Homeowners insurance misconceptions

June 3rd, 2010

Myth 1: Standard policies include coverage against flood.

Fact: All insurance providers do not include any flood coverage into their standard policies. In case you require this type of coverage you can purchase I either as an addition to your current policy or as a separate policy.

Myth 2: The Medical Payment part of the policy will pay for the injuries I and my family have sustained.

Fact: The Medical Payment part of a standard home coverage policy is designed to pay for the injuries any third party suffers at your property. Whether a friend, visitor, neighbor or worker gets injured within your premise the MedPay coverage will pay up to $1,000 per claim. However, nor you not any of your family members will be covered by this type of coverage as your medical policy takes force in such situations.

Myth 3: In case my home is completely destroyed the insurance company will pay for anything I tell them I had in the house.

Fact: In case your house gets destroyed due to different circumstances you insurance company will always ask you to make an inventory of all the items you have had in the house, including specific data like serial numbers, purchase prices and so on. If you cannot provide such information you won’t be reimbursed for the items lost. The best way to assure proper coverage of any lost items, you should make an inventory of all the items you have now with detailed information on every piece of equipment, jewelry, furniture or any other item. Read the rest of this entry »

Auto insurance shopping online

May 31st, 2010

If you are a car owner, you surely know the deal. You need to get your favorite thing insured. It gets very complicated on the roads without insurance. There are too many people on the left and on the right, that can make a mistake at any hour or minute. You have to be prepared for anything.

Your car is your investment. You put money towards it and it works well for you. But it can’t exist without you. You have to take care of it if you want to have it in a good condition.

There are many ways of purchasing insurance. But as we live in the 21 century everything becomes easier with Internet. You can find anything you want with the help of your computer.

You probably wonder if there is any difference between getting insured online and getting insured in some downtown office. We can’t tell you there is no difference at all because it won’t be true. There are some differences and you are about to see them right now. The first thing is of course the convenience. You don’t even have to walk out of your house to order yourself a good insurance plan. Your computer will do it for you 24/7 no matter what the weather is outside and what day of the week it is. You don’t have to drive around from one place to another hoping to find a better offer. You can do it right from your favorite couch with a box of chocolates in your hand. Internet sites will give you an opportunity to choose the bets from the best. You can read quotes and send your questions to different sites. Be sure to receive answers as soon as possible. With just one click you can find all the information you need and plus, you will have all the time in the world to analyze the information you were given. Read the rest of this entry »

Health insurance – health comes first

May 30th, 2010

When you thought your health troubles were costing you much, they got even more expensive for fix. It is almost unreal to come to any health specialist and see him getting interested in cutting your payments. This is your task and you have to make sure your wallet is not crying tears after a visit to any health care provider. Here are some points to consider:

We spend too much money on our health when we realize that the situation got out of control. But we don’t really want to think that it is possible to prevent the disease instead of curing it. We need to keep the healthy lifestyle if we want to stay healthy all the time without any need for the health care medication. Healthy food, exercise and no smoking habits will keep your payments down giving you a chance to economize on unnecessary things. We know it is always easier to say than to do but this is the only way to save yourself from unwanted extra costs that you can do without.

Every health situation and case is totally unique. You can’t predict the health care plan you may need in the future. If you are a member of a big family or you have little children that you want to be a part of the plan too, you have to do some research to find the best possible option for yourself and your beloved people. There are different plans to choose from but they usually require consideration and time. You need to sort out what is the most important thing for you in a plan, how much you are willing to pay, what is the most important for you – deductibles, co-pays or other features. Can you afford to pay a little bit more for those or not? The truth is that it is very important to choose the right plan as it can save you lots of cash.

Before you sign up for any plan, you have to understand how it works and what good it will do for you. What you have to learn is to take care of the advantages that are given to you. Take advantage of possible discounts and ask for alternative medication if you feel like you are being prescribed the most expensive one that you cannot afford. Read the rest of this entry »

Finding auto insurance when you rent a vehicle

May 25th, 2010

If you were building a time machine, you need only find a way of travelling back two years to find a land of plenty. Remembering how good it was almost brings tears to your eyes. Every week a bank, credit card company or finance company would mail you their latest offers. Cheap overdrafts, reduced interest with expanding credit limits or yet another way of converting that positive housing equity into cash for spending. There seemed no possibility of this coming to an end. Yet suddenly the price of gas was up to $4 and more a gallon. That proved just a passing straw in the wind. A month or so later came the bank failures, the credit crunch and a full recession with major problems of unemployment. Comfortable lives disappeared. Family budgets suddenly had to pay for debt reduction. Everyone was looking for ways to save money.

