A Game Plan for Your Insurance in 2009
It’s time to mark your calendar, whether it’s made out of card stock and hangs on the walls or if it’s a fancy web calendar, because it’s a new year, and it’s time to make sure that you have the right types of insurance once again. If you have a type of insurance that you don’t need or haven’t re-shopped your insurance policies, you could be wasting a lot of money. If you don’t have insurance that you do need, you could be putting yourself at a lot of risk.
Here are some steps to make sure that your insurance is ready to go for 2009 and beyond:
Check Up on Your Life Insurance - If you’re in relatively good health, mark a date on your online calendar to re-shop your life insurance quotes online. If you have whole-life, consider switching to more affordable term insurance. If you don’t have any children or have adult children that aren’t dependent on your income, ask yourself if you really need life insurance at all. If you have a wife and kids and don’t have any life insurance, you should beat yourself up, get a quality term insurance policy so that your family is protected.
Reconsider Your Car Insurance - If you have a vehicle and are paying for collision and comprehensive insurance, make sure that it actually makes sense to do so. If your vehicle is worth less than $5000, and you’re paying for these extra insurances, you should probably not be wasting your money by insuring something of such little value. If you’ve bought a new car and are only carrying minimal insurance, consider upping it.
Review Your Health Insurance – If you’re getting employer provided health care, you’re probably stuck where you are, but if you buy your own health insurance, you should probably go out and check and make sure you’re with a good company. Not all health insurance companies are the same and there are some that are notorious for turning down claims, and there are others that provide great customer service, so make sure you’re with a good company by reading reviews of it online.
Eliminate Wasteful Policies – If you are paying for pet insurance, mortgage-life insurance, cancer insurance, or any other policy that most people don’t have, you might be insuring something that’s really un-necessary. If you get cancer, your health insurance will pay for the bill, you don’t need a separate policy that will pay your bills if you get cancer. It’s kind of like signing up for both Flickr and Facebook for photo sharing, they do exactly the same thing, so there’s not much need to do both.
Finally, you should check up on your
home insurance
policy. Make sure that it will cover the current value of your home. Although the market is down a bit, some have still appreciated significantly in the last 5 years, so make sure the dollar amount on your policy matches the value of your home.