Homeowners Insurance: How much Dwelling Coverage do I really need?
IdaClaire
4 years ago
last modified: 4 years ago
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sushipup1
4 years agomaire_cate
4 years agolast modified: 4 years agoRelated Discussions
Dogs and homeowner's insurance
Comments (28)"By "uninvited guest" do you mean the 7 year old kid visiting the neighbors house who accidentally throws a Frisbee too high and it land in your yard and innocently runs over to get? And by "licking" do you mean the child having their face ripped off?...It makes no difference in the dog is in your yard and the their are signs everywhere, that's not the point. Using a dog to attack would be trespassers amounts to the same thing as (or at least it should legally) mounting guns around your house with triggers attached to trip wires. The dog, like the trip wire, can not differentiate between a would be burglar or a 7 year old looking for his Frisbee. The owner of the dog should be totally and solely responsible for the outcome, just like the person who set up the booby trapped guns." What a crock? Parents should be held liable for their children actions. Those kids KNEW they were wrong to go into someone else's yard, it is called trepassing! Everyone has to learn their actions have consquences while unfortunate (same as if they had been hit by a car running into the street to get the Frisbee) it is still their own fault. And now they have to live with those consquences. Now you can blame the dog or the owners of the dog, but face it the kids made a bad choice. They are lucky that choice didnt cost them their life. And those parents who weren't around to tell their children not to go into their neighbors yard should be charged with neglect....See MoreHow much life insurance does a couple need?
Comments (8)First off, you need to decide what you want insurance for. Some of the reasons could be: - Income replacement for surviving spouse - Mortgage payoff - Children (education, etc.) - Retirement Level term is usually the least expensive method of obtaining insurance. Term periods are usually 10, 15, 20, 25, or 30 years. Companies that specialize in this market include Metropolitan, Transamerica, USAA Life, and West Coast Life; there are many others. Use a company with a sound financial rating, of which there are certainly fewer than there used to be, LOL. Income replacement: up to you to decide how much would be adequate recompense for a spouse's death. Generally it's recommended to have 5-10x gross annual salary, but your needs may be different. Mortgage payoff: self explanatory. Get a level term policy for each employed person on the title, for the 15 or 30-yr term of the mortgage. Children (education, etc.): again, self-explanatory Retirement: In our case, I have insurance as a retirement backstop. My DH has the old-fashioned Defined Benefit Pension that is assignable to the spouse, along with a good-sized 401k/457 account. I, OTOH, have only some small annuities that kick in when I'm 65, and a very tiny IRA. I use life insurance to mitigate the risk to him that if I die before I start collecting (he would get nothing, in that case) this offsets the loss of that monthly income for a number of years. Be aware that you need to be careful if the reason for purchase is estate planning. As most estates fall under the Federal Tax Limits, the majority of folks do not need an insurance policy for estate tax planning. These limits, of course, are changeable but general consensus is Congress will settle for the current $3.5M limit after 2010. Although life insurance does not incur income tax, being a POD (Payable On Death) financial product, and thus bypasses probate, I believe that it IS counted in your overall estate total and therefore, can trigger the federal estate tax when added to your other assets. To avoid this, there are two alternatives: - Have the policy owned by someone other than the insured; e.g., a spouse. - Set up an ILIT: Irrevocable Life Insurance Trust. You will need an attorney to do this, and sufficient cash flow to pay a considerable annual premium. This is usually a VUL (Variable Universal Life) policy, and is designed to move assets out of a taxable estate over time by purchasing an insurance policy which will eventually benefit the heirs by providing the cash necessary to pay any federal/state estate taxes (and providing liquidity with any remainder). Life Insurance can help with estate liquidity, but it is not in itself an immediate solution. Whoever you name as Executor of your will or Trustee of your Trust, will not actually be able to access cash funds unless they are a co-trustee of a jointly owned trust account. Anyone else will have to wait until they have a certified copy of the death certificate to present. If there are no problems and the county is efficient you might have this in a week or two. If there are any suspicious circumstances necessitating police or coroner investigations, the Executor or Trustee might have to wait a while. In either case, each has a fiduciary duty to keep the estate intact as much as possible before dispersing the assets. IOW, you can get life insurance proceeds fairly quickly - usually 2-3 weeks after they receive a copy of the death certificate. But your estate Executor or Trustee needs to start paying bills of the estate IMMEDIATELY upon death. This is something most folks never think about - there are legal and financial costs to death, and whoever's responsible for the estate had better have sufficient cash/credit up-front for at least one month, maybe two or three. They will get reimbursed from the estate, but it may take a little while. Just something to keep in mind!...See MoreShopping for homeowner's insurance