Lives must go on but the problem was how to stay mobile. During the good times, towns and cities had exploded. Gone where the high density housing developments close to workplaces. In their place came suburbs and then exurbs. People were organizing their lives around private transport and expecting to commute further and further to get anything done. What do you do when you find you cannot afford to replace your current vehicles but live too far away from work, schools and convenient shops? There is no private transport so, as a first response, you are looking at constantly patching up your old vehicles to keep them moving. But small repairs become major repairs, particularly if your mileage is high or you get into a traffic accident. You look around the neighborhood for carpools. This can work for routine journeys, but it ties you to other people’s timetables. That leaves renting. Read the rest of this entry »

Using credit scores to set car insurance premium rates

May 23rd, 2010

When you look around your neighborhoods, it’s hard to find any good news. Friends and neighbors may have lost their jobs or be on short-time. There are foreclosed properties on every street. Shops and businesses have been closing down with increasing frequency. These are the signs of a real recession where unemployment and poverty stalk the land. The cause of all this pain is not hard to find. We have all been living beyond our means. When the banks and credit card companies offered us more money to borrow, we just took it. Why bother to save when the value of our homes only goes up? Let’s plan for our retirement by borrowing cheap money and buying stocks and other more risky investments. No-one ever loses if they follow the advice of the credit rating agencies. Well, we know better now. What goes up can also come down. What is given a triple A rating can be junk tomorrow.

In the midst of all this chaos, the credit card operators have been cutting back on the borrowing limits. This has forced pain on us for two reasons. Firstly, finding the money to pay down our debts more quickly means redesigning the family budget. Sacrifices have to be made. Secondly, the way the credit score is calculated depends in part on the extent to which we use the credit cards we have. If the limits are reduced, we look like bad risks because the amount borrowed is closer to the limit. We have less money available to borrow and cut down on card usage so we can repay faster. Put the two together and the score falls. This is a direct criticism of the methods used to calculate the scores. It produces a fundamentally unfair result during a recession. Read the rest of this entry »

Car insurance when you live out in the exurbs

May 23rd, 2010

Urban sprawl never used to be an issue. Even though the latest development might be miles from where you work or the nearest shops, this was never a problem. Most families owned two vehicles. Some three or more. No-one walked. Everyone just jumped in the nearest vehicle and off they went without a second thought until the price of gas rocketed up. Now we have the credit crunch and a recession just bottoming out. Car ownership has become an expensive proposition. Too expensive for some who have been reborn as a one-car family to cut their losses. The first step in crisis management is to find out which of your vehicles is the cheapest make and model to insure. Now balance that against the likely costs of maintenance and repair over the next twelve months. And which will sell for the highest price? When you know which vehicle you are keeping, maximize the number of discounts on the policy, including bundling auto and home together with the same insurer. Except, one vehicle for a busy family may not be practical. What are the options? Read the rest of this entry »

Should you rely on cheap car insurance?

May 18th, 2010

Do you remember the Blues Brothers? They were unstoppable. They were “on a mission from God”. Seems like almost everyone standing behind the counter in the rental agency is a Blues Brother when you come into collect the vehicle. They always want to sell you something, usually additional insurance. The most common special offer is loss damage waiver (LDW). It sounds such a good idea to have complete cover against any loss caused to the vehicle while under your control. The magic word is “waiver”. You are excluded from liability even if you drive the vehicle off the end of a pier and it sinks without trace (hopefully without you still inside it). The only problem is this good idea can seriously damage your bank balance when the final bill comes in. That hourly or daily rate just got heavy. So when should you add LDW? The answer is deceptively simple. If you do not own another vehicle and have no insurance cover in place, it may be a good buy. But most insurance policies on your own vehicle cover you while driving a rental. So it all comes down to the extent of that cover on your own vehicle.

To get the maximum discount in these hard economic times, most people have been pushing up the deductibles. In many cases, the potential losses can be managed to keep to the low end. It’s your vehicle. You can talk to the repair shop and get all the work you want done at the best price. But when it’s a rental vehicle, everything is out of your hands. The rental company has no interest in protecting your bank balance. It pays top dollar to get the vehicle repaired and sends you the bill. No searching around to find the cheapest replacement parts and lowest price body shops. Everything is top of the range and then comes the kicker. It’s called the “loss of use” charge. You are expected to cover their estimated loss of profit while the vehicle is off the road. And guess what. If you are paying their loss of profit, they have no incentive to rush the repairs. They can take their own sweet time and, in most cases, you pay – most private policies do not cover loss of use charges. Some credit card companies offer limited cover, but read the small print before relying on it. Limited cover means very little actual money will ever be paid out. Read the rest of this entry »

Life insurance quotes – term insurance options

May 17th, 2010

Life insurance is what we all come to think about at some point in our life. We need it to feel safe and protected, we have to have it because it is useful and it rational. If somebody asks you about the purpose of insurance, you probably won’t tell as it is like a combination of reasons combined. And it is also correct that each one of us has different expectations from insurance plan.

