Latest / Marci talks money (and life) / Understanding Homeowners, Auto, and Umbrella Insurance with Cheryl Lacasse
Transcript
- speaker-0 (00:00) you . speaker-1 (00:07) . Hello, I am MoneyMarci. I am really excited to share today's guest with you. This is a topic that is important to everyone and most people don't really have a full understanding. So I am really happy to be able to share with you this informational and educational conversation I have with my guest today, Cheryl Lacasse. And Cheryl grew up in the independent insurance world. Her great-grandfather owned an insurance agency, her grandparents owned an insurance agency, and her parents eventually took that over. Since she can remember, she was in the family office, playing with carbon copy paper and stamps as a young child, filing and typing letters if she was grounded as an older child, working part-time during a year in college to finally deciding to work full-time while figuring out what she wanted to major in. Once she started working full-time, she stuck with it. And here she is 22 years later. In 2012, her father passed away suddenly and Cheryl and her mother and husband kept the agency going for a few years until deciding to sell it to Sweet Insurance Agency, who she has now been with since 2017, since they are a family agency. like hers has been, it just gives her a bigger scale and bigger resources to help her clients. If you don't think you need to know insurance, you're going to learn a whole lot today with this episode. So welcome, Cheryl. speaker-0 (01:48) Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. speaker-1 (01:50) Well, I am so thrilled to have you because, you know, I'm an accountant. deal with money. I talk about money. I help people understand their money and I still don't understand everything about insurance. And we all need it. We need it for our home. We need it for our car. We're not talking health insurance, life insurance. We're talking about all those other insurances that are so important to cover yourself. you are Michigan based. So speaker-0 (02:16) personal insurance. speaker-1 (02:19) While a lot of this information is relevant no matter where you live, some of the specifics may only apply to Michigan or some other states. So you wanna make sure you use the information you learn here to ask questions of the professionals around you that can get you the right answers that you need for your situation. So it's a family business you ended up in and even though you merged with another family business, you're still independent. speaker-0 (02:39) Perfect. speaker-1 (02:48) which means you deal with multiple insurance companies rather than just selling one brand. speaker-0 (02:54) Correct, yeah, we're independent. There's independent and there's captive. So the captive agents are those like State Farm, Allstate, Farm Bureau, things like that where those agents only sell that company insurance. And then independent agents, represent multiple different companies. So we have a lot of options for people. speaker-1 (03:13) Okay, out of curiosity, what did you end up majoring in? speaker-0 (03:17) I did not. I did not finish college. I did the year and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. So as a child, I wanted to be a police officer and all of my friends growing up told me I was too giggly to be a police officer. So kind of deterred me from that. I wanted to be a nurse, but I didn't think I was good enough at science to be able to finish those types of classes. So. I just kind of got stuck in the insurance world. I enjoyed working with my parents and my grandparents. It was nice seeing them every day. speaker-1 (03:50) It's important, and it's a career. speaker-0 (03:52) It's not a job, it's definitely a career. speaker-1 (03:54) So I think that's awesome. I'm gonna start kind of at the end. What should an insurance agent do for you? What should people expect from looking for an insurance agent that's right for them? speaker-0 (04:07) The biggest, they need to educate their clients. So we're here all the time. We have people that call in and you need insurance at unlikely times during your life. You don't know when a claim is going to happen. So we get a lot of people that call and they're terrified. They don't know what to do. They don't know what steps there are. They don't know what coverages they have. So we're here to walk you through that process to help you understand what you may need, what should be sufficient for your lifestyle, your assets. your home auto, if you have children. We're just here to guide you on what your best options are and also find you competitive rates. Nobody wants to pay too much money for insurance, myself included, but we're here to guide you and to help you. speaker-1 (04:53) So you want to make sure like with every financial professional that I've talked about, you want to have someone to talk to that you're comfortable talking to. You've got to lay out your information for them. ⁓ speaker-0 (05:04) correct and that's why if you have an actual agent it's really nice because you have that relationship if you're just calling a one eight hundred number you could be speaking to one of three hundred people that you're just a policy number instead of an actual name speaker-1 (05:17) Okay, so we said these are personal insurance. What kind of policies does this come? speaker-0 (05:22) many. Home, obviously, types of the homes are your regular standard single-family home duplexes, renter policies if you're renting an apartment or a house, condo policies, there's vacant policies, vacant home policies, landlord policies for the dwelling fire if you own and rent out to people, obviously the auto insurance, and