Does Your Insurance Need a Little Spring Cleaning?

By Catherine Powell

Image courtesy of flickr

Only in Florida do people start thinking about Spring cleaning in February.  That’s because as I write this blog, the temperature is in the 70’s with the weekend forecast for 80 degrees.  Spring is the time of year we Floridians start to straighten up around the house and yard to get a jump on home and yard maintenance before the gully washers and named storms begin to head our way in the summer.  With an average temperature in the low to mid 90’s, summer is the last time to start clearing out the dead leaves or working to seal cracked weather-stripping.  The time to perform home and yard maintenance is while the weather is mild. 

While most Florida residents routinely roll up their sleeves in February and March to get started on Spring cleaning, I thought I’d take the time this week to address another kind of Spring cleaning that has nothing to do with leaf blowers and rakes.  I’m talking about Spring Cleaning for your insurance policies.  Just as our homes and yards tend to get cluttered and weather-beaten if we aren’t careful, so too can our insurance policies.  Face it, modern life is fast paced.  Everything from our earning ability to our living arrangements can and do change from year to year.  When it comes to insurance coverage, what may have worked perfectly last year may be off the mark in the new year.  While you and your family get ready to head outside to spruce up your home and yard, I thought it was high time that I gave you a few facts to consider when it comes to weather-proofing your insurance coverage.

1.      Home Sweet Home? – While it’s easy to keep sending that check to the insurance company every month for your homeowner’s policy, you need to bear in mind that the coverage and premiums are based on the value of your home when you purchased the policy.  That means if you have made any improvements or additions to your home, the numbers quoted on the policy are far from accurate.  Likewise, if you have purchased new furniture, or began accumulating collectibles, you could put yourself in a bind if your house were to catch fire or a burglar should target your home.  If it’s been more than a year or so, you owe it to yourself to talk to your agent to make sure that you and yours are sufficiently covered.

2.      The Brady Bunch – Another good time to touch base with your agent is any time your family status changes.  Everything from marriage or divorce to having more or less mouths to feed means it’s time to reassess your insurance coverage.    Whether we’re talking about having or adopting another child, or should your son or daughter leave the nest to attend college, these changes in lifestyle also reflect a family evolution that can quickly change the metrics involved in calculating and mitigating your risk.

Image courtesy flickr

3.      Are You a Budding Tycoon – With the advent of the Internet has come a boom in home-based businesses.  If you started or are thinking about starting a small office-home office (SOHO) business, you need to see your agent now.  While the local municipality doesn’t require you to carry liability insurance to start a SOHO, if you should have a client slip and fall at your home office, your homeowner’s insurance will not cover you.  Even if you have no foot traffic at your SOHO, if you collect and store customer credit card information, you could be held personally liable should your computer get hacked and the data stolen.  There are cyber-insurance policies available to businesses that are designed to cover the liability inherent in using technology to keep your SOHO from being litigated out of existence should a breach arise.

4.      Baby, You Can Drive My Car – Even though the average family in the US owns 2.3 cars per household, that doesn’t mean that every driver is sufficiently covered.  While every driver in the state is required to carry the minimum mandatory coverage that includes bodily injury and property damage, that doesn’t necessarily mean the minimum coverage is right for you or your family.  When it comes to litigation, auto accidents are like feeding frenzies for many attorneys.  If you don’t want to put your other assets at risk, you may need to increase your liability coverage.   There is even insurance called an umbrella policy that will allow you to keep your liability levels low on your auto and homeowner’s insurance while providing $1 million in liability coverage for under $200 per year.

5.      You Bet Your Life – Life has its ups and downs, right?  That being a given, these ups and downs need to be reflected in the amount of life insurance you carry.  Whether you have extra mouths to feed (including possibly an aging parent or two), or your business is poised to explode, as your life changes, so to do the variables that were used to determine the amount of life insurance coverage you need to keep you and yours safe from life’s ups and downs.

Image courtesy flickr

6.      Has Your Ship Come In, or Have You Missed the Boat – Unless you live aboard your boat, don’t think of it as a home on the water.  Think of it as a floating motor vehicle.  Just as with your car, when you buy a boat you are required to carry a minimum amount of insurance coverage (usually by the bank).  The question is, does the minimum coverage cover your assets?  The answer is, “It depends.”  It depends on such things as how much you’re personally worth, as well as how much experience you have on the water.  Unlike an automobile, there is no licensing requirement for boaters.  That means anyone who can afford to buy a boat can become its skipper whether they know what they’re doing or not.  This means you never know if other boaters have much if any on-the-water experience. Even if they do, if they’ve had a few adult beverages, you could quickly find yourself involved in a watery collision that could put you, them and every passenger aboard both vessels at risk of injury, drowning or possibly death.  Just as with motor vehicle accidents, when it comes to collisions at sea, no sooner do the vessels come into conflict with one another when the lawsuits start flying. 

When speaking to my insurance customers, I always urge them to schedule a yearly insurance assessment that will allow me to help them make sure that all their policies are up to date so if anything untoward should happen to them or theirs, they won’t be caught short.

Catherine Powell is the owner of A Plus All Florida, Insurance in Orange Park, Florida.  To find out more about saving money on your insurance, check out her website at http://aplusallfloridainsuranceinc.com/