Diamond Engagement Ring Insurance

Insurance is one of those things that can help take some of the stress out of life. You have insurance for your house and the contents inside it, for your car, and you may even have life insurance. Diamond engagement rings, being a big-ticket item, should be seriously considered in the context of getting insurance.

When you get insurance for a diamond engagement ring, there are three typical possibilities you are trying to cover.

The first situation is damage to your diamond engagement ring. The diamond can become chipped, or the setting can become cracked, break or warp. If you play a lot of sport, or have a manual job and wear your diamond engagement ring, there is a small but significant chance that you may at one stage damage part of your ring.

The second situation you take out insurance for is the lost diamond engagement ring. There is a horrible moment in Apollo 13 when the wife of one of the astronauts loses her ring down the shower drain. Apparently it is based on a real event that occurred just before launch.

You can lose your diamond engagement ring in lots of situations. Drains anywhere around the home are a frequent culprit. Swimming, especially in cold water, can shrink the width of your fingers and make the ring more likely to slip off in the pool, lake or ocean. And of course, in trying to protect your ring you may remove it while you play sport or do cleaning. If you do this regularly at some stage you may forget to put it back on and lose it.

The third situation in which insurance can help you is if your diamond engagement ring is stolen. Engagement rings are a favourite target of theft because they are small, high value items which can easily be sold at a local pawnshop. Note that for many types of insurance require you to show evidence of a police report indicating you have attempted with the local authorities to recover the ring.

One of the simplest options for ensuring your diamond engagement ring is to add it to your home and contents insurance policy. Just be sure to check what the actual conditions are. For example, some policies will only cover damage while others will only cover loss. Some will only cover what happens inside the home while others will be extendable to cover the ring being lost or damaged anywhere.

The fine text of the insurance policy can also specify different types of conditions. As with most insurance, your policy may have a new for old replacement option, or an actual value option where the insurance company will consider wear and tear and ageing of the ring.

It's important to note that in the situation where your ring is damaged, lost or stolen, having any type of insurance is usually far better than having none at all. Even if you only get paid out the actual value of the ring, rather than getting a new ring, it will still take a lot of the stress out of what could be quite an emotionally draining situation.

One situation in which it might not be advisable to get insurance is if your ring represents a small financial outlay for you, and you think that you are a lower risk for damage, loss or theft than the average consumer. In this situation, if you can easily absorb the cost of buying a replacement ring, insurance is probably not for you. And remember, if the ring is lost, the insurance doesn't solve the emotional stress of losing such an important item.