then umbrella insurance which is quite important for a lot of people. And then your toys, your RVs, your motorcycles, electronic bikes are now a new thing that we're seeing. Golf carts are a new thing that people are buying more of. Snowmobiles, ATVs, just little toys that people have. speaker-1 (05:59) Is there certain types of insurance you need if you're running an Airbnb? There are so many new businesses out there. speaker-0 (06:06) Yes, so the Airbnbs, Verbo, the the drive-for-hire companies, the Shipt and the Instacarts and the Ubers and Lyfts, there are specific coverages and specific type of policies you need for all of that. People do not know this until something happens and they are denied coverage because the insurance companies typically do not cover these things on a standard policy. Now there's exceptions to every rule. There are endorsements you can get on some companies offer endorsements to cover things like this, but usually if it's an Airbnb situation, you would want a commercial policy for that because it's more of a business. Same thing with doing the drive for hire or ride share. That's more of a commercial exposure. So you would want a commercial vehicle policy for that instead of your personal. speaker-1 (06:57) So if you're doing these things, I'm driving for shipped and I get in an accident and I guess it matters at that point in time if it's my fault or not, because if it's not my fault, then it's on the other person's policy anyway. But if it's my fault, my insurance company might say, you're on your own. speaker-0 (07:14) Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they could come out and say, no, you were driving for a business and for a commercial use. Your coverage is denied. speaker-1 (07:26) I have a cabin up north and I sometimes rent it out to people. I need a different policy than if you speaker-0 (07:32) Yeah, you would at least want to if it's a very rare occasion where maybe you're not on an Airbnb, you're just loaning it out to a friend for a weekend. That's a different situation altogether. But if you are making money off of it, and you are specifically if you are on those sites where you are using that third party to rent your home out. Yeah, you want to make sure that you talk to your agent explain the situation that way they can get you the proper coverage. And again, You might need a new policy or there could be an endorsement that could be added to your current policy to add some coverage. speaker-1 (08:04) I want to say we go camping that that's not the way to say it though, because we have family and friends that do a lot of camping. have campers and they're all gung ho. We go up for trick or treat camping because the campsites do amazing things. We rent a camper. have someone, the guy who's camper it is, deliver the camper, set it up and pick it up afterwards because we don't know what we're doing. It's just basically bringing us a cottage to. to wherever the campsite is. ⁓ And we have to, at the time we sign up to rent that camper, we have to sign up if we want insurance or if we're gonna give them. So I assume that because of that, I don't have to worry if what they have on a regular basis, they're getting insurance per that you. speaker-0 (08:47) Right. Yeah, if they're making you sign something, that probably means they've got the specific type of insurance where their company is requiring some sort of a waiver saying that your personal contents may be extended to if you're going on vacation and you're renting somewhere, if you have some things with you that maybe go lost or get stolen, you should have some sort of extended coverage for that on your own policy. If it's a long term rental, maybe a month or more, then that's That is another thing where you'd want to probably get your own renter's policy for that type of situation. But yeah, if you're renting it from somebody else, they've got their own policy in place. Hopefully their agent knows that they're renting out their things to avoid any problems on their end. speaker-1 (09:31) Okay, and I'll treat it nicely so I don't injure ⁓ speaker-0 (09:34) I think you'd be really sensible. ⁓ You always leave it cleaner than it was when you got there. speaker-1 (09:40) I tried to, but you don't always know all the nooks and crannies in a camper. We find things on our way out the door. I didn't know it had that. speaker-0 (09:49) Then you just have to book it again and go back. speaker-1 (09:52) Yeah, always, always. think vocabulary is important in anything you deal with and insurance has its own vocabulary. So, and some of these vocabulary words are scary. Premiums are... speaker-0 (10:06) That's the big bad word. Yeah. Premiums and denial. Those are the two big words. Premiums are just that is what you pay. So if you pay, then you will have the coverage that is on your policy. You you have to make sure that you pay your premium. If you are late on your premium, you could get denied coverage. You could be canceled. then it becomes an issue trying to write you elsewhere. But the definition of that is just that is what you pay for insurance. is that is the payment. That's the summary. That's just the easy little summary. If you want to know what your policy has just the basics of it. It's one two pages tops, it'll show the named insured, it'll have your effective dates on there, your policy number, it'll have the address or the vehicles, depending on the policy, and then a brief description of your your coverages. speaker-1 (10:57) Okay, and I guess right with that would be the exclusions, which are what doesn't get covered. speaker-0 (11:02) Correct. Correct. There is a spot in your policy if you ever want to or if you ever