Tag Archives: Buying
Buying A New Home? What You Should Know About Home Owner’s Insurance (2)
Buying A New Home? What You Should Know About Home Owner’s Insurance
You do not need to do any research to understand how important your home is. It is a significant investment and a storehouse for your treasured and valuable possessions. It is natural and smart to want to protect your home with insurance. Getting the best insurance coverage at the best rate, though, is a matter you can learn more about.
To avoid potential problems when filing claims, be sure that all of your high value possessions are covered. Because of policy limits, some of the more expensive items you own may not have automatic coverage. You can ensure your valuables are taken care of by adding a specific endorsement to your insurance policy.
When considering valuable contents, remember to include unusual or valuable items that may not normally be considered. Jewelry, art, furs and electronics are common categories of contents your agent likely verifies to make sure you have adequate coverage. However, if you collect stamps, antique books or other unusual items, valuable possessions may not be fully covered in case of loss.
Although it sounds petty, you can be covered by home owner’s insurance for the cost of food spoilage in certain situations. If a power line near by is cut and causes loss of power to your home, you may be covered for the lost food. Some home owner’s insurance also will cover you in the case of storm-related power outages. Call your insurance agent for clarification.
Have a security system installed in your home. By having this extra security measure, often times the cost of it will be absorbed by the savings you will receive on your homeowners insurance policy. Not only will you and your family be safer and more protected, but you can actually save money and increase your resale value.
The home you have just bought is probably the largest investment in your life. It is a natural instinct to protect the value of your property. The way to do that is to purchase a home owner insurance policy, which is basically a contract between an insurance company and the home owner. As long as the home owner keeps paying the monthly premiums, the insurance company pays for certain losses such as damage caused by human actions or natural disasters.
When shopping around for homeowner’s insurance rates, be sure to mention any security systems that your home may have. Having a central security system that reports remotely to an off-site security service in case of burglary or fire, can lower your monthly premiums by as much as five percent a month.
Pick an insurance company you are comfortable with. You need to be able to trust your insurance company. Before purchasing your policy do research on the company you choose and look at the company’s complaints and at the customer satisfaction rating. Doing business with an insurance company you trust is important.
Insurance for your home is no less complicated than the other sorts of insurance you can purchase. Given the value of what you want to insure, it also has a great deal of importance. By reviewing good advice like that above, you can ensure that you act wisely when you take steps to protect your home and its contents.
Buying Home Owner’s Insurance In Several Easy Steps (2)
Buying Home Owner’s Insurance In Several Easy Steps
Shopping for home owner’s insurance is not something most people do frequently. It is very important to make sure that you get a policy that covers your personal needs and meets your requirements for cost and customer service. Selecting the appropriate insurance carrier can mean a significant difference in your life should you need to make a claim in the future.
Review your homeowner’s insurance policy every year to make sure it still accurately reflects your situation. Keep track of additions or changes to your house that might call for discounts or premium reductions. Do not neglect your neighborhood, either. The installation of new services nearby (e.g. a new fire hydrant close to your house), may also call for lower insurance payments.
Before purchasing your house and policy, try to get a quote for windstorm and flood insurance. Some companies may not offer you coverage with these disasters, but it depends on the area you live in. If you live in an area prone to hurricanes and your insurance policy offers windstorm coverage, then installing approved shutters for hurricanes should cause a premium discount.
To lower your annual premiums, install up to date smoke alarms and security systems in your home. Insurance companies give significant discounts to home owners who take steps to protect their home, and these are among the most cost efficient ways to do that. Provide proof of your alarms or security system to your insurance company in order to receive your discounts.
Do everything possible to prevent yourself having to make a claim on your home insurance. If you don’t make any claims with your home insurance provider, you can build up a no-claims discount. After five years of no claims, many insurance companies offer discounts of 50% or more on your annual premiums.
Understand how your home owner’s coverage works. A home owner’s policy is a combination of two types of coverage to provide more complete coverage to the insured. Your home owner’s insurance is made up of property insurance and liability insurance. The property insurance covers loss and damage, while the liability portion gives you coverage for any injuries that someone sustains while on your property.
When considering home owner’s insurance, staying with the same company for a long period of time can affect premium rates. Many insurance carriers offer discounts or reduced rates for long-term customers, so staying with a company often makes financial sense. If you are pleased with your current carrier’s service and feel the premiums are reasonable, keep your policy with that company.
