Backstreet Boy's lost engagement ring needs to be scheduled

Brian Littrell, a member of the once insanely popular Backstreet Boys pop music group, told police that someone stole $120,000 in jewelry from the hotel room where he and his wife Leighann were staying, according to an AP report. The stolen jewelry included Leighann's engagement ring, valued at $110,000.

"I kept my rings on the bedside table, we left the room and 15 minutes I came back, they're gone." Leighanne Littrell said in a WSBTV interview. Some of the jewelry has been found, but not the ring. "We were going to leave, but come to find out there was a person, not to be named on the housekeeping, had one ring that we were looking for and one of the earrings," Littrell said.

Tsk tsk! What is it with celebrities and their obscenely expensive jewelry going missing? We covered a similar story on this blog last summer, when the girlfriend of a Dallas Cowboys football player somehow "lost" a $76,000 engagement ring after she turned down the marriage proposal. The truth later came out that her father had kept it, on the false assumption that the ring was a gift not conditioned on his daughter's acceptance of the football player's marriage proposal (go figure).

Anyway, we're not saying Backstreet Boy Brian is making this story up. Perhaps this truly was just a dumb accident and his insanely expensive ring really was stolen by some opportunistic cleaning lady. If that is the case and the ring doesn't show up, Brian better hope he got the engagement ring scheduled on his homeowner's insurance.

What does it mean to schedule jewelry on a homeowner's policy? Well, the typical homeowner's insurance policy only covers valuable property like jewelry up to a stated limit, usually less than $10,000. For most people, that is more than enough coverage. For people like Brian Littrell, however, that means that more than 90 percent of the value of his lost ring is not covered by a standard California homeowner's insurance policy. If you own expensive jewelry, you will be underinsured unless you have it scheduled on your policy. Sometimes this scheduling is referred to as wedding ring insurance, or a ring rider.

If you have jewelry or other valuables worth more than a few thousand dollars, it's worth talking to your insurance agent about your homeowner's insurance policy so that your extremely valuable items are fully covered. The cost of the extra insurance might not be more than what you'd pay for a few cups of coffee.

(Photo credit: Seth Lemmons on Flickr, used here with permission according to a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license)