Savings · · 7 min read
A household insurance map: what you have, what repeats, what's missing
Draw your household's insurance map on one page: what is mandatory, what your pension and health fund already cover, and what to ask before adding a policy.
An ordinary evening, the credit card statement open on the screen. Between the supermarket and the petrol station there are five lines from insurance companies. One you recognise: the car. One is probably the flat. The other three you are not sure when they arrived or what exactly they cover.
Each of them came at a sensible moment. With the mortgage. With the baby. With the new job. With a phone call from a pleasant agent who said something hard to argue with. None of them is foolish on its own. But nobody, including you, is holding the whole picture.
So you end up in one of two familiar places. Either you add another policy, because "what if". Or, one evening in a tidying mood, you cancel two and are not quite sure what is left.
An insurance review is not an expertise test
Part of you wants to be protected and to pay only for what you need; part of you would rather leave the folder shut. Both want something good for you.
You want to know that if something happens, the household carries on. And you don't want to keep quietly funding a policy nobody remembers buying.
Then again: "Thinking about insurance means thinking about illness, accidents, death. And what if I cancel something and turn out to be wrong?" As long as nobody checks, there is a comfortable sense that everything is covered. That comfort spares you an evening of thoughts nobody wants on a weeknight.
The problem is not that you don't understand insurance. The problem is that you have no map.
Duplicate insurance: what happens when each seller sees one piece
This is not your fault. Policies are sold at moments of change and emotion, one at a time, each from a different source. Whoever sold you the mortgage cover never saw the policy from work. Whoever offered health insurance never asked what your health fund already provides. Each seller saw one piece, and you ended up with five pieces and no picture.
That produces two things at once: the same risk covered twice, and another risk not covered at all. "All or nothing" is not ignorance. It is what deciding without a map looks like.
The map takes no expertise. It takes gathering, and one page.
One sentence before going on: insurance advice in Israel requires a licence. What follows is general information about kinds of cover and the questions people ask, not a recommendation to buy, cancel or switch a policy. What to do about a duplication or a gap? Households describe working that out in a conversation with a licensed professional. The decision is yours.
What the map gives you, and what it doesn't ask of you
What you are building: a one-page map of everything the household is covered for, with every duplication or gap written as a question. Nothing cancelled under pressure. Nothing bought out of fear. No need to become an expert.
Which insurance does a household need? Build the map from the bottom up
Gather: start from what you already have
Start from what you already have, not from what is missing.
- Har HaBituach (הר הביטוח), the Capital Market Authority's database where you can search for insurance policies registered in your name. Exactly what it includes and what it does not is set out on its explanation page on the Authority's site; read it before assuming the picture is complete.
- Your pension fund's annual statement, which also lists the insurance cover inside the fund.
- Your health fund's supplementary plan (shaban, שב"ן), if you are a member.
- Your payslip and mortgage documents, since cover sometimes comes through an employer or a bank.
- Your card and bank statements, for any line none of the above explains.
What to gather before drawing the map
0 of 6 done
Four layers instead of a shopping list
The answer to the question in the heading is not a list. It is four questions, one per layer.
Layer 1: what is mandatory. Compulsory motor insurance, for every vehicle. And the cover a bank asks for when it grants a mortgage, which usually includes life insurance and buildings insurance; Kol Zchut sets out the details, and the article on home and mortgage insurance goes deeper. The question: what is required of us, and who are we buying it from?
Layer 2: what sits inside the pension fund. A comprehensive pension fund usually includes disability and survivors' cover as well. What exactly applies to you is in the statement, and the article on the cover inside your pension explains it. The question: what do we already have without having bought a separate policy?
Layer 3: what the health fund provides. The national health basket, plus the supplementary plan for members. The question: what is covered here before we pay for the same thing elsewhere?
Layer 4: what is private. Health, life, home and contents, comprehensive car, long-term care. The question: what does each policy add beyond the three layers beneath it?
Duplications and gaps marked as questions, not decisions
Now look at the page. Where the same risk appears in two layers, write a question mark beside it, not "cancel". Where a risk that matters to you appears in no layer, write a question mark, not "buy". The map doesn't tell you what to do. It shows what is there, so the questions are precise.
In AlphaHome: open an "Insurance" category with subcategories (health, life, car, home) and record each policy you pay as a recurring fixed expense, monthly or yearly, with its payment source. When a fixed expense changes amount, the insights bell flags it, so a premium that went up doesn't slip by unnoticed.
One conversation, with the map in hand
With one page and your questions written on it, a conversation with a licensed professional changes shape. It is no longer "tell me what I need" but "here is what we have, here is what we don't understand". You get answers to your questions rather than to the seller's.
An unfamiliar policy, an offer to switch, a review that drags
You find a policy you don't understand at all. You almost certainly will, and that is exactly why you drew the map. Write it down as a question and leave it in place until you have an answer. Cancelling under pressure just to make the page look tidy can remove cover you would still want.
An unfamiliar policy: what's the first step?
Someone suggests cancelling and replacing, "because it's cheaper". Ask what you lose on the way: is there a new waiting period, are there exclusions that weren't there before, what happens to a medical condition found in the meantime. Ask for the comparison in writing and take a few days. A good decision doesn't disappear in a week.
The review drags on. If the map wasn't finished in one evening, it hasn't failed. One layer a week is enough. What matters is that the page exists and comes back once a year, like the annual fixed-expense audit.
A household that knows what it is protected against
Once the map exists, the next sales call sounds different. You are no longer arguing with "what if"; you are checking which layer the offer belongs to and whether it is already covered. Without a map, every new offer sounds essential. With one, it sounds like a question, and questions can be checked.
The expertise stays with the licensed professionals. What stays with you is the thing none of them ever held: one page, four layers, and a few question marks in your own handwriting. Both partners look at the same page and decide from the same place.
We know what we're protected against, and we know what to ask next.
This week, search Har HaBituach, and record every policy you pay as a recurring fixed expense in an "Insurance" category.
Do one thing this week
Open AlphaHome, record this month's income and fixed charges, and see how much is really free to spend. Everything in this article starts from that number.