Money Matters
bmo88
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
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Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
UPDATE: I hate hail!!!
Sorry, just a vent.
Erg. I hate hail. We live in Colorado and the weather is very unpredictable throughout the year. Just the other night, a hail storm came through for about 30 minutes with golf ball sized hail. It wreaked havoc on our neighborhood.
Fortunately my car was in the garage, but still lots of damage. DH's car has over 100 dents in the body and his windshield is spider web cracked. My sister (who is staying with us for the summer) found her the car the next morning with a sunken in back window, shattered windshield and dents all over.
Our home has lots of damage too. The roof is missing shingles, the gutters are crushed in, we have a broken window, our composite siding has holes in it and the rails on our deck (hard plastic material) is missing pieces.
We filed claims with insurance but over 2,000 claims have been filed and it will be weeks until they can get out to us. We are fortunate we have an emergency savings account and have good insurance. It will likely get covered but we will have to pay at least $1,500 in deductibles (car and home).
It's astonishing how much damage can be done in 30 minutes by mother nature. Luckily no one was harmed and it can all be fixed. DH sees a silver lining...he has been wanting to upgrade his 10+ year old car, so this might be his chance.
Erg. I hate hail. We live in Colorado and the weather is very unpredictable throughout the year. Just the other night, a hail storm came through for about 30 minutes with golf ball sized hail. It wreaked havoc on our neighborhood.
Fortunately my car was in the garage, but still lots of damage. DH's car has over 100 dents in the body and his windshield is spider web cracked. My sister (who is staying with us for the summer) found her the car the next morning with a sunken in back window, shattered windshield and dents all over.
Our home has lots of damage too. The roof is missing shingles, the gutters are crushed in, we have a broken window, our composite siding has holes in it and the rails on our deck (hard plastic material) is missing pieces.
We filed claims with insurance but over 2,000 claims have been filed and it will be weeks until they can get out to us. We are fortunate we have an emergency savings account and have good insurance. It will likely get covered but we will have to pay at least $1,500 in deductibles (car and home).
It's astonishing how much damage can be done in 30 minutes by mother nature. Luckily no one was harmed and it can all be fixed. DH sees a silver lining...he has been wanting to upgrade his 10+ year old car, so this might be his chance.
Re: UPDATE: I hate hail!!!
Be very happy/proud of yourselves that you guys have an emergency fund that can cover your deductibles. Most Americans couldn't come up with the money to handle a $1,000 emergency without charging it.
I've told this story before I think, but I have a friend whose house blew away in the tornadoes that hit the university of Alabama a few years ago. They lost everything, but she was just grateful that they were all OK and they had the funds to cover the insurance and also start the process of replacing everything before the insurance paid out. She's a positive person and viewed it like your H in that she used it as an opportunity to upgrade.
Best of luck dealing with that - I hope the process with your insurance company goes smoothly!
Personally once our home owners insurance raises up to $1200 I bait and switch. we are about there. I will need to find another company next year.
Our house is valued around $300k, so not sure if that makes a ton of difference.
There's definitely a silver lining. About 10 years ago now we had a huge hail storm in our area and most of the existing homes had significant enough roof damage that most people were able to file insurance claims to get them repaired. It made house hunting nice for us because most of the homes we saw had newer roofs and we didn't have to worry about roof replacement cost in the immediate future. My parents took advantage of their insurance claim to contribute a few thousand extra to get upgrade shingles and new gutters on their roof rather than just the basic ones that the insurance claim covered as well.
Also, before I met H, when his house was only a year old, it got hit by hail and wind, and his insurance gave him money to replace the roof, all the gutters, and even his grill that was sitting outside. He just did the roof and kept the rest of the money since the damage wasn't even that bad.
I hate to say this, but thankfully, since this happens here in CO so often, it doesn't really affect insurance, other than there might be an increase in rates for everyone in the state. I know my insurance didn't go up at all after my claim on my car, and it was a $7,000ish claim. I was also with Progressive at the time, and the claim process was very easy with them.