Homeowner’s insurance is an expensive but necessary investment. However, there are ways to reduce that expense. By raising your deductible, you can lower your premium. Certain updates, such as a new roof or a security system, can also reduce your rate. Check with your insurance company for a full listing of the updates and improvements that can save you money on your policy.
Following the advice and tips in the above article can make shopping for your home owners insurance an easier process. Be sure you have all of the coverage that you will need for your situation and if you ever find yourself in a place where you need to make a claim, you can be assured that your policy will cover most if not all circumstances that could occur in life.
Buying life insurance: A Shopping Checklist
Buying life insurance: A Shopping Checklist
When shopping for term life insurance, you want to find the right amount of insurance coverage at a reasonable price with a company you can trust. But for many people, getting started is the hardest part. That’s where the following Life Insurance Checklist can help.
1. What you would like your policy to achieve?
Ask yourself what it is you want your life insurance to do. For example, do you want to have insurance coverage that will:
• Pay funeral arrangements?
• Pay the outstanding balance owing on a mortgage and other debts?
• Offset the loss of your income? And if so, for how long?
• Contribute to the future education of your children?
• A combination of all or part of the above?
Knowing what you would like to accomplish with your life insurance policy and approximately how much you need to achieve these goals will help you determine how much life insurance you should consider purchasing. Online life insurance calculators are available to help you put a dollar value on the amount of coverage you need.
2. Who would you like to insure under the life insurance policy?
Most insurance companies offer a variety of life insurance products to suit your lifestyle and family needs. You can get an insurance policy on your own life, or you can get one policy for both you and your spouse (called a joint life insurance policy). The most common joint life policy provides coverage when the first partner dies, leaving the life insurance benefit to the surviving spouse.
3. How long will you need life insurance?
Consulting a psychic isn’t necessary, although it does require that you estimate the timing of your life insurance needs. For example:
• When will your mortgage be paid off? The amortization period of your mortgage will often determine how long your term life insurance policy should be.
• When will your children be finished school? One day they’ll finish their education and having enough life insurance coverage to pay their educational expenses won’t be necessary.
• When are you planning to retire? You will have less income to replace at that time.
Knowing how long you’ll need life insurance coverage before you begin shopping will ensure you’re comfortable with the life insurance product you end up purchasing. Online tools are available to help you figure out which term for your life insurance policy is most recommended for people with similar lifestyles.
So now that you’ve got the how much, who and how long questions answered, you’re ready to shop.
1. Compare life insurance quotes from multiple companies:
It pays to shop around because life insurance rates can vary considerably depending on the product you choose, your age, and the amount of coverage you request. This is the easy part, because with the Internet you can compare life insurance quotes easily, online, anytime.
2. Which life insurance rate has been quoted – standard or preferred?
There are two basic life insurance rate groups you should know about when shopping for life insurance coverage: standard rates and preferred. Standard life insurance rates are the rates the majority of Canadians qualify for, while about one third of the population is eligible for preferred rates.
Preferred life insurance rates are typically offered to very healthy people and means you may pay a smaller premium than most. Usually preferred rates are offered only once the results of the medical information and tests are known. It will depend on your blood pressure, cholesterol levels, height, weight, and family health history. But preferred rates are worth it. They could save you up to 30-35% off your quoted premium.
When comparing prices, make sure you’re comparing ‘standard to standard’ or ‘preferred to preferred’ life insurance rates. If you’re not sure, ask the broker. It would be disappointing to find out you were quoted preferred rates at the beginning, only to find out you don’t qualify for them later.
3. Review the life insurance broker’s availability:
How easily can you get a hold of the broker? What are their hours of operation? Whether it is through their website or telephone, the life insurance broker should be easily accessible to you should you ever have questions or need to speak to them about a change in your life insurance needs. Look for toll-free numbers and extended hours of service as guides.
4. Review the medical information required to obtain the policy:
Typically the more medical information you provide, the better the price. For a policy that asks few or no medical questions, you can bet the premium is higher for the same coverage then a plan asking for more information. Depending on the company, your age, and the amount of coverage you want, you could be asked to provide blood and urine samples. To obtain the samples, a nurse will visit at not cost to you.
5. Consider a life insurer’s financial stability and strength:
A company’s financial stability is something to consider if you are planning on making a long-term purchase like life insurance. There are organizations out there, like A.M. Best, that evaluate insurers and provide a rating on their stability and strength.
6. Ask about renewal options and requirements:
Once the initial premium is set, it is usually guaranteed for the length of the policy (often 10 or 20 years). But what happens when the policy expires? Most policies are renewable until you are 70 or 75 so don’t forget to ask your broker if you will have to take a medical to renew your policy. While your premiums will be higher on renewal, find out if they will also be guaranteed to remain level for the second term of the policy.
