Renters Insurance for Off-Campus Students: What It Costs and Why It’s Worth It
Moving off campus is a milestone — a real lease, a real apartment, and a real pile of belongings that didn’t come from the dorm-supply aisle. What often gets skipped in the move is renters insurance. Skipping it can turn a routine break-in, kitchen fire, or burst pipe into a financial setback that takes years to recover from.
Here’s how off-campus students (and the parents helping them figure it out) should think about renters insurance, what it actually covers, and why Lemonade has become a popular choice for this specific situation.
In partnership with Lemonade, let’s break down what families need to know as they transition out of the dorms and into their first apartments. Get a quote here >>
The Coverage Gap Most Families Don’t Realize Exists
When a student lives in a dorm, many families buy specialized dorm room renters insurance policies. These cover the dorm, as well as personal belongings.
Once they’re renting an apartment, townhouse, or room in a shared house, the student needs their own renters insurance policy. This catches a lot of families off guard, especially during sophomore or junior year, when a student moves out of the dorm without changing anything else about how the family’s insurance is structured.
Why Off-Campus Students Actually Need It
The risk isn’t hypothetical. The U.S. Department of Education recorded 6,500 burglaries on college campuses in 2021, and theft and burglary together account for about 44% of campus criminal activity. Off-campus units tend to carry more exposure than dorms, including ground-floor windows, shared entryways, roommate turnover, and less security infrastructure.
Theft isn’t even the most common claim. Among college-student renters, the most reported losses are fire or severe weather (31%), accidental water damage (31%), vandalism (22%), and theft (17%). A clogged sink, an overloaded power strip, or a kitchen towel too close to the stove can wipe out a laptop, a TV, and a year’s worth of textbooks in an afternoon.
Survey data from Insurify shows 36% of college students say they can’t afford to replace their belongings without renters in
What Renters Insurance Covers
A standard policy has three main parts:
- Personal property protects the items inside the apartment, such as a laptop, phone, bike, clothes, furniture, gaming setup. Most off-campus students do well with $15,000 to $25,000 in coverage.
- Personal liability covers the student if a guest gets hurt in the apartment, or if they accidentally damage someone else’s property. $100,000 to $300,000 is standard.
- Loss of use pays for somewhere to live if the apartment becomes uninhabitable after a covered event like a fire or major water damage.
Most policies also include medical payments to others and optional add-ons for high-value items like cameras, instruments, or jewelry.
You can compare Lemonade options here >>
What It Costs
Renters insurance is one of the cheapest pieces of financial protection a young adult can buy. The average for a college student renters insurance policy runs about $21.95 a month, or roughly $263 a year, according to Insurify.
Lemonade starts as low as $5 per month, depending on the state and the student’s situation, and the company says its policies run about 30% less than typical renters insurance. The basic tier includes $10,000 in personal property coverage, with the option to scale up to the $15K–$25K range most off-campus students need.
Put another way: protecting more than $15,000 worth of belongings costs less than a single takeout dinner per month.
Why Lemonade Works For Young Adults
A few reasons Lemonade has caught on with student renters:
You can get a quote in about 90 seconds on your phone, and policies can bind the same day — no agent appointment, no paper forms.
Claims happen in the app. Lemonade says roughly 40% of claims are handled instantly and claims are paid out fast thanks to its AI technology, which matters when a student needs to replace a stolen laptop before midterms, not three weeks after.
It’s purpose-built for off-campus renters. Lemonade does not write dorm policies, so the product is specifically designed for students renting their own place.
Pricing is transparent. Premium, coverage limits, and deductible are all shown before the student commits.
How Students And Parents Should Think About This Decision
The choice usually comes down to two questions:
What would it cost to replace everything in the apartment from scratch? Walk the unit and add up the laptop, phone, bike, TV, clothes, kitchen gear, textbooks, and furniture. The number is almost always over $10,000.
What happens if a guest gets hurt or the student accidentally causes damage to the building? Without liability coverage, the student (or the parents, depending on the lease) could be on the hook for medical bills or repair costs.
For most off-campus students, the math is simple: as little as a $5 monthly premium against a potential five-figure loss. Renters insurance is one of the few financial products where the cost-to-protection ratio sits firmly on the buyer’s side.
