Have you ever wondered if you're paying too much for your homeowners insurance? It's hard to decide sometimes if homeowners insurance is really worth the investment-after all, you're essentially spending over $1,000 a year to build a nest egg for "just in case". There's no guarantee that you're ever going to need your homeowners insurance coverage, which means you may very well be giving up a hundred dollars or more a month to pay for insurance protection you might never use.

When skies are sunny and the threat of winter snow is a long way off it's easy to question the value of your homeowners insurance. In many ways it can feel like you're just burning through your hard earned paycheck without reaping any of the rewards-at least, that's what the percentage of the population living without homeowners insurance will tell you as they happily show you their latest purchase. How they can step out of their house at all with the threat of disaster hanging over their heads is anybody's guess.

Consider this. The average person has over $5,000 worth of electronics and valuables lying around their home, not to mention expensive appliances and liquid assets left lying around. That's going to cost them thousands of dollars to replace if an intrepid thief decides to take advantage of that Hawaiian vacation they're on and cleans the house out from top to bottom while they're gone. Sure, they got to enjoy Hawaii while their neighbors stayed home watching the snow fall, but when they get home they're going to have to clean out their bank account and then some to start over.

And then there's the little issue of the fact that Mother Nature doesn't usually bother to send out a press release before she sends a storm your way. How much do you think it would cost to replace your home if it were completely totaled? $200,000? $300,000? More? If you're lucky enough to live in the 'burbs of Washington D.C., Los Angeles or New York City you might find that the cost to rebuild your home is breaking a cool million. Do you have that kind of money lying around?

As homeowners found out after Hurricane Katrina, living without homeowners insurance is almost always a bad idea. The complete and total financial devastation that a disaster like that can leave behind can be a crippling blow many Americans may never recover from. Losing everything is never something you want, but losing everything without any hope of getting it back sometime in the near future isn't something any of us ever want to contemplate.

The bottom line is that, regardless of how zealously anti-homeowners insurance lobbyists state their case, homeowners insurance is always worth the investment. The last thing you ever want to do is be caught unprepared when the Big Bad Wolf comes knocking on your door, and if you're going to live without homeowners insurance you may as well leave that door thrown wide open. Talk to your insurance agent and then sit back with the satisfaction that comes from knowing that sooner or later you'll have the last laugh.