Lower Your Homeowner’s Insurance Costs
A lot of people check around periodically to see if they can lower their auto insurance costs. After all, we are inundated with commercials to “Save money on your car insurance.” But the homeowner’s insurance policy is often overlooked. Review the article below to see if you can lower your homeowner’s insurance costs.
Lower Your HO Insurance Costs
Homeowners insurance premiums often take a substantial bite out of a family’s budget. You may, however, be paying too much for this coverage. The following are some approaches you can use to reduce your homeowners insurance costs.
Try to increase your deductible to the highest one you can afford, even if the premium savings do not appear to justify it. This will decrease your premium and increase the likelihood that your loss history will be excellent, since minor losses will be paid by you and not your insurance company. A loss-free record over time saves premium dollars. For example, if you currently have a $250 deductible on your homeowners policy, consider increasing it to $500 or $1,000.
Consider purchasing a monitored burglar alarm. Alarms have proven successful in reducing burglary rates. In addition, most insurers provide premium discounts to consumers with these alarms, some as high as 20 percent.
Maintain your home in optimum condition. If a repair is needed, perform it as soon as possible. For example, loose or missing roof shingles should be repaired or replaced immediately. A home in excellent condition is much less likely to experience a loss.
Buy your home insurance and your auto insurance from the same company. Discounts normally apply when you do.
Get more personal lines insurance and risk management tips and ideas from IRMI.
Copyright 2011
International Risk Management Institute, Inc.
A Tough Conversation
Do you have children that are approaching driving age? How do you feel? Personally, I’m pretty apprehensive about my two daughters driving in a few years. Thankfully, although there is a lot more traffic compared to when I started driving, there are many new laws to address youthful driving. For example, mandatory driving school and zero tolerance for drinking and driving.
But have you also given any thought to your parent’s driving? Again, for me, I have a few more years before I need to address this issue. But I have a couple of clients who are going through this process now. These clients’ parents should not be driving. Close calls and minor accidents led the clients to try and put a halt on their parent’s driving.
Both cases provided examples of the two extremes that could result. One parent admitted that he should stop driving. The other was quite emphatic that his driving was fine. He even changed doctors when his long time primary doctor agreed with the client.
The point here is that many of our parents will be living past the point when they should be driving. Like youthful drivers, we must also be prepared to have a tough conversation with our parents regarding their driving.
View the following video for more tips: http://www.libertymutualimages.com/ProfDave/#tough-conversation
What if I Do Have a Car Crash?
You hate to think about it, but accidents happen. Are you prepared if you are involved in an auto accident? What should you do? Who should you call? What kind of information should you be getting from the other driver?
These are all good questions. Unfortunately, most of us are not prepared to answer these questions.
Of all the question that you may ask yourself, calling the police might be the most important question. No matter how small the accident, you should ALWAYS call the police. It’s always good to have a third party opinion, and there’s none better than a police officer.
Click on the link below and check out the video. It helps answer these questions just in case you are involved in a car crash.