have trouble sleeping at night reading the conditions and exclusions of an insurance policy is a surefire way to put you to sleep for a very long time. But yeah, they are there. It is important for people to read through their policies to understand though. And then of course, if you have questions, or if there's wording that makes no sense, which a lot of times there is, again, that's when you would call your agent and they can assist you. speaker-1 (11:30) And then deductible is what you have to pay. And that's, that's one of the areas in insurance that you have some flexibility. Correct. Because you can say, I want a low deductible and then you have to pay more. But then if an incident occurs, you pay less out of pocket at that point and a higher deductible. So that's very similar to health insurance. Correct. speaker-0 (11:49) Yeah, deductibles, they're getting a little more ⁓ increased nowadays. A lot of companies are trying to go with a higher deductible for people to pay out of pocket more to avoid smaller claims that just the bottom line goes against their being financially stable, things like that. Insurance was never really made for the small, small claims. Something that, you know, a few hundred dollars that I could do on my own. I don't want to do it, but I will. ⁓ it's not a maintenance policy you wanna put the claims in for things that are really going to financially destroy you that could cause bankruptcy that could really just empty out your bank account your credit card but those are the claims you obviously would want to put those in but the small minor claims if you can take care of it on your own that's always the advice that i would get speaker-1 (12:37) Like it used to be a 250 windshield. speaker-0 (12:39) Yes, even less than that. A lot of times it was either zero or 50. There's still zero for glass for windshields available. A lot of companies are doing 50 now. On the home portion, a lot of companies are now starting with either a minimum of 1000 or a $2500 deductible. And that is that's a difficult conversation with people because there are still many insureds that are grandfathered in with with the old 250 or 500 deductibles on their homes. And when we go to shop them around, we have to explain, well now, you have to either have the 1,000 if it's with this company or 2,500 with this company. And that's, it's a sticker shock to people. And of course it'll lower the premium, but it's still, it's a lot out of pocket if something happens. If you're not somebody that has $2,500 easily available throughout the year, that can make or break somebody. And then there's also to get more into the deductibles. The wind hail deductibles, which are becoming more common as well. Some companies are requiring a separate one. It is always higher than your normal deductible. Sometimes it's a flat deductible of maybe 5,000 or 10,000. Sometimes it's a percentage deductible and that percentage deductible can be high depending on the replacement costs of your home because that is based on what your dwelling limit is for that percent. speaker-1 (14:01) Since you said hail and wind, let's talk about flood and all of these natural disasters that seem to be happening. Our summers are hotter, our winters are colder, there's more ice dams, there's more basement flooding. speaker-0 (14:15) Yes, mine included. My basement likes to flood quite a bit so sticks to one spot But it's it's never fun to bring out the shop vac and clean it the natural disasters. They're happening more and more They're worse than they've ever been and the one big thing that I think a lot of people know now but flood insurance is Excluded on your home policy. That is it is a completely separate policy that you get but That would be the natural water that is seeping in through your foundation or through the walls. Very different and it can get confusing with people between flood and sewer backup. So heavy rains do cause the sewers to overflow. If it's coming up through the drain, typically that is a sewer backup claim. Again, it depends on what actually caused everything. ⁓ The adjuster would decide or would do an investigation to figure out what happened, what caused all the damage. If it was seeping in through the walls, that would be flood insurance and that would be excluded on your typical home policy. If it's coming up from the drains or the sewers, that's sewer backup or sewer drain backup coverage, which is a lot of times endorsed on the policy automatically. speaker-1 (15:30) So you guys have been busy here in Michigan the past few years. All I see on Facebook is people saying my basement flooded and here's a picture of everything that's out of my curb for the garbage men. speaker-0 (15:34) very busy. Yeah. It is, it's a sad situation because a lot of people, especially in Michigan, a lot of people have basements and a lot of people have finished basements. And that's when they find out that they don't have the proper coverage, either if it is flood or if it's a sewer backup. You know, if you have, if you have a custom finished basement and you find out after the fact that your sewer and drain backup coverage is $5,000, that will pay for the cleanup. maybe just the drying of the carpeting and the walls. Your contents are gone. You have to start over, out of pocket for something like that. speaker-1 (16:20) conversation if you have a finished basement you need to check in with your insurance agent and say hey is this covered now I know a lot of times when you change agents they'll say hey is your basement cover right you know finish is this is that but if you've been with the same agent for a while and you've had the same policy you may not be thinking about