver’s license, social security card, birth certificate, college diplomas, marriage certificate, any immigration or legal residency paperwork, passport, home deed or lease, automobile paperwork, loan documents, wills and trusts, and any other important papers – and store them on a secure hard drive that only you have access to or a private cloud with a password protected firewall. Better yet, stash that hard drive in your home safe – and keep those original documents in your bank’s safety deposit box.

Online services offering secure document storage are starting to pop up, and you might want consider them as another option for your vital documents. Focusing on health, myMediConnect’s Safety Deposit Box offers unlimited access to your own secure and centralized repository for digital copies of all your important life documents. You can upload, print and view digital copies of your original life documents like your personal health record (PHR), living wills, advanced directives and more.

Another important thing to secure and save in a safe place is copies of all of your credit cards. In the event of a lost or stolen wallet or purse, you’ll want to have these all in one easy-to-access place so you can quickly call your credit card companies to report the loss and have the cards cancelled and replaced. I make photocopies of all my cards, with the cancellation numbers on the document, to prepare for just such an event. They’ve come in handy more times than I’d like to admit.

The ability to own licensed firearms is one of America’s great freedoms, but even the rights-affirming gun owner will usually quickly admit that owning a gun comes with the heavy responsibility of keeping that firearm in a secure location at home, away from kids and out of harm’s way.

Surveys suggest that there are firearms in half of American homes, whether they be for personal protection, hunting or recreational shooting, work-related obligations (like law enforcement) or are ancient family heirlooms.

If you have a gun at home, are you exercising the best practices to keep it safe? Use these refresher tips to brush up on how to best store firearms in your house or apartment:

-Lock them up. Ideally, guns should be kept in a gun safe or a small personal safe, with only the trained user of the weapons able to access the containment unit with a key or combination. When being stored at home, guns should always be unloaded. No exceptions.

-Ammunition should be kept separately from the weapons in an equally secure location.

-Educate your kids. A comprehensive child-oriented gun safety program is a good place to get information and resources. Teach your kids these rules about what to do if they find a gun in your home or anywhere else they might be.

Stop.

Don’t touch.

Leave the area.

Tell an adult.

-Educate yourself. Do you know the best ways to safely handle your own firearms? Check out these tips:

• Always keep the gun pointed in a safe direction. Whether you are shooting or simply handling a gun, never point it at yourself or others. This is how people get shot accidentally.
• Always keep your finger off the trigger until ready to shoot. Until you are actually ready to fire, do not touch the trigger, keeping it outside of the trigger guard.

-Finally, if there are guns in your home that do not belong to you or are not licensed in your state, remove them immediately. Don’t wait for something bad to happen – protect yourself and your family by only owning fully legal, licensed firearms.