Does Your Homeowner's Insurance Cover Hurricanes?

This is probably a question many people along the east coast are wondering today as a major hurricane barrels towards them.  One would think that homeowner's insurance would cover whatever disasters are the most common in an area where they insure homes but it turns out that isn't the case!  Apparently earthquake insurance is a totally separate policy, homeowner's policies don't cover flooding, tornadoes do seem to be covered by these policies, and only some kinds of hurricane damage is covered by homeowner's insurance. 

So the tldr; of this short post is to thoroughly read and understand your homeowner's insurance policy, know what it covers and doesn't cover, and purchase extra coverage for things that are likely to happen but are not covered.

Travel Insurance

Well the part of the family that went to Europe is coming back earlier than expected (not sure why, just saw it on Facebook) and a few of hubby's sisters will be heading to Asia week after next (when asked if he wanted to go, hubby said definitively "no way").  I think hubby is worried about traveling because if we would have not decided to do a no-travel year, he would have been in a remote part of the Philippines when he had his heart attack earlier this year.  I think the possibility of what would have happened to him in that case has kind of curbed his interest in travel :(

I am a bit worried about the hubby's sisters traveling because all of them have a hard time walking and they are all getting older and you never know when a sudden medical crisis will happen.  I told them all to check out travel insurance "just in case".  These are the kinds of insurance to consider if you will be traveling:

• Medical insurance.  See if your current medical insurance will cover you, whereever you go.  Sometimes it will, sometimes it won't, and sometimes if you end up in a hospital in a foreign country they will hold you hostage until you pay them cash before letting you leave.  You can get a specific travel medical insurance plan if your regular medical insurance doesn't cover you abroad.
• Trip cancellation insurance.  There is an added fee when you book a cruise (as well as other types of travel) that will pay for trip cancellation insurance in case you can't make your travel due to illness/death/etc.  Note that some policies have very specific rules while others let you cancel for any reason.
• Medical evacuation insurance.  If you become seriously injured or ill in a foreign country, you can't just hop on a plane and come back home which is where medical evacuation insurance comes into play (if you were to pay cash to be medically evacuated and returned home it could cost $100k+!!).
• Kidnap and ransom insurance.  There is actually an entire industry built around people being kidnapped and ransomed while traveling abroad (eeekkk!).  
• Other types of travel-related insurance.  There are several other types of insurance coverages for travelers, either through specific policies or sometimes through your credit card, including lost luggage, rental car coverage, term life insurance, medical tourism coverage, etc. 

I Saved $250 Yesterday!

A few days ago we got our semi-annual car insurance bill in the mail.  We pay our car insurance twice a year and our house insurance is with the same company (this bill is paid annually by our mortgage company).  Anyway, I was disappointed to see that our bill increased yet again--it seems to go up about 10% each time we get a new bill!--so I decided to do something about it.

First I called a couple of other insurance companies to get quotes for bundled auto and house insurance.  One company in particular had lower rates than what we were paying so I carted myself over to our insurance agent's office and asked what could be done in order to stay with them.  I told the lady that we had been with her insurance company for nearly 30 years and it doesn't seem right that another company would give us better rates than what her company could give us.

She got busy on her computer and we were able to reduce our home owner's insurance from $408 a year to $274 a year by increasing our deductible from $1000 to $5000 (the $5000 deductible was what was quoted by the new insurance company which is what made the cost lower).  We are happy with the cost savings and we were OK with upping our deductible because basically the insurance is covering something catastrophic that happens to our house.  We are more than happy to handle smaller problems ourselves, mostly because if you do file any sort of insurance claim it makes your future insurance costs sky rocket.  So that part was taken care of.

Then she went to work on our car insurance.  We have one old car with liability insurance only.  Our newest bill was $353 for six months (car insurance rates in general are REALLY high in Las Vegas because there are so many wrecks here...crazy drivers!).  By reducing our coverages from 25/50/100 to 15/30/100 and removing us from the higher rate "gold plan"...whatever that is...we were able to reduce our cost to $309 every six months.  I think these coverages will work fine for us.  If we had a lot of assets we would probably keep the higher coverages since this insurance only kicks in if we are at fault for an accident and get sued.  We were also able to remove the uninsured motorist coverage also which basically covers our medical costs if an uninsured driver hits us but since we have excellent full coverage health insurance this wasn't needed.

Finally, we can reduce our car insurance costs by another $10-$20 per premium period if hubby takes a senior driver course since he is 65 years old.  I checked on the course, which will cost only $10, and will probably sign him up soon.  The insurance lady said that once he takes the class, our rates will be reduced for three years at which time he will need to take the class again.  Note that hubby WAS NOT happy when I told him he was going to take a senior driving class (he still thinks he is 35 not 65) but I will go with him and force him to learn something new (when I worked with seniors some years ago the course taught them how to compensate for lack of motion as they get older--like using mirrors instead of turning around to look behind them which is more difficult as you age--and decreased hearing ability, etc).  Anyway he is an old dog but he will learn some new tricks in the name of reducing the amount we pay for insurance!