Would you need home insurance? Since being in Taiwan, I have noticed that Taiwanese are less concerned with insurance in general than Europeans.
I’m not sure why, either. There have been a lot of disasters in Taiwan. In fact, soon we will have the 10th anniversary of the major earthquake in 1999 that destroyed over 40000 homes, and killed over 2500 people.
So it is a mystery to me that more people don’t buy insurance given all the problems that Taiwan experiences: earthquakes, typhoons, landslides, flooding, etc in a given decade. It would seem to be an obvious choice: yet I wonder how many people here do purchase home insurance with additional protection for these particular events.
But the reverse is also true: British people do seem excessively concerned with insurance that I wonder if it is really worth it in many cases. For example, you buy an LCD TV that is warranted for three years; and the clerk wants you to buy an additional warranty that (admittedly covers a whole bunch of stuff) but will cost you an extra GBP4.49 per month~! PER MONTH.
While the service is surely decent, one wonders if it is worth paying 50% on the original purchase price given the fact that the TV unit won’t last more than five or six years. Even if it lasts longer, the technology will change so fast that it is outmoded even before the original warranty is expired.