Money Matters
vlagrl35
member
Dear Community,
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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.
who is your home insurance with
Who do you have your auto and home policies with and do you like them? We were with American Family 5 years ago and switched to State Farm and I feel our home policy is getting to expensive again and would like to get some quotes. I was in the process of doing that with Farmers but the holidays happened and we got busy. I plan to get back on it next week. Just curious how much is your home policy. Our house square footage is 1700 and our yearly premium is around $1100. 5 years ago it started about $800 yearly.
Re: who is your home insurance with
State Farm includes an inflation index on their policies. Each year they get adjusted as needed.
Homeowners was $953
Auto was $900.63 every six months on 4 vehicles.
I also have a small life insurance policy with them that I've debated dropping, but it's only $150/yr and so I leave it.
Home - about $1,300 for a 1950sq ft home that was built in 1869. It's a bit high, but the replacement value is set to rebuild a home to 1869 standards not 2017 builder grade so we would get the same quality should we ever need to rebuild.
Auto - also $1,300. For one 2012 Subaru. It's totally stupid. We are able to get discounts for paying in full (which we do anyways) and for showing our donations to the Jimmy Fund (which we do anyways) so we'll end up paying about $1,150 with those discounts.
I noticed a pretty significant difference in our car insurance bill when we moved from one county to another. Our particular region of states in general, and apparently our county in particular, has a pretty high claim rate which affects our rates at any insurance provider we were to go to. This was according to USAA anyway when I called to talk to them about why our auto insurance increased this year. We were able to get it down a little bit, but it didn't make a big difference. I did some cost comparisons online and we could save around $100 per period switching to something like Esurance but I enjoy the customer service USAA provides and it would have to take something extremely significant for me to switch to another provider.
We got 3 quotes from other companies/agents but AllState ended up being the best price for the coverage we wanted. We live in a no-fault state so we tend to pay higher rates than others. Also we have always had additional home owners coverage because of the pool.
We did some comparison shopping on auto a year ago and our rate was still competitive.
I'm always a speshul snowflake because of my area, but here goes. $3300/year for $260K worth of replacement coverage. House was built in 1911, but all systems are to current code. Flood is around $400/year for the same replacement coverage, but my house is raised 3' off the ground. That does NOT include the b.s. $250 annual fee because it is a multi-family property.
One car/one driver $225/month, which includes comprehensive. I'm a highly rated driver, but the percentage of UI motorists for the area is substantially higher than the national average, so we also get nailed big time on that insurance.
I have my homeowner's insurance with Lloyd's of London and my car with Progressive. I've been with Progressive for over a decade and love them. Lloyd's...by FAR...is the cheapest I was able to find. But there are only a handful of companies that sell in my area.
Our house is through a local mutual company, and our auto is through Safeco Insurance (now bundled with Liberty Mutual), and our umbrella is with Grinnell Mutual out of Iowa. Safeco kicks ass on our auto. I can't even touch them with other companies, but we also have a couple higher risk vehicles.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
It's funny how people can have such different experiences! Using an agent is the only way I've ever bought homeowner's insurance. Though, in my area, that is about the only way you can do it because there are so few companies who offer coverage. Otherwise, you'll spend hours calling a million companies just to keep hearing, "Oh, sorry! We don't write policies in your area."
When I was first shopping for homeowner's, I called about 3-4 different local agencies. Each one would usually give me quotes for 1-3 insurance companies, though there was a lot of overlap. The evil "last resort" Citizen's Insurance was always included, but its the same rates no matter who the agency is. That is true with most insurance companies.
It IS time consuming. Because, to give an accurate quote, the agencies have to ask a lot of questions or they have you fill out a form. I learned to keep a template of all my answers, because most of the questions are the same.
Here is my other savvy tip. If you are in an area where you can buy an already built house CHEAPER than a new build, cut to the chase with the agent and ask for a particular insurance company's "construction rate per square foot". Generally speaking, the lower that rate is, the cheaper the insurance will be because you can get away with insuring your house for less money.
For example, when I first bought my house it was $80K. Everyone wanted to keep insuring it for $160K-$175K, because that is what it would cost to "rebuild". I was like "rebuilding"? Are you nuts? I'd rather insure it for much less and then just walk away and buy another one if it burned to the ground or something.
On the flip side of that coin, don't include the land value in how much you insure your home for. For example, if your house is worth $200K, but the land is worth $50K, you'll want to keep the insured value around $150K.
FFC? I work for an independent agent and handle all of our personal lines policies, but I just searched for an agent and had them re-quote all of our stuff. I actually used Dave Ramsey's ELP (Endorsed Local Provider) program and had them quote it out with their options. So you could go that route to narrow it down. I primarily went that direction because I don't want someone who's going to try and sell me whole life insurance or explain to me the reason why my rates are a bit higher is because our credit is in the process of going from mid 800's down to zero since we no longer have any debt.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com
But, for all the policies above except home (because that's escrowed with our mortgage) we pay $108 per month. This is with comprehensive and glass on one vehicle (2014 Dodge Grand Caravan) and a basic auto policy on an older vehicle. 24 hour road side assistance. This also includes the valuable property on some jewelry. And it includes about $1M in umbrella coverage.
For home, the premium is $1,625. With $402k coverage to dwelling. $40,600 to other structures. 100% loss of use. $304,500 to personal belongings. Personal liability up to $300,000 per occurrence. USAA is interesting in that they cover 100% of debris removal. I do not know if all companies do that, somewhere along the line, I read or heard that not all home owners insurance companies cover debris removal, which can be quite costly in the event of a loss. Our deductible is 1% or $4,060 for everything except wind/hail, which is $2,000. We set it up this way to save money monthly on the premium (we have plenty in e-fund to cover the deductible). The $2k in wind/hail is because we live in a high wind/rural location.
Yeah it's tedious.
If you ask, most agents will let you go ahead and send over all of your info if you just put it all down. Names, address, drivers license #'s, Social security #'s, date of births, year make and model of all vehicles, vin#'s, current coverages.
A lot of them will let you just send that stuff over to them if you already have it put together in an e-mail or paper. Rather than filling out every agents form they have.
I'm right there with you right now. Since I'll be leaving my employer in about 4 months, I've been shopping around our insurance to see if we can save any money by going elsewhere. Its been a PITA because we have so many vehicles, farm land, and the umbrella. I've told H about 10 times that he needs to stop being a car fanatic because it's a pain to get all of these quoted.
TTC since 1/13 DX:PCOS 5/13 (long, anovulatory cycles)
Clomid 50mg 9/13 = BFP! EDD 6/7/14 M/C 5w6d Found 11/4/13
1/14 PCOS / Gluten Free Diet to hopefully regulate my system.
Chemical Pregnancy 03/14
Surprise BFP 6/14, Beta #1: 126 Beta #2: 340 Stick baby, stick! EDD 2/17/15
Riley Elaine born 2/16/15
TTC 2.0 6/15
Chemical Pregnancy 9/15
Chemical Pregnancy 6/16
BFP 9/16 EDD 6/3/17
Beta #1: 145 Beta #2: 376 Beta #3: 2,225 Beta #4: 4,548
www.5yearstonever.blogspot.com