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.