Check out Lemonade here and get started >>
Editor: Colin Graves
The post Renters Insurance for Off-Campus Students: What It Costs and Why It’s Worth It appeared first on The College Investor.
the failure of Slater Walker – Bank Underground
David Rule
In August 1977, the Bank of England purchased the bank Slater Walker Limited, completing its rescue. The bank had been a subsidiary of Slater Walker Securities, controlled by Jim Slater, which also owned an insurer. This post describes how Slater misused depositors’ and policyholders’ funds to finance his wider business interests. The Bank of England sought to protect depositors by supporting the wider group rather than putting the bank into liquidation. The case remains relevant today when banks and insurers continue to be owned by financial and industrial groups, including private equity sponsors, and supervisors must consider how to address conflicts of interest and how far to insulate the bank or insurer from the rest of the group.
Growth of Slater Walker
Founded in 1964, Slater Walker Securities initially specialised in takeovers of industrial companies. In 1968, it acquired a controlling stake in a bank called Ralli Brothers, which it renamed Slater Walker Limited. A well-known investor and business writer, Jim Slater broadened the scope of the group into financial services, marketing it as a merchant bank and setting up insurance and asset management subsidiaries. By 1972, Slater Walker Securities was one of the fifty largest companies on the London Stock Market by market capitalisation.
UK banks were not subject to prudential regulation until 1979 and not supervised by the Bank of England in any systematic way until 1974. But Jim Keogh, the Principal of the Bank’s Discount Office, had regular contact with Jim Slater. He characterised Slater Walker in 1971 as a ‘rapidly growing but responsible merchant bank’ with a ‘new and well-deserved aura of respectability’. Slater was ‘highly honest, outstanding in his field… according to his bankers, good for anyone’s money’. Nonetheless, the Bank of England did not allow Slater Walker Limited to take over Ralli Brothers’ account with it. One reason was that it distrusted ‘house banks’ that were part of wider groups and used to finance their non-financial activities. In 1970, Bank of England officials described Slater Walker Limited as a ‘group washing machine’.
In the early 1970s, Slater Walker grew rapidly, acquiring businesses globally. By late-1973, however, the boom was over. Recession, falling property prices and a liquidity crisis affecting secondary banks put Slater Walker on the defensive. It began urgently to sell assets around the world.
Table A: Slater Walker Securities: total assets and pre-tax profits 1965–75 (£ millions)
It later emerged that Jim Slater used the bank and insurer to finance both the growth and subsequent shrinking of the group. Slater Walker Limited had financed acquisitions of companies and property developments, and it had lent to buyers of the group’s businesses – what would now be called ‘vendor financing’. A report by Price Waterhouse and Peat Marwick in 1976 revealed that two thirds of Slater Walker Limited’s lending to borrowers outside the group was to companies to which the group had sold businesses. A Bank of England supervisor wrote, ‘Slater has treated depositors’ money as his own, lending it to finance the sale of group assets on concessionary terms’.
The bank had lent to other group companies on a bigger scale, amounting to more than two and a half times its external lending. It also took deposits from these companies, leaving an apparently manageable net intragroup exposure. But these netting arrangements were questionable in insolvency, even after the Bank of England insisted that Slater Walker tighten them. Slater Walker treated its insurer similarly to its bank. According to the accountants’ report, Jim Slater had ‘exercised a dominant role’ over the insurer’s investment decisions and 24 of its significant investments were in companies connected to the wider group.
Slater Walker Limited’s external loanbook was also highly concentrated. More than half comprised four large exposures to companies with business connections to the wider group, each exceeding the bank’s capital. In August 1975, a scandal broke in Singapore that threatened to push Slater Walker over the edge. Three years previously, at the height of the boom, Slater Walker Securities had sold its Hong Kong business to a related company in Singapore, Haw Par Brothers International, financed by a c.US$30 million loan from Slater Walker Limited, the biggest of its four largest exposures. Slater Walker had then sold its stake in Haw Par in 1974 in its period of attempted deleveraging. But the loan remained. The new owners of Haw Par now alleged that the loan was invalid because Slater Walker executives had benefitted from an illegal executive compensation scheme (through a company called Spydar Securities) that had given them shares at below-market prices in Hong Kong companies subsequently purchased by Haw Par. If the courts agreed with Haw Par, Slater Walker Limited would be insolvent.
Bank of England support
Haw Par’s allegations led Jim Slater to resign, replaced by his friend and another celebrity ‘corporate raider’, Sir James Goldsmith. The Bank of England provided a £130 million facility to Slater Walker Limited to allow it to repay depositors and put two prominent merchant bankers on the Slater Walker Securities board. The bank’s interlinkages with the wider group, however, made it difficult to support it in isolation. As the Bank’s Governor Gordon Richardson summarised to Chancellor Dennis Healey, Slater Walker was a ‘tangled skein’. At the end of 1975, the Bank of England was faced with the choice of putting the bank into liquidation or providing additional financial support to the wider group. This choice was to recur five times over the next two years and each time the Bank of England chose to increase its exposure to keep the group alive rather than putting the bank into liquidation.