7. Confirm the policy can be cancelled without penalty:
Most term life insurance policies can be cancelled at any time without penalty. Make sure to check with your broker to see if the life insurance company has any unusual cancellation policies.
8. Consider the conversion options and restrictions for the policy:
As your life changes so do your life insurance needs and you may want the option to convert your coverage some day.
To convert a term life insurance policy means to transfer all, or part of, the death benefit of the policy into a permanent life policy without a medical. For example, say you originally bought a term policy to protect a mortgage and child. Once the mortgage is paid and the child grown, you might find it desirable to convert the policy into one that will give you a new level premium for the rest of your life, and a death benefit that is guaranteed not to expire as you age.
When you purchase your life insurance policy, find out if there are any limitations on your age at the time of conversion. In most cases, you have the option of converting up until you are 60 or 65. As well, ensure you are given several options of the type of policies you can move into, the more the better.
Final tip – choose a life insurance broker you trust:
While it doesn’t necessarily impact the type of policy you choose to purchase, a rapport with your broker is critical in feeling comfortable with the life insurance policy you buy and the information you’ve received.
A CPA Talks About Buying Life Insurance
A CPA Talks About Buying Life Insurance
Not everyone needs life insurance. The first thing to do is make sure you need it. Life insurance is really meant for your family members or other dependents who rely on your earnings.
Why You Buy Life Insurance
You buy life insurance so that, if you die, your dependents can live the same kind of life they live now. Strictly speaking, then, life insurance is only a means of replacing your earnings in your absence. If you don’t have dependents (say, because you’re single) or you don’t have earnings (say, because you’re retired), you don’t need life insurance. Note that children rarely need life insurance because they almost never have dependents and other people don’t rely on their earnings.
Life Insurance Comes in Two Flavors
If you do need life insurance, you should know that it comes in two basic flavors: term insurance and cash-value insurance (also called “whole life” insurance). Ninety-nine times out of 100, what you want is term insurance.
Term Life is Simple to Buy and Understand
Term life insurance is simple, straightforward life insurance. You pay an annual premium, and if you die, a lump sum is paid to your beneficiaries. Term life insurance gets its name because you buy the insurance for a specific term, such as 5, 10, or 15 years (and sometimes longer). At the end of the term, you can renew your policy or get a different one. The big benefits of term insurance are that it’s cheap and it’s simple.
Cash Value is Trickier
The other flavor of life insurance is cash-value insurance. Many people are attracted to cash-value insurance because it supposedly lets them keep some of the premiums they pay over the years. After all, the reasoning goes, you pay for life insurance for 20, 30, or 40 years, so you might as well get some of the money back. With cash-value insurance, some of the premium money is kept in an account that is yours to keep or borrow against.
This sounds great. The only problem is that cash-value insurance usually isn’t a very good investment, even if you hold the policy for years and years. And it’s a terrible investment if you keep the policy for only a year or two. What’s more, to really analyze a cash-value insurance policy, you need to perform a very sophisticated financial analysis. And this is, in fact, the major problem with cash-value life insurance.
While perhaps a handful of good cash-value insurance policies are available, many— perhaps most—are terrible investments. And to tell the good from the bad, you need a computer and the financial skills to perform something called discounted cash-flow analysis. If you do think you need cash-value insurance, it probably makes sense to have a financial planner perform this analysis for you. Obviously, this financial planner should be a different person from the insurance agent selling you the policy.
What’s the bottom line? Cash-value insurance is much too complex a financial product for most people to deal with. Note, too, that any investment option that’s tax-deductible—such as a 401(k), a 401(b), a deductible IRA, a SEP/IRA, or a Keogh plan—is always a better investment than the investment portion of a cash-value policy. For these two reasons, I strongly encourage you to simplify your financial affairs and increase your net worth by sticking with tax-deductible investments.
If you do decide to follow my advice and choose a term life insurance policy, be sure that your policy is non-cancelable and renewable. You want a policy that cannot be canceled under any circumstances, including poor health. (You have no way of knowing what your health will be like ten years from now.) And you want to be able to renew the policy even if your health deteriorates. (You don’t want to go through a medical review each time a term is up and you need to renew.)
Get Smart And Follow These Tips To Buying Home Owner’s Insurance
Get Smart And Follow These Tips To Buying Home Owner’s Insurance
Have you recently bought a home and purchased home owner’s insurance? Maybe you own a home and you have yet to purchase insurance for it. Either way, it is important that you are well-informed about the ins and outs of home insurance. The following article is going to give you some of that knowledge.
