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.

There are a variety of insurance policies that are considered good investments of your money, and many that you absolutely shouldn’t go without, including automobile insurance if you drive a car, life insurance if you have dependents, and health insurance.  On the other hand, there are a number of different insurance policies that pop up that could actually be more a waste of money than anything else!

Mortgage Life Insurance:  A mortgage life insurance policy is a plan that will pay for your mortgage in the event that you become permanently and completely disabled or you die.  If you’re married, this policy seems like a terrific idea because if you should die before your spouse, you know the spouse will not have to pay for the mortgage on his or her own.

If you have a life insurance policy already, either a separate policy you have purchased or one offered through your place of employment, chances are the mortgage would already be covered.  A standard life insurance policy gives your beneficiary the money that can be used for whatever they need to use it for – including the mortgage.    It really doesn’t make much sense to purchase a policy specific for your mortgage if you already have one that would cover it.  It makes more sense to pay for a general life insurance policy that your beneficiary could use to pay for whatever he or she chose, rather than have to use it only for the mortgage payment.

Cancer Insurance: With the number of people who are diagnosed with some form of cancer each year, it may sound like a good idea to invest in an insurance policy to cover medical expenses related to cancer.  Maybe not!  Cancer insurance doesn’t cover skin cancer, which is the leading type of cancer, and most policies won’t cover any outpatient expenses that a cancer patient undergoes during their treatment.

In addition to what cancer insurance doesn’t actually cover, the fact is – if you have health insurance, it will almost always cover medical expenses (both inpatient and outpatient) related to cancer patient care.

If you’re concerned about cancer coverage, check with your primary health care insurance first to see if they would cover cancer related expenses.  If not, then you may want to consider a cancer insurance policy (or looking into a better health care insurance, if possible!)  Otherwise, paying for a policy that is specific to one type of illness or disease is typically not a good use of insurance premiums.
Flight Insurance: Whenever you purchase airplane tickets, you’ll be asked if you would like to purchase additional travel and/or flight insurance designed to pay your beneficiary in the event your plane doesn’t arrive safely to it’s destination.  Check with the credit card you used to book your flight first – chances are it includes complimentary travel insurance.  Also check with your life insurance policy – most cover you even if something happens when you are traveling or flying and will pay your beneficiary based on the policy amount.