Beating Broke

Personal Finance from the Broke Perspective

3 Ways to Record Your Stuff for Personal Property Insurance

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So, you’ve got auto insurance for your car, health insurance for your health, flood insurance for your property, and home insurance for your house.  Everything’s covered!  Yay!  Whoa there.  Not quite.  These days, it seems like you’ve got to insure everything if you want it covered in case of loss.  There’s pet insurance.  Celebrities are insuring their body parts.  And, while you probably don’t need to insure those killer legs, you probably want to check to make sure you have some sort of personal property insurance (or personal belongings insurance).

Despite what you may think, your home insurance doesn’t necessarily cover your personal properties.  They might have some small rider that will pay out a small amount to replace certain essentials like clothes and such, but if you’re ever in need of it, you’ll quickly find that it will fall far short of replacing much of the personal property that you owned.  Some of the things will have caps on them for value.  Got a killer gaming computer?  Not covered to it’s full value.  Many people are choosing to add a personal property policy to their list of insurance policies.

House Fire Training - Te Horo

Part of getting a personal property policy is being able to identify the item, it’s value, and prove both.  Here are three ways you can use to record the property that you own, and do it easily.

  • Spreadsheet — Create a spreadsheet for each room and list the items you are insuring from that room.  Be sure to record any serial numbers and model numbers that you can.  A short description can also be helpful.
  • Take Pictures — Combined with a simple spreadsheet, take pictures of the items that you own in each room.  This can help identify the items, and act as proof of serial and model numbers as well as condition.
  • Contents Video — Take a camcorder (or any device that records decent quality video) and walk through each room of your house, recording each item that you’ll be insuring.  Again, be sure to record serial numbers and model numbers.  You can use the ability to record voice to add in descriptions as you go.

Properly recording and keeping track of your property can make purchasing your personal property insurance a much easier task and make sure that you’re insured for the proper amounts and items so that you don’t find yourself trying to replace expensive items that you though your home insurance would cover.

photo credit: 111 Emergency

My Wife Quit Her Job: Business Insurance

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As I’ve covered before, shortly after my wife quit her job, she joined a couple of her previous coworkers in starting a business of their own.  As anyone who has started a business of their own knows, there are many, many unexpected things that can come up.  With proper planning, many of those things can become less of a shock when they happen.  One way to do that, and one that the accountant that was helping my wife and her partners get started required, is business insurance.

What is business insurance?

insuranceIt can come in many small variations, but in general terms, it is insurance that helps protect you and your company against liability and litigation.  It also can act as insurance against interruptions in business.  If your store floods, and you have to close for a few days, it will help defray those costs.  Your coffee burns someones tongue off?  It’ll help with that as well.

With the particular type of business that my wife and her partners were building, liability insurance was the most important part of their business insurance package.  They work daily with clients in a variety of locations and scenarios and as such, need an insurance that will cover them for liability if someone were to get injured while at one of the locations or in transport to the location.  That part of the insurance was much more important than having insurance for a office location (at least right away since they didn’t have an office for several months.).

Where do I get business insurance?

Getting business insurance isn’t as difficult as it may seem.  In fact, it might be as easy as getting a referral, like my wife and her partners did.  A quick look through your local phone book will likely get you some prospects as well.  And in many cases, if the agent you talk to doesn’t offer business insurance, they’ll happily refer you to someone who does.  Much like any other type of insurance, there are plenty of websites that offer quotes and services.  And, much like any other type of insurance website, it’s difficult to weed out the ones that are really there to help and which are there to make themselves a quick buck.

Much like anything else involving your business, business insurance really needs to fit your business.  Your responsibility as the business owner is to check and double check to make sure that the coverage fits your business and will cover all the necessary situations.  Getting a sub-standard insurance just because it was the cheapest could cost you money, or worse, your business.

insurance by alancleaver_2000, on Flickr

Check Your Car Insurance

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Way back in March, I mentioned that I was beginning to look into making some adjustments and doing some price checking.  Somewhere in between there and here, life got in the way and I wasn’t able to get it done as quickly as I would have liked.  I’ve finally caught up to it though and I’m glad that I did.

This story should be proof for the rest of you who don’t regularly compare prices on things.  Never assume that you’re getting the best rate.

Our car insurance had been with State Farm.  I have been a customer of theirs for close to a decade.  As of August (when the home owners insurance renews) I will no longer be a customer.  Why?  Because, what I found in my checking is that they were tied for most expensive auto insurance.  And the home owners wasn’t much better.  Of course, your results may vary and the insurance company for us isn’t necessarily going to be the company for you.  I know that when I originally signed up with State Farm, it was because the price comparison tool at Progressives website pointed to them as being the cheapest.

I find it ironic that the insurance company that we’re moving to is Progressive.  We’ll be moving our Home Owners policy to someone else.  Progressive was almost exactly 50% cheaper than State Farm.  50%!!!  In fact, the total for 6 months for all three vehicles that we insure was just barely more than it was for just one of them at State Farm.  That’s pretty incredible.  A bit of trivium; our new ins. agent mentioned that he’s moved 11 clients from State Farm to Progressive in the last month or so, and that about 6 Progressive clients have moved to State Farm.  I mention that to concrete the idea that the right insurance company for one person isn’t necessarily the right insurance company for another.  With all the variables that they take into account, it’s hard to say which will be better unless you do some shopping.

Another interesting note from the adventure.  Previously, I went to a State Farm agent and got my insurance.  This time, I went to an insurance agency.  They’re independent for the most part and have access to several insurance companies to quote from.  That makes it much easier to shop around, as they will do most of the footwork for you.  All you’ve got to do is check any companies that you’d like quotes from that the agency doesn’t have a relationship with. In our case, Allstate was probably the biggest one that the agency didn’t have to quote from.  I used Allstate’s online quote tool and found it to be on par with State Farm.

So, lesson learned.  Shopping around is good.  It can help you find the best deal when you’re buying just about anything.  But, if you’re buying a service, remember to shop around periodically and compare the service that used to be the best deal to make sure it still is.  You just might do like we did and save 50%.