If you live in an area prone to hurricanes, or even if you don’t, it’s unlikely your basic home owner’s insurance actually covers the damage that comes from the storms. If there is any risk of a hurricane heading your way, ensure that you get the coverage you need, just in case. Remember – NO private insurance company provides flood insurance, even if you’re covered for a hurricane.
When it comes to homeowners insurance, make sure you update it if your life changes. If you go through a divorce, make sure the right people are on the policy. If you a built a playground or added something to your house, you will need to update that, too. Being current is what you need to be!
If you need to insure a holiday home, cottage, or a home you are away from for long periods of time, let your insurer know. They have policies that cover problems that happen to your home while you’re not there, which otherwise could be considered negligence, and you wouldn’t be able to claim.
If you run a home-based business, you should ask your insurance company if your equipment is covered. Typically, it will only be covered for ,500, which may not be enough for items like computers or tools. You can add additional coverage, specific to a small home business, for a small increase to your premium.
If you’re cheap on your home owner’s insurance coverage it can come back to haunt you if something really bad happens. You have to balance how much you’re willing to spend today on your premiums with how much you’re willing to spend out of pocket if you have a problem with your home.
To save money on your homeowners insurance talk to your agent and see if the company provides discounts for installing additional smoke detectors. Many older homes lack them in areas that are considered standard places to install today and many insurance companies will provide a discount as an incentive for you to add more.
Know how much homeowner’s insurance you need. It is estimated that many homeowners are under-insured. Make sure the replacement value on your house would be enough to rebuild your house today, from the ground up. This value can differ greatly from the market value which is listed on your insurance policy.
If you have worries about people being injured on your property – although I cannot imagine why – you do have coverage under your home owner’s insurance for personal liability. This coverage is typically 0,000, but you can have it raised if you feel that is insufficient coverage for your home.
In conclusion, whether you are an insured home owner or if you have yet to get home insurance, it is wise to be well informed on the subject. Use the information given to you in the above article to make sure you have the best home owner’s insurance possible.
Why You Should Consider Buying Your Auto Insurance Online
Why You Should Consider Buying Your Auto Insurance Online
Many would consider auto insurance as an added financial burden. And who would not ? Imagine paying for something that you are not sure if you will ever going to use. The worst thing is, auto insurance is not the product you can choose not to buy.
However, this is not to say that auto insurance is a total financial burden. It only says that there are products like auto insurance that the government imposes you to buy for your own sake even though you do not really like it. Nonetheless, you cannot do anything about it anymore and have to accept it as it should be.
Anyway, if you are ready to buy your next car insurance policy or ready your first car insurance policy, consider buying online. Why? Let us count the reasons…
As stated above, car insurance can be a burden primarily because of its cost. But would it be nice to know that you can certainly lower your car insurance cost using online resources?
Car insurance cost is influenced by many factors. The thing is there are factors you can change in order to lower the cost of your premium. Your car insurance broker may reveal the different ways on how to get cheap car insurance. But, it is always better to know this yourself? And you will know everything you need online.
Whether you are just inquiring or ready to buy your car insurance online, you can be sure that you get price quotes instantly. There are several auto insurance companies that offer free car insurance quotes. Five to ten minutes on each site will give you instant price quotes you need. This speed is not possible if you are doing it the traditional way.
Comparing these quotes will give you the edge on choosing which one is the cheapest (if you are after the price) and which one is the best (if you are after the quality of coverage being offered). You don’t have to wait for several hours, even days, to get a reply via mail. Within seconds, your quotes are already on your screen.
Furthermore, the internet can let you shop from several car insurance companies without leaving your home. It’s simple: you don’t waste your time and energy just to visit and inquire at different car insurance offices scattered across your state. Of course, that is not all. You can also get the ratings of these companies which are essential in your selection process. Here, you can differentiate those that give the right claims and those that are don’t.
You surely can remember the times when you have to pickup your heavy yellow pages and look for specific names for several minutes. Well, that is long been over with the revolution of the internet. You can now easily search for a particular company fast and easy.
Car insurance shopping may be very complicated for some. It may be very complicated for you too. But with the help of the internet, you surely eliminate the hustle of searching, calling, visiting and negotiating with different car insurance companies. Everything you need to know is online.
Think of it this way: you are the shopper; the internet is your car insurance shopping mall and information center you can easily access right at your very fingertips.