Slater Walker Securities had issued £91 million of loanstocks in the domestic and Eurobond markets. These had long maturities, mostly to the late-1980s, but covenants required early redemption at par if the total indebtedness of the group exceeded a multiple of its current net worth. Slater Walker Securities needed to make significant provisions at the end of 1975, leading to losses that would reduce its net worth below these trigger values. The Bank of England chose to shore up the net worth of the group by providing a £40 million guarantee of the bank’s loanbook. In August 1977 the Bank withdrew the guarantee and instead purchased Slater Walker Limited at above its fair value. Through a combination of the purchase price and asset sales, around £5 million was transferred to Slater Walker Securities, allowing it to repay the loanstocks early and survive as a going concern. Advisor to the Governor Sir Henry Benson, described this as a ‘bounty’ for the bank’s owners.
Why did the Bank decide to support the wider group? There was a healthy internal debate. The head of banking supervision and later Deputy Governor George Blunden wrote to the Governor in November 1975 arguing in favour of putting the bank into liquidation and protecting depositors at a cost of £10 to £70 million. He described the alternative of providing additional financial support to keep the group afloat as a ‘complete gamble, and we should not gamble’. Several arguments, however, were made in favour of support. Slater Walker was front page news and Bank officials were concerned about contagion to other banks if it was allowed to fail. They wrote about possible damage to the ability of UK borrowers to raise funds in the Euromarkets if Slater Walker Securities defaulted. Some also felt that they had a moral commitment to the management and board of Slater Walker Securities that they had put in place after Jim Slater had left. The most important judgement, however, was that the Bank stood a better chance of recovering the money used to support depositors if the group continued as a going concern, with the bank put into a protracted solvent wind down. They thought that the bank could not be disentangled from the rest of the group and put into liquidation at reasonable cost. The Governor wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer concluding, ‘we believe that the alternative of attempting to keep the group alive is better’.
Conclusion
Conflicts of interest, where the owners of a bank or insurer might use lending and investment to support a wider group strategy, remain a live supervisory issue. For example, in December 2019 the UK Prudential Regulation Authority required Wyelands Bank to limit its exposure to the Gupta Family Group Alliance that controlled it. Wyelands Bank subsequently went into wind down and was fined by the Prudential Regulation Authority for breaches of its rules, including unacceptable concentrations of risk to connected companies. The Bank of England began to supervise Slater Walker Limited in 1974 when it was already a ‘group washing machine’ and ‘tangled skein’. But the questions facing it when deciding how to rescue the bank were similar to those facing supervisors today: what safeguards can you put in place to mitigate conflicts of interest and how effectively can you ring fence the bank or insurer from the rest of the group?
David Rule is a Senior Advisor in the Prudential Regulation Authority.
If you want to get in touch, please email us at bankunderground@bankofengland.co.uk or leave a comment below.
Comments will only appear once approved by a moderator, and are only published where a full name is supplied. Bank Underground is a blog for Bank of England staff to share views that challenge – or support – prevailing policy orthodoxies. The views expressed here are those of the authors, and are not necessarily those of the Bank of England, or its policy committees.
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31 of 50 riskiest housing markets cluster in 4 states
Of the 50 U.S. counties with the risk for distressed properties, 31 are concentrated in four states, led by Florida, an Attom Data Solutions analysis found.
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Florida is the home of 12 of those counties, with the No. 1 most at risk locale in the nation being Charlotte County. California was next with nine, while Illinois and New Jersey had five each. The results were similar to
After Charlotte County, Butte County in California was next, followed by Charles County, Maryland, Shasta County, California and Cumberland County, New Jersey.
The riskiest markets have similar characteristics, namely
“While home prices have eased slightly from last summer’s record highs, affordability remains a challenge in much of the country,” Attom CEO Rob Barber said in a press release. “The greatest risk remains in counties where unemployment rates are above 5% and homes are being foreclosed at greater rates.”
Besides unemployment and the percentage of homes facing foreclosure, other considerations included the share of seriously underwater mortgages, plus the percentage of the average local wage needed to pay for major home ownership expenses for a median priced home.
The list was created from an analysis of 580 U.S. counties with sufficient data available for the first quarter.
At the other end of the spectrum, of the 50 counties with the least risk, nine were in Tennessee, five each in Virginia and Wisconsin and four in Michigan.
