Entries Tagged 'Home insurance' ↓

How to choose best home insurance the smart way
If you are reading this article you probably do not need convincing that Home Insurance is a necessity. With homes being so expensive and hard to come by you need to do your best at protecting yours. However as with most things there is a smart and foolish way of doing things.
This article will give you some steps towards smart home insurance, read our other blogs on home insurance for more tips on finding your home insurance balance the smart way.

Try deductibles they are great to reduce you home insurance premiums.

Deductibles are a feature insurance companies introduced to share the risk of accidents with customers. The idea is that customers agree to pay for the first $xxx in an insurance claim. Lets illustrate: say you have your windows insured and your adorable son breaks one with his new baseball. You can claim your house insurance and get it fixed. Every little claim drains the home insurance company’s resources and is a huge pain in the rear. These small claims are often not worth it for us, the customers. Just in filling the forms, calling the insurance company, taking a morning off to receive the adjuster and workers… With a deductible of say $300 you pay for the first $300 dollars of every claim so it won’t be worth your trouble to claim for small stuff. This will reduce your insurance premiums significantly.

Improve your credit score. This is not just a good idea for loans and mortgages, home insurances look at your credit rating to assess if you are a high risk customer or not. Prove to them you are a desirable customer with a low credit rating and see the premiums drop.

Shop around. Don’t stick with your grandparents home insurance just because you are emotionally linked to them, they aren’t. Shop around like you shop for home loans, clothes or cars. Home insurance is expensive you need to get the best deal you can. Even if you are happy with your current home insurance shop around every year to see if you can improve your policy. If you find a better  home insurance policy tell your company and they will likely match it or improve it.

Stop smoking. Not only will you live longer you will have more money to spend and enjoy the extra years you get. The highest cause of fire (one of the biggest expenditures for insurance companies) are unattended fags (Brit for cigarettes). If you used to smoke and have currently stopped, tell your insurance company you will be happy with your savings.

Install an anti-burglar system.

Home insurance love it when you get involved in your own protection. They see it as a sign of a responsible and low risk client. Some insurance companies might even help with the costs and they will all reduce your home insurance policy premiums.

Home insurance flood coverage, is it worth the money
Finding out what you need in and what you don’t or as we phrased it in the title, what it worth your money and what isn’t is no easy task. This is especially so in an industry like home insurance where you are betting against the odds of something terrible happening to your house. You then have the weigh the odds of that happening, the cost of fixing it and the expense of paying for the insurance.

This is especially important with risks that are not covered by typical multi-peril insurance packages, flood insurance being one of them. You can’t contract every home insurance coverage out there or you could buy a new house just with the yearly insurance fee. So some smart choices are needed to assess your risk and protect your investment.

This article will focus on the pros and cons of a rather important home insurance coverage, flood insurance. Floods can completely destroy your home, it’s contents and make it unlivable for long periods of time. As we mentioned above it is not included in most home insurance packages so you have to make the choice of including it in your home insurance coverage or not.

The Good.

The good thing about having flood insurance is that you have protection against one of the nastiest things that can happen to your home. When Mitch hit the Caribbean, Central America and surrounding areas the damages were often absolute, homes and contents completely destroyed. There are few more distressing things than having everything you own destroyed in a minute and not have the cash to replace it. My wife suffered that experience when living in the Dominican Republic and lost everything  she had, unfortunately she had no flood insurance.

The bad.

Flood insurance is very expensive. For a business for example that is worth under 500,000 dollars it will probably mean $3,000 per month, for larger business it can easily climb to $7,000. This is why most individuals and business waive flood insurance coverage unless they feel their house or business being flooded is a real risk.

The ugly.

Many people that don’t get flood insurance because they feel they aren’t at risk suffer the dire consequences of flooding. The saying a house built on a hill doesn’t get flooded is not so adequate in our current global warming climate where more and more previously safe areas are being affected. To illustrate this 25% of flood victims live in an area that was not categorized as a flood prone area.

The best thing you can do if you are re-assessing your home insurance and are thinking about flood insurance is to contact your insurance agent and get some advice from him. Then take the coverage he suggests you get (they are very prone to encourage you to spend more) and see if you can get a better home insurance deal elsewhere.