The dangers of the car insurance "race"

You've heard the ads:

"15 minutes could save you 15 percent!"

"Welcome to the modern world. Save in half the time!"

First of all, I hadn't realized it was a race.

Price is important, nobody understands that better than me. The best auto insurance in the world does you no good if you can't afford it.

But the battle over whether the protection of everything you own is worth a quarter of an hour vs. 7 1/2 minutes?

That really is what we're talking about here. It's not just your car you're protecting, it's also your assets.

Now then, I know you have an excellent driving record and you would never get into an accident that's your fault. But let's pretend for a moment that you do get into an accident and you send someone to the hospital.

The accident is your fault, so it's your responsibility to pay for the other guy's hospital bills and the pay he's not receiving because he is in the hospital.

If someone dies in that accident, you're responsible for not only their burial costs, but all of the money that he won't make to take care of his family.

Your insurance company will pay all those bills, that's it's job. But it's only going to pay the bills up to the liability limits that you've set up.

If you haven't set those limits high enough, you may have to pay for the hospital bills and the lost wages with whatever money you have in your bank account, whatever assets the court says is claimable, plus whatever wages the court says can be garnished.

That's what those ads promising "quick and easy" don't tell you and that's why it's worth a lot more than just 15 minutes. That's why it's worth talking to an agent about what coverages are right for you.

But at least it's not Norm McDonald extolling the benefits of just doing the minimum. I really hate those ads.
photo credit: sdowen via photopin cc

Life insurance for young adults

My telemarketer was coughing last night.

(First of all, yes, I have telemarketers. Yes, I know it can be annoying, but I've been able to help a lot of people with telemarketers. So please be nice if we happen to give you a call, OK?)

In any case, she was coughing, so I asked if she was going to die on me. She said she thought she might.

"Well, at least talk to me about life insurance first," I told her.

"No, I'm not old enough for life insurance," she said.

OK, hold up. We were joking around, but now we have to have a conversation. In about two minutes I threw together a proposal and made her come sit in the office.

If there is a possibility that someone, at some point in your life, will be financially devastated by your death, you need life insurance.

At 18, she's footloose and fancy free, she's not supporting anyone other than herself.

However, life insurance for her will never get cheaper than it is right now. That's why I have life insurance on my kids.

Plus, there are life insurance options that build up a cash value. That cash value can make the policy pay for itself or even build up enough to pay for other stuff, like a down payment on a home, or to supplement a retirement. The longer the time frame (the younger you are when you buy it), the bigger and quicker the return possibilities. That's also why I have life insurance on my kids.

And it's a whole lot easier to get life insurance before the years start falling behind you, the cholesterol starts collecting in your arteries and the fat starts collecting everywhere. (Technical term here is "protecting your insurability," just in case you're keeping track of buzzwords.) That's another reason I have life insurance on my kids.

So, if she ever thinks she may need a chunk of cash at some point in her life, life insurance is a good way of building that up.

If she ever plans to have kids, she's going to need life insurance. Yes, even for stay-at-home moms. (Do you have any idea how much day care is? That's why my wife stays at home. It's also why I have life insurance on her).

It's kind of like the old joke about trees. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

The best time to get life insurance is 20 years ago. The second best time is now.

Food Contamination Shutdown — Business coverage for restaurants

Most of the time, a case of food poisoning means we won't be getting too far from the bathroom for a while. Uncomfortable, but something we'll recover from.

For a restaurant, it could be mean the end of a business.

I heard an ad on the radio the other day, a Springfield restaurant owner trying to lure customers back after a well-publicized series of health inspection failures.

If you're in the Ozarks, you've probably already heard the ad or the closure, so I won't go into details.

But if you're a restaurant owner, I hope it makes you question, "What if?"

That's the basis of my job as an insurance agent — asking "What if?" then finding a way to plan for it before it happens.

So, What if my restaurant had to shut down because of food poisoning?

Food contamination shutdown and food-borne illness business interruption are two of the coverages that you can include with your Restaurant Business Owners Package with Farmers.

Similar to business income insurance, these two coverages can pay for the loss of income if the health department shuts down your restaurant because of an actual or suspected contamination.

It can also help pay for loss of income because the health department announces that a case of food poisoning was traced back to your restaurant — or another restaurant with the same name.

Obviously, your best line of defense is keeping an eye on your kitchen staff to make sure nothing happens in the first place. But these are two ways Farmers can help you get back to where you belong.

Vacant houses

When it comes to your vacant home, what your insurance agent doesn't know can hurt you.

I had a woman call me yesterday because she just found out that the insurance on her house in Springfield no longer covered much of anything. Why? Because she put it up for sale when she moved to Texas two months ago.

