How Much Insurance Do You Need – Building Your Own Insurance Program
Last Updated on October 21, 2020
One of the most important things that you need to remember when it comes to purchasing insurance is that it is always best to keep things as simple as possible. Although purchasing any kind of insurance can seem like a daunting task at first, the fact of the matter is that you can simplify the entire process and make everything much easier on yourself. Purchasing health, auto, life, or home insurance is tough enough on its own, so there is no reason to make things harder on yourself. By keeping everything as simple as possible, you should be able to create an easy path towards getting insurance for every part of your life.
Keeping Things Simple Does Not Mean Cutting Corners
When you are aiming to simplify the insurance process, it is important to remember that you cannot cut corners or try to find a deal that sounds too good to be true. If the deal seems too good to be realistic, then you are probably missing something. It is important to remember that all insurance coverage is not created equally, and you need to make sure that you are getting the right kind of coverage for your needs. Just because a policy comes with a lower monthly cost does not mean that it is going to be the right option for you or your family.
An example of keeping things simple when it comes to insurance is making sure that you are always prepared before any kind of accident takes place. Your insurance is there to cover any losses that you encounter during some kind of disastrous situation, but you need to make sure that you have an inventory of everything that is covered under your policy before something bad happens. For example, you need to make sure that you have an inventory list of all the valuables in your home before a fire burns everything away. After all, you will only be covered for damages on items that you actually remember you had in your home.
If you want to take simplicity to the next level, then you could always just take a video record of your items instead of writing everything down. Writing all of your expensive items down in a notebook could take many hours of your time, but going through your home with a video camera could take a matter of minutes. As long as you are able to have some kind of record of all your insured belongings, you should be fine. A video record is also much easier to store because it can be left on a DVD, computer, flash drive, or any other kind of storage. You won’t need a file cabinet to handle all of your records when you go digital. Having said that, you should make sure that your video records are backed up in many different locations. This will give you a bit of extra insurance in case your computer crashed or you lost the DVD.
Be Smart with Your Risk Levels
There is nothing wrong with taking a risk every now and then, and that’s what you are probably doing anyway with most of the investments in your retirement fund. After all, there is no such thing as a sure stock or bet that can’t lose. Risk is also heavily involved with the insurance business. In certain situations, it could make sense to make your insurance policy a bit risky, but you never want to put yourself in a situation where your insurance policy is basically useless because of a certain risk that you decide to take. The main gamble that people usually decide to take with insurance policies is getting a policy with a large deductible. The deductible is the amount of money that you will have to pay out of your own pocket in a disastrous situation, but you will also pay a lower amount of money on a monthly basis to pay for your coverage. One of the riskiest things that you can do when it comes to insurance is to not purchase any coverage at all, but this still makes sense in certain situations. When it comes to risk, you have to think about your personal situation and what makes the most sense for your financial life.
One of the most common risks that people take when it comes to not buying coverage is when someone owns a rather old car that would not be worth it to repair. If you are driving a car to work every day that could easily stop running tomorrow, then there is probably no reason for you to get insurance. It could be a better use of your money to simply save it and create a small fund to use as a down payment for your next new car.
When looking at the risks in your own life, it is important to focus on the kinds of risks that could put you in a situation where you incur a major financial loss. You really only want to insure yourself against terrible situations that could completely alter your life because most of the smaller problems could probably be solved with the money that you have saved up in your bank account. This is the main reason that richer people tend to not buy insurance as often as people who are living paycheck to paycheck. For example, if you are someone who depends on being able to bring home a paycheck every few weeks, then you need to make sure that you are insured against any kind of accident or illness that could prevent you from working in the future. Disability insurance is actually rather unpopular these days, which does not make a lot of sense when you think about a large number of people who depend on getting that paycheck on the 1st and 15th of every month. Most people think about insuring physical items that they could lose, break, or have stolen more than anything else, but these people also need to think about where their income comes from on a regular basis.