You can insure yourself for your whole life or you can choose the period of life that you want to insure. It is totally up to you. No matter what you do, please give it a long thought.

If you choose the term life insurance we have to let you know that it is the basic insurance coverage. It is good for those people that want to protect themselves for a particular period of time – this can be specified by you at any point. This type of insurance has certain benefits on its side. If the policyholder dies within the period of the insurance, family or the beneficiary part receives all the benefits stated within the insurance policy. This insurance type is the most simple of all.

If we go on talking about term life insurance we have to admit that it is very attractive as you can decide which part of life you need it for. If you need it for 5 years and not more, it is not a problem. You can pay only for those years that you need it for. You can also cut the frames of time if you wish to do so.

You can stretch the policy and make it suitable for yourself. It can be as short as 1 year only and as long as 30 years. The most popular term periods of time are from 10 to 30 years. The idea of this coverage is to give you protection for a period of time that suits you the most, it won’t be permanent but not permanent doesn’t mean it will last only a few months.

The amount of insurance is up to you as well. Nobody forces you into anything. If you want grant financial security with this type of insurance then you can do it without a doubt. Let’s face the truth, this is one of the biggest reasons people get the term insurance. If you have debt obligations, needs related to income replace or some other financial obligations you should not rush into any decisions on your own. It will make sense to take some time, think your variants over, write down some calculations or advice some specialist. Read the rest of this entry »

Small business insurance and healthcare reform

May 16th, 2010

Well, for better or worse, the healthcare bill has been signed into law. There is no immediate benefit in being angry. There are a number of legal actions started by various Attorneys General alleging that the reforms are unconstitutional. Even if some of these cases succeed on the issue of mandatory insurance for private individuals, this will not necessarily strike down the whole bill. The likelihood is we will be left with all the provisions dealing with small businesses. Keeping it real, we have to start planning for the future on the law as it is. The good news is that the main raft of provisions will not become active until 2014. This gives the lawmakers plenty of time to have second thoughts. Just as important, there are sets of regulations to be written clarifying the detail of how some of the new features are to work at state level. However, this is an outline of what we can expect.

The states are to establish SHOP exchanges where small businesses can group together and buy insurance. For these purposes, until 2016, a business is considered small when it has no more than 50 employees, with states having the option of increasing the limit to 100 employees. To calculate numbers, you pro-rate the full- and part-time employees. Independent analysts predict group premiums will drop no more than 4%, while the value of the cover will rise by up to 3%. To bridge until the exchanges are operating, a tax credit system will come into force. If your business has less than ten employees with an average annual pay of less than $25,000, the credit is 35% of the health plan cost. There are partial credits where the number of employees is less than 25 and their average annual pay is less than $50,000. When the exchanges start, the credit increases to 50% for the first two years. Read the rest of this entry »

Cheap car insurance? Not in Louisiana!

May 15th, 2010

Recently, the political parties were arguing over whether you should be allowed to buy your health insurance across state lines. As part of the healthcare debate, the GOP was strongly in favor of dismantling the current state monopoly. For once, and some would say for good reason, the Democrats were the party of “No”, and insurance companies are still to be regulated by Departments of Insurance in individual states. Obviously, this does not prevent you from moving between states so here, at last, is a national survey telling you where to pitch your tent to get the cheapest premium rates for insuring your vehicle.

With the arrival of internet search engines, it is easy to collect and compare data state-by-state. For these purposes, the research team agreed a standard set of answers to the questionnaires used by the search engines. The sample covered ten zip codes for each state and assumed a single male driver with a short distance to commute to work. He accepted a $500 deductible on comprehensive and collision coverage, and limits of $100,000 for injury to one individual, $300,000 for all injuries arising out of a single traffic accident, and $50,000 for property damage. Prudently, our hypothetical male also asked for uninsured coverage. This approach distinguishes the survey from that undertaken by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC). The NAIC monitors the actual premium rates and takes an average from the gross revenue figures submitted by the insurers in each state. This survery’s sole intention was to find the cheapest average insurance available for one class of driver. Read the rest of this entry »