right those speaker-0 (16:41) I think it's a good rule of thumb to just contact your agent or have them contact you every few years just to update your home and your auto and your finance situation just to see if all of your ducks are in a row, if your coverages are still... where they should be or if we need to make some changes to that. Sometimes you downsize as well. Maybe you don't need as much as you did five years ago and you can lower that coverage and lower your premium. That's always a good conversation to have is, hey, I can save you some money by doing this. Typically, it's the other way around. ⁓ speaker-1 (17:14) For a few years you should call your agent and say, bid me up as if I'm a new client so that we can check all the... speaker-0 (17:19) Let's review it, let's make sure everything is status quo, and because you don't want to find out after the fact that things were too old on your policy and not updated where you have what you needed at the time of that loss. speaker-1 (17:33) Would that be the biggest surprise you think that people have had lately with these natural disasters is to find out, I don't have what I thought I had before. speaker-0 (17:42) Yes, usually is again for Michigan the one that we see a lot of during the storm season is that sewer backup. It is rare that it's considered flood when stuff like that because we've gotten so much heavy rain from the from the storms all the sewers are just backing up so quickly so fast. So we are seeing a lot more sewer backup claims. people that have had the same policy for a decade or even longer, they either don't have sewer backup coverage because they didn't think they needed it at the time, or maybe it just wasn't added at the time or available, or they have a minimum amount of five, $10,000. And again, those limits are quite low when you think about cleanup costs, when you have to mitigate and you have that company come out and do the cleaning. When you have water in your basement, I think... I could be wrong on this number, but I believe once it hits four or six inches on the drywall, they have to cut it for the mold because the mold expands so fast that you'll see if there's water damage in the basement, you will see that drywall cut up very high because they are preventing all the extra mold from happening from just that one bad storm that we had. speaker-1 (18:53) What about the people who do their own cleanup? I'm not going to call the insurance. I'm not going to whatever. It's just I'm going to throw it to the curb. just don't want to. And then they find they've got mold a year later. speaker-0 (19:04) So with mold, that is something that is different per policy. So it's really hard to answer that question specifically. I would always say if you do find something a year later, the worst case scenario is you get denied. If you put in a claim, they say no, it's not covered. But that is a conversation per person, per policy with your agent to see if that is something that. your policy would cover for mold because mold is one of the tricky ones that can come back years later and you just don't know. speaker-1 (19:36) Right, because if you thought it was good and you thought you dried the drywall, it doesn't feel soft. You say, I'm going to leave it there. speaker-0 (19:44) Right. Right. I will say personally, if this were to happen in my basement, again, I'm not somebody that's going to put in a claim unless it's a very large claim. But if it was something like that, my husband and I are quite handy, I would be cutting that drywall a few feet and just replacing it on my own just to be on the safe side. But that's because I'm in this industry and I have seen the damage that has happened. speaker-1 (20:06) Yeah, I think it's interesting when you can see behind the veil. And you see what's really happening. And we could talk stories and you could probably keep us entertained for hours and hours. Oh, I learned this because XYZ and... speaker-0 (20:17) Hahaha And it seems like every time there's a new natural disaster, we all learn something new because they're just, they're happening more and more that we're finding all of these new results from them, all of these different claims coming in. And yeah, every day is a learning experience for us in the industry as well. It's, changing constantly. Insurance is always evolving. So we have to learn with it. That's why we have to do the continuing education and. as many webinars as we can to find out what are these companies doing now? What's being added? What are they recommending? And it seems like every year there's five new terrible things happening that you might want to get coverage for. speaker-1 (21:01) Right. Well, while we're talking about houses, I guess we should talk about replacement costs versus market value. speaker-0 (21:08) Huge, huge, this is a very big question we get probably more than anything else. When you are getting your insurance, your home on most policies, it's based on the replacement cost, which is what it would cost in the event of a total loss to rebuild new for old. Market value has nothing to do with replacement cost, and that is the one thing that it's very hard. to explain and have people understand and again myself as a consumer if I was not in the insurance industry I would be confused and very mad as well but we get a lot of ⁓ examples like my next door neighbor their home is worth three hundred thousand dollars why is my house on my insurance policy at four hundred and fifty thousand well there's quite a few different reasons not every house is exactly the same you and your next door neighbor do not have the same things inside the house Every piece of material is not the same but if