One last thing to remember when it comes to assessing the risks in your life is that it is almost always a good idea to stay conservative with your decisions. You never want to end up risking more than you are willing to lose. Spending a few extra bucks per month right now makes a lot more sense than completely ruining your life in the future. People who need to purchase insurance are usually not millionaires, so it’s important to make sure that you get the insurance that is actually going to protect you if something goes wrong. Instead of choosing a cheaper form of coverage that gives you a more comfortable lifestyle right now, you should be thinking about what could go wrong in the future and how you can protect yourself against those problems. Instead of skipping out on important forms of coverage, such as liability insurance, you need to make sure that you get everything that you need. In the case of liability insurance, you need to make sure that you are covered against an auto accident where you are at fault. You do not want to have to pay for someone else’s injuries and car damages out of your own pocket, and the most common amount of coverage seen here is usually around $100,000.
It’s a Game of Odds
Much like many of the other aspects of life, insurance is a game of odds. The only time you should even think about skipping out on insurance coverage is when the odds of something bad happening are basically zero and the cost of insurance is going to be too high for you to handle. You should be purchasing insurance when you know that there is even just a small possibility that a claim could pop up at any point in the future. You may think that the chances of something happening over the next few months are low, but that does not mean that something could not happen in the distant future. The best way to stay safe is to know the odds and get insurance when you know that there could be a problem.
It’s a good idea to take a look at homeowner’s insurance when you want to completely understand the odds of something going wrong. There are a large number of different natural disasters that can pop up in different parts of the world, so you need to make sure that you are covered against the problems that impact your local area. For example, you need to make sure that you have earthquake insurance if you live on the west coast. While people in other parts of the country would be fine without this kind of additional coverage, the fact of the matter is that a seriously massive earthquake popping up in California is a real threat. 80 percent of homeowners in California were not covered for the damage caused by the 1989 earthquake, and those people had to learn the lesson of insurance odds the hard way. The losses that these people incurred could have been avoided if they thought about the odds of an earthquake happening in California while they lived there.
On the other hand, you can avoid purchasing additional insurance when it is not needed. For example, earthquake coverage is not something that people in Florida really need to worry about. As long as you consider the odds of natural disasters in your local area, you should be able to come up with some idea of what kind of coverage you will need. If you live in a low-elevation area near a body of water, then you should probably get flood insurance. If you live in tornado alley, then you are going to need some extra coverage against tornadoes. Learn about your local environment before you purchase insurance because Mother Nature is usually the one that can cause serious problems for your property.
The best rule of thumb to use when it comes to playing the odds of insurance is to always risk as little as possible for the best coverage. If you do not see any possible way that something could go wrong with your property or health, then there is no reason to purchase insurance. On the other hand, you need to be willing to put down some money on a monthly basis if there is any kind of possibility that something could go wrong. The name of the game is to find coverage for everything that you need without putting yourself in a situation where you are paying large sums of money every month for your coverage.
Make Sure That You are Completely Covered
When purchasing insurance, it is important to make sure that you don’t put yourself in a situation where you are betting on a certain outcome in your future. Basically, you don’t want to have the kind of insurance that comes with the same amount of risk that you have when you’re at the casino in Las Vegas. When you are only partially covered with your form of insurance, you will only be covered in specific situations. For example, when you purchase some forms of health insurance, you are only covering yourself against certain illnesses and diseases. This means that you will basically have to hope that you only get certain types of health problems in the future because some health problems will not be covered. You do not want to play Russian Roulette with any kind of insurance these days because you cannot predict the types of problems that you may face in the future. That is the whole point of purchasing insurance in the first place.
Insurance is Not the Only Available Solution
When you want to protect yourself against a disaster, it is important to remember that insurance is not your only option. While this is definitely an option that makes a lot of sense in most cases, there will be some instances where insurance may not be your best option. In addition to that, you also need to remember that you still need to take care of your body and your property after you are insured. Insurance will definitely be helpful when something goes wrong, but it still makes sense to make sure that nothing actually goes wrong. You will still have to pay your deductible when something happens, so don’t feel like you can be a crazy person just because you are insured in a situation where something goes wrong.
One last thing to remember is that there are some situations where taking better care of your property or securing it properly will make more sense than buying insurance. For example, if you own some precious metals or any other kind of physical investment, then you should make sure that you store that investment in a proper manner. You could be in a situation where your insurance does not cover the full amount of your investment if the nominal value of that investment goes up in value, so sometimes it makes more sense to take care of your own things instead of just purchasing insurance against theft or damage.