On Saturday, my wife and did some errands and then decided to lay low in the apartment. I planned on grilling some chicken and vegetables and opening up a bottle of wine for dinner. So I got all my ingredients set and went outside to light the grill. We live in an apartment complex where it is ok to use charcoal grills, which works great for us since we only have a charcoal grill.

I light the grill and everything seems fine. I go back in the apartment to get the brush to clean the grill. As soon as I get back outside by the grill, the fire sprinkler goes of on my balcony. There was absolutely no fire except for what was in the grill; meaning the fire didn't spread to the building or anything.

So, I am stranded outside on the balcony, a few choice words might have escaped my mouth, but swearing is supposed to be good for you right ? My first thought was, holy crap (I actually said a different word but this is blog is rated PG), all our belongings inside our apartment are going to get ruined. But, my wife and I got incredibly lucky in that each fire sprinkler is independent of each other. While I was outside getting soaked, all our furniture and big TV were staying dry.

The other reason my wife and I got lucky is usually we keep our bikes out on the balcony, but this week we got a notice from our apartment complex that we had to clear off the balcony because there was going to be a company painting the outside of the building- so our bikes were safely inside our apartment.

While the fire department was double checking the sprinkler that was replaced and was asking me a couple more questions, it really hit just how lucky my wife and I were. Thinking of all the DVDs, video games, TVs, clothes, couches and all of our other possessions, there was no way my wife and I could financially replace all the stuff. Renters insurance is just like homeowners insurance in that it will protect all your belongings incase of fire, theft and other perils as well as offer liability coverage.

As soon as I got into work this morning I went through the renters insurance quote process and received about five quotes to look over. So moral of the story- even if you don't do anything wrong, accidents can happen. Like mother always said, "it's better to be safe than sorry!"