you're looking at Zillow for instance and if I'm looking there and I see that my home is $250,000 on Zillow, well my replacement cost is actually closer to $375,000 because of having a finished basement because of having ceramic tiles and granite countertops and a semi-custom bathroom and all of these things on the interior and exterior of your home go into deciding what the limit would be for a hundred percent replacement cost. And it is something that a lot of people get upset about, understandably, but you do want to make sure that if, if God forbid you have a fire, I want to make sure that my house is rebuilt the way that I had it. So I don't want any corners being cut. I don't want to go back to linoleum floors. I want what I had. So that's the insurance in my blood talking. speaker-1 (23:00) Well, but I mean you're paying for what you expect. And then you have to, that's why you have to have these conversations with the... speaker-0 (23:09) Yeah, so that's why when I speak to somebody, I get as many details as I possibly can on their home so that I can make sure that when we do the cost estimators and all companies have different third parties that do it, they're usually roughly the same, but it'll come out to, know, whatever that hundred percent insurance to value should be. And that's what we would be quoting you at. And a lot of times, again, if you've been with somebody for 10, 15 years, we're going to be very different because a normal home policy there's inflation on that dwelling about three or four percent every year it'll go up just for the inflation but what's happened in the past five years inflation has skyrocketed so the insurance has not caught up with that large inflation yet so they're still just doing their three or four percent but it could be a lot more than that it can get scary in the time of a total loss if you haven't reviewed your policy speaker-1 (24:03) What about the other structures? know, I throw up a something to house my toys or a structure for my kids to in or whatever it is. I don't think to call my insurance agent, it was, you know, a couple hundred bucks to throw this thing. speaker-0 (24:18) Right, so other structures generally is about 10 % of your dwelling limit. So that's $100,000 on your home, you would get $10,000 for the other structures on your property. If you have large pole barns, if you have a guest house, a very nice gazebo, or a deck that's not attached to the home, you want to make sure to find out what the value of those things are. Will that 10 % of your dwelling cover those items? If you had a big loss, if you're next door neighbors or you have a giant urn in your yard and it comes down with the wind, if that falls on one of those things, do you have enough coverage for other structures to rebuild that? speaker-1 (25:00) I from homeowners, the next thing to go to would be the umbrella, that's kind of an extension. speaker-0 (25:06) Yeah, yeah, umbrella is very important. It's not everybody needs to have it. I would recommend it to most people, but you want to think what your assets are. And then also what risks you have. That's the big one for me is the questions that I ask people. We do a lot of underwriting questions. And if I if you have a swimming pool, if you have teenage drivers who are a lot of them are responsible, but they're teenagers, they're not experienced, if you have any pets, specifically dogs. We are seeing more dog bite claims just because of more deliveries now. People are getting everything delivered at home so the dog bite claims are increasing. You want to make sure that if you have anything like that, you want an umbrella. As much as you don't want to spend any more money, then you have to. Umbrellas are relatively cheap, a few hundred dollars typically for a million dollars in coverage, but that will go over that liability limit on your home or autopolicy so that have enough if you are sued for something like that. A kid drowns in a pool or your teenager causes a very large accident or a dog bites the Amazon guy. speaker-1 (26:17) But if your teenager causes an accident, isn't that under your car insurance? speaker-0 (26:21) It is, it is. So the limits that you have on your personal auto policy, that will be what they pay up to. I would say the most common limit we see is 500,000 for liability. If you really think long and hard about it, if somebody is severely injured in an accident and they want to sue and they have a good lawyer, they're going to come after you for a lot more than that. So that's where that umbrella would come into play is to give you that extra liability. speaker-1 (26:46) ⁓ Young adults, are many of them living at their parents' home longer? The cost of houses and the cost of whatever else. So whose insurance is it? Do I now have a fleet? speaker-0 (26:58) Yeah, it depends on how many kids and cars you have. We're seeing more and more of that where kids are staying home well into their 30s now. And yeah, my advice would be keep those kids if they are living primarily at your house, if their license and their vehicle is registered at your address, keep them on your auto policy. It'll be cheaper for them. It's cheaper for you because you get those multi policy discounts. You're all on one policy together. That would be my advice for something like that. And of course there's people that don't want their kids on their policies. I understand that as well. So they can always get their own separate standalone auto policy. The one thing is now in Michigan, you do need to list every household member, regardless of age or relation, on your auto policy. They can be rated or non-rated or excluded. Again, that's a conversation with your insurance