The five least risky counties were Chittenden County, Vermont; Rutherford County, Tennessee; Arlington County, Virginia; Tippecanoe County, Indiana; and Cumberland County, Maine.
Those counties were not notably more affordable than others, Attom pointed out. But each benefited from some of the lowest unemployment and best foreclosure rates in the country, along with a low share of underwater mortgages.
The report found the national median home sales price in the first quarter totaled $360,000. This would need 30.3% of the typical American worker’s annual wage to afford major monthly purchase expenses. This is an improvement from one year ago, when the share was 32.5%.
Kings County, otherwise known as the borough of Brooklyn, expenses for a median priced home in this part of New York City consumed 108.6% of a typical resident’s wages. The next four counties on the list were all in California: Santa Cruz, 97.1%; Marin, 91.1%; San Luis Obispo, 89.7%; and Orange, 98.1%.
Louisiana was the state whose jurisdictions, known as parishes, occupied the top of the listings most properties
The Attom report said one out of every 1,211 homes nationwide were in the process of foreclosure. The highest rate was in Liberty County, Texas, one-in-every-55 homes. Baltimore was second, at one-in-every 294 homes.
A recent report from Cotality noted
Its data, which measures metro areas, had Odessa, Texas, in a different part of the state, as the area with the largest increase in the serious delinquent rate, a year-over-year gain of one percentage point. The overall delinquency rate for Odessa increased 1.1 percentage points, trailing Pine Bluff, Arkansas, up 1.5 percentage points.
TSA Remote Security Screening Now Available at Boston Logan
TSA Launches Remote Security Screening Program
On June 1, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) launched its latest initiative, a remote screening option for passengers flying out of Boston Logan International Airport.
In partnership with the Massachusetts Port Authority, TSA has introduced this pilot program with an inaugural remote terminal in Framingham, Massachusetts. Passengers flying out of Boston Logan on JetBlue or Delta flights between 5:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. are currently eligible for this new experience.
Instead of dealing with traffic at the airport, congestion at the checkpoint, and limited parking, these passengers can instead park at Framingham, check in, go through security, and take a bus directly to the secure side of their terminal.
Tickets for the Framingham remote screening experience are on sale at massport.com now for $9, and children under 18 board the secure bus for free when traveling with a ticketed adult. Parking at Framingham is available for only $7 a day.
TSA plans to roll out this pilot program at more remote passenger screening options nationwide. Other current remote screening locations are located at Los Angeles, Atlanta, and JFK International Airports. Visit TSA’s website for more information on TSA’s remote security screening program.
The 5 Vital Numbers You Must Put in Your Next LinkedIn Funding Announcement
Many founders are missing the moment.
CEO says anyone who works from home is grabbing groceries or at the vet 30% of the time
Just when you thought the dust had settled on the return-to-office wars, one startup founder has reignited the debate—accusing remote workers of sneaking off and doing life admin on company dime for a third of their working day.
Serial founder Bridger Pennington panned his camera around an office full of people still at their desks on a Friday evening to prove his point that in-office working is more productive.
“I get a lot of hate, but I’m a big believer for working in an office in person,” Pennington posted to his Threads account, where it’s racking up thousands of reactions. “You can look at the time, it is five exactly on the dock, and you can see everyone’s still working.”
The Utah-based co-founder of the startups Fund Launch and Ugly Unicorn explained that, despite offering workers incentives to work in the office—including free dinners for anyone who stays past 7 p.m.—he still faces backlash for not letting staff work remotely.
“You try that with your startup, go ahead. Good luck,” he bluntly responded to anyone pushing back on him.
“I’ll bet your bottom dollar, Susan or Joe, whoever, on a Tuesday afternoon that’s working remote, 30% of the time they’re getting groceries, they’re running their dog to the vet, they got a kids dance recital—they’re not working, and you’re paying them full time.”
The internet fired back—and some of them do run their own companies
Pennington captioned his video, telling people to run their own company if they weren’t happy with his stance on in-office work. So naturally, founders came to his comment section to let him know they already do—and that their remote-first firms are thriving.
“Seeing this while my team helps me run a successful company from their beds or the beach, in different continents,” one user—who says she runs her own company with an entirely remote, women-only team—commented.
“No clocking in. No permission slips… I give them paid leave for periods because day two under fluorescent lighting is not it,” she said. “Daycares for their kids are covered too.”
“I do in fact run my own company. My employees are all remote and incredibly hardworking,” another user added.
