Most of us have added to our arsenal of mobile gadgets over the years and many of us are surprised to find that we regularly carry around a couple of thousand pounds worth of equipment every day.

If you want insurance cover for these possessions you carry around regularly, you’ll need to add personal possessions cover through your home insurance. This almost always saves money over buying individual policies from the vendor for each device. Better yet, personal possessions cover is effective anywhere you go, including on holiday (though it is not an adequate substitute for travel insurance because travel cover also includes cancellation, illness, and other things home cover does not).

Personal possessions cover is a worthwhile way to extend your home’s content cover. It will insure expensive clothing, handbags, jewellery, and even sports equipment and cameras. If you regularly have an iPhone, netbook, MP3 player and an expensive watch with you, then personal possessions cover is worth considering. Thieves regularly target small, high-value items: why nick a big-screen television when one handbag can net thousands of pounds worth of swag?

Students tend to carry more in the way of small gadgetry than other demographics and, before leaving home for university, they should check into their parents’ home cover to see if their various mobile devices are covered. If not, it is usually relatively inexpensive to add them to the homeowner’s contents cover. Some insurers cover mobile phones under these plans and others do not, so if you want to make sure your mobile phone is covered, be sure to ask specifically. Usually, personal possessions cover can be taken out for a maximum of £10,000 from insurers with whom a contents policy already exists.

Homeowners insurance consists of buildings cover and contents cover. Building cover is for the structure itself, and contents cover is for the things inside that are not fixed parts of the property, including furniture, musical instruments, televisions, and stereo equipment. Personal possessions cover may be necessary in addition to contents cover, but it is an inexpensive add-on that proves to be a worthwhile purchase for many people.

Most personal possessions policies have a section that you fill in for insuring individual items separately. This is where you would list your expensive jewellery, expensive eyeglasses, MP3 player, iPhone, and other expensive things you regularly take with you.