​You need home insurance. Most likely, your mortgage company wants you to have at least minimum coverage on your home. More important, you need homeowners coverage to protect your dwelling, your belongings and your family. Here are a few tips on making sure your home insurance policy protects the things you need protected:
1. Choose the deductible that meets your budget. A deductible is the amount out-of-pocket that you need to spend before insurance coverage kicks in. While it may be tempting to choose a higher deductible to reduce your premiums, consider how much money you will have on hand to cover that deductible in the event of a loss.
2. Make sure your limits match your risks. Every insurance policy comes with limits. A limit is the total amount your insurance policy will pay out in the event of a loss. Lower limits are usually less expensive, but if a covered loss exceeds the limits you carry, you’ll get stuck footing the rest of the bill.
3. Consider a scheduled personal property rider for collectibles or high-ticket items. This is a way to insure antiques, collectibles, musical instruments and other expensive or irreplaceable items beyond the limits of a standard homeowners policy.
4. Add flood insurance to your policy. Most standard homeowners policies do not cover losses due to flooding or water damage, but the risk is real. Don’t drown in expenses that could have been handled by the right additional coverage.
5. Keep a record of belongings and update it annually. If your home burnt down or you had another homeowners claim, would you know exactly what you lost? In order to make recovery after a covered event as painless as possible, make a video list of your belongings and keep it in a secure location away from your home.
Cotten Coverage Insurance Agency takes your protection seriously. We’re honored to have been named Best Insurance Agency on Long Island for five years. Call today if we can help you with homeowners insurance or any other type of insurance coverage.

This is the very first post on our insurance agency blog. We're not quite sure what we're going to write about here, but the plan is to create helpful content for customers and prospective clients about information that is relevant to you.

And if we decide not to use the blog, we can just delete it.

Here are a few of the topics we may be writing about:

• Answers to clients' frequently asked questions.
  
• Helpful information about insurance shopping.
  
• Safety and Health Tips and Ideas.
  
• Local Community Information.

And if we decide we don't want to keep blogging, we'll probably just delete it. :)