Sorry to hear that happened! That is a lot of damage, such a bummer.
I didn't own a home at the time, but had rental insurance when Hurricane Katrina hit NOLA/MS. It took 2.5 months before my rental insurance company would even return my call!!! Ugh!
I was recently reviewing my policies with my insurance agent and mentioned that I like to keep a high deductible because, unless there is really substantial damage, I'd never use my insurance anyway for fear of super high rates.
What she told me is that, insurance companies don't "raise" your rate after an incident. But you do "lose" your "no claim" discount. Which sounds like a lot of "6 of one, half dozen of another" to me. But, okay.
I actually just got my insurance documents in the mail for the coming year and I did see what she was talking about. I have a 25% discount for no claims. I'm sure there is similar info with your policy or you can ask your agent. That should give you an idea if/how much your insurance will go up.
Insurance adjusters finally made it out. There is $22,401.32 worth of damage to our home and $9,350 of damage to DH's car.
So we have decided to get a check ($6,700) for DH's car and put it toward a new one. They are mailing us a check for the house damages. Now we have to start the process of getting a new roof, gutters, siding and windows. Ugh...
Thanks for the update. That's a lot of repairs to get done. Such a hassle, but hang in there!
One of my coworkers keeps an apartment in NOLA for work, but his house is in Baton Rouge. In all the recent flooding and devastation going on, his BR house got 41" of flood waters. I don't envy either of you
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Well, we have started the car shopping process, which is proving to be interesting. DH wants to purchase a new car, but I am trying to get him to consider a certified pre-owned since they are quite a bit cheaper than new and still come with warranties. But he is quite stubborn. In all other things in life, he is fine with used, (his first two cars were used), but he is somehow set in wanting to buy new...ugh. But we have set a strict budget to stay under and his check from the insurance (about $6,500) will go toward the down payment.
For the home, we got a contractor to come out and he estimated our repairs would be around $28,000. Our insurance originally estimated about $22,000. The contractor said it was common (their common has lots of great reviews and have been around for 20 years), so he said they will handle the process of going back and forth with insurance to get the full amount needed. We will get an upgraded roof (due to code requirements) and better gutters, so I guess that is good.
Also, the insurance credited us $3,900 to repair our cedar split rail fence and $275 to replace personal items (grill covers, lawn statues). But the fence is fine, just has some dings and a few chunks missing. The insurance doesn't require proof of complete replacement, so we are going to replace the top rails ($150) and can bank the remaining funds. So that is kind of nice perk from dealing with all of this!
As for the car thing, have you looked at the rates of new vs used? I just bought a new car, and was originally looking at lower mileage used (in the 20-30k mile range), since that's how I always buy cars. The prices on used were a bit less than new, but once we wheeled and dealed, a brand new one was only about 4k more than the used one, but the rates available for the new one were better, so it ended up working out to be a pretty similar payment etc... plus got the full warranty. I didn't pay anywhere near the sticker price. Dealers can do a lot more haggling with new car pricing than used, especially right now if you're looking at 2016 models. They're trying to unload those to make room for the 2017s, and they're offering 0% on a lot of the 2016 dealer stock.
I also learned from our neighbor, who used to be in the car business, that for new cars, dealers get incentives from the manufacturers for selling a certain # of vehicles per month... the price of those vehicles becomes almost irrelevant. So they're also willing to deal more just to add it to their sales volume.
The only other thing to consider is the cost of tags... new will set you back a lot more than one that's even a few years old. I just did mine a week ago and they were $832
@bmo88 obviously you and your H need to decide together what is best for you, this is just food for thought that it may be beneficial to compare used vs. new. Good luck!
ETA: @bmo88 I don't know what type of car you're looking for, but we found that the Kia Soul seems to be a pretty good bang for your buck.