Others pointed to Fund Launches’ 3.1-star Glassdoor rating as evidence that not everyone who works for the company is as happy as Pennington is with its in-office policy and company culture.
Meanwhile, remote workers took to the comments to argue how much more productive they are from home and that Pennington’s take has “micromanager written all over” it.
But Pennington pushed back, telling Fortune that in-office working is beneficial for both workers and company culture.
“Especially post-COVID, many young people want to work on something compelling, with people who work hard and build something fun together,” he said.
“That’s the culture we’ve built at Fund Launch, and it’s a cascading effect. It’s energizing, fun, and exciting to work with great people on really hard problems, especially when you know you have upside in the company you’re building.”
Workers and their bosses have very different definitions of productivity
As Pennington points out, he believes workers are less productive at home, not because of their output levels, but because he sees them having time to run errands. Whether or not his 30% figure holds up, he’s put his finger on a tension that isn’t going away: workers and employers genuinely cannot agree on what a productive day actually looks like.
Research has shown that only 25% of workers measure their productivity in any formal sense—meaning most people rely on something far more subjective, like ticking off a to-do list or simply feeling done for the day.
A key way many workers say they measure productivity is by being able to get their stuff done “without roadbacks”—something which the office is full of: The impromptu desk chats, the colleague who needs five minutes that turns into forty-five, the back-to-back meetings that could have been an email.
And yet Pennington describes being able to quickly tap a colleague on the shoulder as one of the biggest draws to working in an office.
“In person is such an advantage,” he said, while pointing to two young hires who are sitting in an open-plan office where you can overhear every conversation. “These guys all get to learn and be like around those people,” he added. “When you work in person, you can walk around and talk to people and get stuff done and just get things moving.”
Ironically, those same spontaneous interactions are precisely what remote workers cite as their biggest productivity drain when they’re in an office.
Because while visibility may feel more productive for a manager—being able to see who’s at their desk, loop someone in on the spot, get a quick update in passing—for the individual contributor doing the actual work, those micro-interruptions compound, leaving them with less time to do their actual job.
It’s why workers and their employers may never see eye to eye on what constitutes a day well spent at work.
Remote employees may argue they’re more productive because they can do their jobs two hours faster, sans distractions, than if they were in an office—leaving them extra time for life admin. To them, that’s proof of efficiency. But to their boss, it may look like two hours they weren’t working.
15 Years Of Investing: How I'm Investing At All-Time Highs
ad Find out more about InvestEngine here:
If you’re wondering whether now is the right time to invest, you’re not alone. With headlines about market crashes, AI bubbles, and economic uncertainty, it’s easy to feel like you should wait. But in this video, I break down what I’d actually do if I was starting investing today, based on 15 years of real experience.
Disclaimer: I do not earn any commission from this link. Capital at risk. ETF costs apply when investing. Tax treatment depends on individual circumstances and may be subject to change. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results.
My performance data correct as of 13/03/2026.
For Impact methodology visit:
source
Atmos Rewards: Atmos Members Day (Discounted Award Flights)
The Offer
Direct link to offer
- Atmos Rewards is debuting something called ‘Atmos Members Day’. First one launches today and you can book by 6/3 for travel September 1, 2026 – November 15, 2026. Route options as follows:
- Mexico City (MEX): now starting at 7,500 points
- Helsinki (HEL): now starting at 15,000 points
- Paris (CDG): now starting at 20,000 points
- Tahiti (PPT): now starting at 20,000 points
- Bangkok (BKK): now starting at 25,000 points
- Taipei (TPE): now starting at 30,000 points
Our Verdict
They are also offering ‘Atmos Unlocked’ which seems to be experiences. Lots of other rewards programs offer similar deals (like KLM/Flying Blue). We mostly don’t cover them as it’s usually marginal value over off peak times.
The Best Defensive Strategies | RPC
We examine downside protection—or defensive—strategies over more than 220 years of global financial history, covering many years in which traditional equity–bond portfolios suffer and across a wide range of economic scenarios and historical regimes. Traditional defensive equity factors—low-risk, quality, and value—consistently provide effective downside protection, whereas gold and put options prove less drawdown or cost-effective. Our long-run evidence shows that multi-asset defensive strategies, particularly a return-enhanced version of the defensive absolute return (DAR) portfolio introduced by Cavaglia et al. (2022) and trend-following, provide the most effective downside protection. DAR and trend-following are complementary across tests by diversifying each other across stages of drawdowns. Investors can improve the defensive properties and improve total portfolio outcomes of traditional portfolios by considering the deep sample evidence on defensive strategies provided in this paper.