Comments (10)raee- It's hard to comment since you don't say how much the house is supposedly worth. I live in an area where housing is horribly expensive and variations like that are in the noise level. You also have to remember that the replacement value of the house can be a lot less than what the total property is appraised for since the land itself is a part of the value, but is unaffected if your house burns down. Whether the amount of "replacement value" is adequate for the property is also a function of what the policy fine print calls out. Good companies recognize that replacement cost is a number that can vary over time. I review my coverage each year and try to keep my coverage at the amount that is an accurate reflection of replacement value. I have a 100% replacement value policy, and it will pay even more than the named amount if the reconstruction costs more, as long as the house was insured for at least 80% of what the actual replacement costs. Some policies will only cover you for up to the specified amount. It's also good to remember to get an automatic inflation adjusment clause in your policy. It's too easy to set an amount and not change it: 10 years later, when your house burns down, you're underinsured and you've got a huge loss. Yes, it costs a little more each year, but isn't it foolish to try to save a few bucks when you have this huge asset at risk? I'm not a gambler so I'm not willing to give up 10's or 100's of thousands of dollars of coverage in order to save a couple of hundred bucks a year. If you carry homeowner's insurance, my view is it should cover all imaginable perils, and that includes complete loss....See MoreHomeowner's Insurance?
Comments (21)We shopped for insurance a year or so ago, and based on a similar thread like this, I got quotes from Amica, Anpac, AAA (the auto club), and USAA. Since we got married, we had been using Erie for our home and USAA for auto (oddly, it was cheaper that way, even with the discount you get for putting everything with one company), then about 5 years ago, Erie jacked up their homeowner rates statewide, so we moved everything over to AmEx through Costco - going through Costco got us a discount over the regular Amex rates and it was a significant savings (close to four digits) over the Erie/USAA combo. We were happy with the Costco coverage but decided to shop around a year ago because they cheesed me off when they started charging a $3/mo convenience fee to charge my premium to my credit card (it had been free for years and they didn't tell me they were going to start charging the fee - it just showed up one day). I didn't really expect to find anything cheaper since the Costco rates had thoroughly trounced everyone else when I went with them, and they hadn't really gone up that much. Anyhow, to make a long story short, Amica seemed to have good coverage, but there rates were MUCH higher than the Costco insurance. USAA was a bit higher than the Costco and AAA was right about even. We ended up going with Anpac (American Nattional Property and Casualty). They were a company that was recommended on the thread just like this one from someone who had filed a claim and been happy with the service. They have a local agent, their rates were fantastic (we saved almost $1K/year for the exact same coverage when we switched over from the Costco plan). Plus they have this thing where if you go claim free for 3 years, you start getting a percentage of your premium refunded to you at the end of each year. We're into our 2nd year now, so in another year and a half, we should start getting rebate checks from the insurance company - it's a significant percentage too -- something like 20%. I don't know how they're doing it since their premiums are already lower than all the competitors I checked. But I'm not going to complain, LOL! I (knock on wood) haven't needed to file a claim so I don't know how that will be, but the agent is very responsive and I have no reason to think the company would give me a hard time. We do have fairly high deductibles since we figure it would take a lot to get us to file a claim that would ruin our claim-free streak and cut off our rebate checks, LOL! Oh - for reference, we are in southeast PA - not a lot of significant weather stuff here, but we do get snow/ice/hail storms. We're in a fairly crime-free rural area and haven't filed a claim on either auto or home (other than a windshield chip or two) in about 10 years....See MoreMimou-GW
4 years agoblfenton
4 years ago3katz4me
4 years ago1929Spanish-GW
4 years agoschoolhouse_gwagain
4 years ago1929Spanish-GW
4 years agoblfenton
4 years agoAnnie Deighnaugh
4 years agosas95
4 years agoIdaClaire
4 years agoblfenton
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4 years agosushipup1
4 years ago
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