ShareBuilder
Home Insurance Investing Auto Taxes
 
Common Sense:
Function: noun 1: the unreflective opinions
of ordinary people 2 : sound and prudent judgment.
Common Sense
Dollar Cost Averaging
Buy your investments in equal regular intervals. Benefits explained here.
The Magic of 150
What do the military, Gore-Tex, and your favorite primitive tribe all have in common?
 
Investing

Dogs of the DOW
Invest in the fledgling blue chips and watch your money grow faster than you can say contrarian.

Indexing
Everybody and their mom says that indexing is the way to go. Is it true?
Small Caps and 18%
Some Irish guy says you can pull down over 18 points if you follow his lead.
Research and Education
Diversification
It's not just about safety. It's for real men too.
Recommended Reading
Read these books and be cool like me.
Sponsors
CCMS Buttons


How to buy Auto Insurance:

Buy good low cost health insurance.
Medical payments in your auto policy shouldn't be needed. You should buy cheap health insurance that covers all illness including car crash hospital visits. A minimum plan for a young man with Blue Cross costs $20/month.

Delete underinsured and uninsured motorist coverage completely.
They may make you go down to the office to sign a form to do this. They will also try to convince you that you are a moron and need the coverage. Don't listen to them. You don't need it. If you read your coverage booklet, you will see that your liability coverage covers any damage you do to other people, other people's property, or other people's emotions....anything you do in a car that causes you to be sued is covered up to twice your net worth. (as mentioned below)

If someone hits you and doesn't have insurance, or not enough insurance, or runs away and they don't catch him, this is what happens:

Without Under/Uninsured:
Your health insurance covers your hospital bills. Your comp and collision covers your own car. No questions asked. Everything is covered except your own "pain and suffering."

With Under/Uninsured: You're already covered for everything with your liability and comp/collision. Your insurer will pay for your car and say, "See? We are paying for your car. Good thing you had underinsured/uninsured motorist!!! Hahahah." They will pat you on the back in your hospital bed. Then you say "wait a damn minute, my other coverages, comp and collision, they are supposed to cover my car. What do I get out of this? I want to sue that bastard who put me in the hospital for pain and suffering! Your insurer says, "well, he's gone, or he didn't have insurance and lives in a basement with no money, but since you had underinsured/uninsured, we are going to give you 500 bucks, just to be nice."

The truth is that you could get many thousands more if you sued the dirty bastard, but now who do you have to sue if you want more than $500? You have to sue your own insurance company. And who will have better lawyers? Who can afford to push the court dates forward until you run out of money for lawyers? They do. Not you, them. There is no point to sueing your own insurance company and you would be forced to accept the $500 for pain and suffering. Even worse, they almost never pay on this coverage. Not even $500. This is why they push this part of insurance so hard. It's pure profit for them, and the insurance agent gets a big comission for selling it. Don't fall for it. I know it's cheap but that's why -- they never have to pay on it and they want everyone to fall for the scam. Put that $30/year into an IRA stock account and you will have over $1,000,000 by the time you need diapers.

Make your deductible $1000 for everything.
You should only have a deductible lower than $1000 if you cannot possibly afford to pay $1000 if you crash the car. For example, if you don't have a credit card with $1000 on it, or savings of at least $1000, then get a lower deductible but save that money ASAP. The lower the deductible, the higher your payments will be. Sometimes dramatically higher. The point with insurance is to insure yourself whenever you can. You become the insurance company for that $1000 and deny them the chance to make money on that $500 worth of extra insurance. Insurance is a very profitable business. The most profitable business in the world. If you can insure yourself, you are part of that business.

Towing insurance is silly.
They usually only cover only up to $50 per tow...and often it will cost hundreds to tow a car, especially if you are not in a city. It's not even worth it at $6/year. Get Triple A or insure yourself .*

Even Triple A is insurance. Don't you think they are making money? They take in more money in annual fees than they pay out in towing expenses. For every dollar you spend on your AAA membership, you'll get less than a dollar back in re-imbursed towing charges -- it's a sure bet, you are going to lose -- so don't play with your money this way. Go to the race track instead. You'll have better odds.

Liability
Liability includes bodily injury and property damage. Bodily injury pays for damage you cause to anyone's body while driving your car, or while driving anyone else's car. Property damage pays for damage you cause to property, like cars, street signs, or your neighbor's collection of bicycle riding carnival monkeys.

The numbers often look like this on your policy: 50/100/25

This means you have $50,000 coverage per person, $100,000 per accident for all dead or damaged bodies (even if you run down 14 people), and $25,000 total coverage for property damage. If you happen to destroy your neighbor's brand new Taurus, valued at $25k -- he'll have to sue you for the monkeys.

Insurers generally recommend you purchase at least 100/300 limits of bodily injury liability because that will protect you from the majority of accidents, says Michael Plesko, former head of claims at Prudential Property & Casualty and current consultant based in Liberty, Mo. Plesko says that even if you've caused a serious injury, a plaintiff attorney is likely to settle a case against you for your 100/300 limits rather than sue you. "If you have only the minimum coverage, the attorney is going to be compelled to go after your assets," says Plesko. What if you have no assets? This advice is only good for people who have assets totalling more than they are insured for. If you live paycheck to paycheck, you shouldn't be buying 100/300 coverage.

Here's a direct quote from the insurance.com website:

"If you don't have significant assets that could be seized if you were sued following a car accident, then the minimum auto insurance coverage required by your state's laws (or by your lender) is probably sufficient. Statistics show that the vast majority of accident claims fall within those coverage amounts, and that is why they are chosen."

The only purpose for insurance is to protect your assets.
If you don't have any, you don't need insurance! However, you will be forced to carry auto insurance in most states. If you have no net worth or very little net worth, buy the minimum coverage required by your state and save the difference. Juries never award more than a person's net worth in damages with two exceptions -- drunk drivers, and reckless drivers. If you don't plan to drink and drive or break 100 MPH in a school zone on Monday morning, you're fine with the minimum coverage. Until your net worth increases.

Liabilities should be set to double your net worth per person. For example, the 50/100 liability coverage above would be valid if you have $40,000 in the bank and you own your $10,000 car outright, and have no other assets to protect. Raise the limits as your net worth increases. Remember, the only reason to buy insurance is to protect your assets from the courts. Buying insurance limits of 100/300/100 if you are living paycheck to paycheck on McDonald's happy meals is silly. The courts will only take what you have. If you don't have anything, they won't take anything from you unless you are drunk or wreckless. If you are worried about the people in the other car, don't be. Their own insurance will pay for their car and hospital bills. If they don't have insurance, you guys can go to McDonal's together to celebrate, and then go hug a tree afterward.

Property damage should be at a maximum of $50,000.
It's very rare to cause more than $50,000 damage to anything. Even if you crash into a BMW or house. If you're broke and worthless, buy the minimum amount in this catagory.

*Remember that magical credit card, with $1000 credit on it? Of course you do.

 

 
 |  Privacy Policy  |  Terms of Use  | Contact Us |

You are welcome to view CommonSenseAdvice.com for your own personal, non-commercial purposes, for free. Copying or other use of any of the information contained on this site is strictly prohibited. Copyright © 2001 The Paper Street Company. All rights reserved.