She never realized there was a problem until last month's wind storms blew through the area and her Realtor told her she had some roof damage. So she called her insurance agent, who told her that since the home had been vacant for more than a month, most of her coverage was no longer in force.

Insuring vacant homes are different than homes that are occupied or even just temporarily unoccupied -- There's no one around to see if the air conditioner has been stolen, or a water line breaks, or any number of other problems arise with the home. And liability risks are different as well — you don't usually have to worry about someone sneaking into your home and setting up a meth lab while you're still living there.

So how do I get insurance on a vacant home?

Foremost Insurance is one of the nation's largest insurers of specialty dwellings -- including mobile homes, properties with too many claims for other companies, and yes, vacant homes.

This is one of those life lessons that I'm lucky I didn't have to learn the hard way. When we moved from Texas back to Missouri, I didn't even think about the insurance until after we sold the house. It never even occurred to me that my insurance would no longer cover my home if I wasn't living there.

It's also one of the reasons having an agent and talking to your agent on a regular basis is a good idea.

Make sure to talk to your insurance agent if you're moving out of your home and find out what your vacant home coverage is, then give me a call at (417) 708 9583 and let's see what Foremost and Farmers can offer.

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Life insurance for kids

This has been on my mind a lot in the past day or so: Life insurance for children.

It's not something that anyone wants to think about, much less talk about, but let me explain why I have policies on my two young sons.

1) In the best of all possible worlds, my sons will live long, happy lives and have kids of their own who rely on them. If that's the case — and statistically, it probably will be — I've already started protecting the grandchildren who are 20 or 30 years in the future.

Plus, these are cash-value accounts, so I've started a nest egg for them. 

2) It protects their insurability. So we don't have to worry about whether my boys will be able to get life insurance, even if one finds out he has asthma, or diabetes, or any number of things that could make it harder for a person to get life insurance in the future.

3) This is the one that no one wants to think about, but it's the one that has everyone in the Ozarks holding their kids a little tighter this week.

If something happens to my boys, I will no longer be a functioning human being.

Even the thought of something — anything — happening to one of those two makes me want to curl up into the fetal position, preferably wrapped around both of them. 

Life insurance wouldn't bring them back.

But it would allow me to pay the bills while my family tries to figure out how to put our lives back together. It would allow me to pay for a funeral. It would allow me put the world on hold with one less thing to worry about.

www.farmersagent.com/dgragg

Cyber security

Another day, another story about criminals trying to get your credit card data.

So, short of hoarding cash and staying in your home — which carries its own set of risks — what do you do?

I have an app for that. Or at least an insurance policy.

For homeowners, every Farmers homeowners package includes Identity Fraud protection of $30,000. In a nutshell, if someone manages to get your information, Farmers will pay the legal bills to get your identity back.

Think of it as passive detection.

It's included for homeowners, but we can also add it to our renter's insurance policy.

We also have the option for active detection with Farmers Identity Shield. The Shield monitors your credit files and provides an annual report with details of your credit file and public records.

And if someone does manage to get ahold of your information, they will guide you through the identity recovery process and a whole lot more. You can get more information by calling me (417) 708 9583 or you can check out www.farmersidentityshield.com.


That may be all an individual needs, but what what can a business do to protect itself?

Most of the Business Owners Packages that Farmers offers include Cyber Liability and Data Breach coverage.

So if someone does manage to break in to your system and steal your clients' data (Just like what happened at Target) Farmers will help you hire a telemarketing agency to let your clients know what happened. It will also reimburse you for the credit monitoring you'll have to do for your customers.

Sounds a lot better than paying for all of that yourself, doesn't it?

www.farmersagent.com/dgragg

The importance of business income insurance

The news last night interviewed an employee of Industrial Wood Products who worried about her coworkers after this fire destroyed their workplace.

My job as an insurance agent is to help you get ready before bad things happen and then recover afterward.

Now, when most people think about insurance, they think about getting the money to rebuild their business's physical location.

But there is also a coverage called "Business Income" that is absolutely critical in instances like this one.

It pays you (as the business owner) the income that you're not making because your place burned down.

Let's be optimistic and say that it will take six months to rebuild the plant. Could you go without income for six months? Could your employees?

That's right. The Business Income rider includes the money you would pay your employees. So that when your business is rebuilt, you won't have to look for new employees because the people who work for and with you won't have to have had to find a new job to pay their bills.

To be clear: I know nothing more about the fire or the business than what's in the news; I am not commenting on the insurance in place at Industrial Wood Products. But I hope they had Business Income coverage so that the woman on the news and her coworkers won't spend the next few weeks trying to find a new job.

 www.farmersagent.com/dgragg