antoniosk:

 

If youre ok sharing, to what number did you broadly come out to as being much more realistic?

 

It's hard to pick a good number for contents, as it's so easy to miss all the things that get built up over time

 

Well, we have two high-income earners, and 2 kids and we like to collect stuff. We were insured for 75K and came out nearly at double that. 

There is so much stuff you need to consider you probably don't even notice. Cutlery, plates, pots, appliances, furniture. I have SOME expensive clothes, though clothes aren't something I spend huge on, but gadgets are something I have a lot of. Just count the number of shoes alone in your house and work out the replacement cost of that. 

I probably have $1000 of cookbooks across the years of collecting including special editions gifted to me.

In reality, I wouldn't replace absolutely everything, but the point is, your insurer will expect EVERYTHING to be insured or they won't pay out the full amount. 

The assessor we spoke to said 85% of people in NZ are under insured and he said the minimum he considered reasonable to insure would be 50K and most people would be well over that.

We actually went around the house with a video camera and took videos and sent them to the insurance company.