agent and what each company requires, but you wanna make sure that if your child is getting their own policy, that they make sure to list everybody in the household as a household member as well on their separate policy. speaker-1 (28:03) Really, so even if my kid has his own policy and I don't drive his vehicle, I still need to be listed on his policy because we live at the same. speaker-0 (28:11) Yep, just as a household member you could be non-rated or excluded. If you're never going to drive the car, would say just exclude. If you're non-rated, that means you just have coverage elsewhere. But the insurance companies do want to know how many people are in that house and what their relationships are. A lot of people don't like that. A lot of people think it's an invasion of privacy, but that is the way it is right now. We have to know everybody in your home, even if it's a baby. We ask... their names and their dates of birth that way we at least have it in file and if the company ever wants to ask you know you put down that there's four household members well you have only two drivers and then we can come back and say well little Ethan's only four years old here's his date of birth speaker-1 (28:54) So what happens if an excluded driver drives the car? speaker-0 (28:57) ⁓ coverage is void for everything. So yeah, that's, mean, that's basically it. If an excluded person drives your vehicle, coverage is excluded 100%. That is fine. you Yeah, yeah, that's fine. As long as somebody has your permission to drive your vehicle, and they're not excluded on your policy, you have coverage, the coverage will extend to the auto or the auto coverage will extend. speaker-1 (29:08) if I loan my car to a friend. They don't live with us. speaker-0 (29:24) And I'm trying to think of another example of things we see quite a bit of. If somebody comes from out of town and is staying at your house and they borrow your car for the week that they're there, that's fine too. Things like that happen all the time. As long as they have a valid license, obviously you don't want to loan your vehicle out to somebody who has a suspended license or a revoked license. That would be bad. That could cause a claim denial right there. But yeah, it's just you want to be responsible with your things. is insurance is part of your finances. You want to make sure that you are you're covering yourself and your assets, right? speaker-1 (29:59) Well, I have a newer car and I have an older car. We're not talking antique, we're just talking, you know, a decade old. Yep. Am I going to want to change the way I cover between the two vehicles? speaker-0 (30:10) Maybe, maybe it all depends on the technology in the vehicle. When I started, I started insurance early 2000s. So at that time, a 10 year old car was, know, a 90, 91, 92. Those cars didn't have the GPS and the technology and the computer chips that cars now do. And now you get into the cars that were built in the 2000s, even 2005, 2004, there's computer chips in a lot of them. those chips are so expensive to replace now that if you do if you do remove that physical damage from your vehicle is it worth not having that physical damage is it gonna cost you so much out of pocket that you be telling yourself well I should have just paid for that $500 collision or comprehensive deductible and now I don't have to worry about a $3,000 chip in my 15 year old car so I always tell people if your vehicles older than 10 check the blue book value you can always get your own appraisal on the vehicle ⁓ from an actual car appraiser that would be out of your pocket unfortunately ⁓ but that'll let you know is it worth paying for that physical damage on there but it used to be added it used to be if it was ten years or older a lot of people would just remove comp and collision and go with liability only it's not the case anymore there's just there's so much technology in these vehicles so speaker-1 (31:32) Does that mean that you're seeing totaling happen more or less because of... speaker-0 (31:37) We are seeing it more and more lately and it's even for me that I find it so odd. that storm that we had back in June with the tornado that came through, but all of the flooding that happened from that, there were vehicles that they weren't completely submerged in water, but just enough that there was a row of vehicles outside of a very large collision shop nearby here. Every single one of those got totaled. just because they had just enough where it would have been too expensive to replace the wiring in their headlights or just the computer chips in general, that's more higher up in the vehicle. But yeah, we are seeing more and more totaled out cars, ⁓ even for something that you might consider a fender bender. If it's gonna cost the insurance company tens of thousands of dollars to replace those chips and wires. whatever else comes with vehicles now, they're just gonna total it out and you just will get that check and get a new vehicle. speaker-1 (32:41) I would have thought it would have gone the other way, that the technology would be in a little black box. so your vehicle has all of this fender bender type damage, all these things, all these bangs, and the technology is good, so they're not going to ever total the car. speaker-0 (32:46) Yes! my thoughts exactly but apparently the auto industry has not cut up with the caught up with the aviation industry yet no little black boxes yet maybe one day soon but even going back to the expenses of things on that even windshields now can cost three or four thousand dollars to replace speaker-1 (33:16) There's technology in windshield. I don't know what the technology is. It looks like glass to me. speaker-0 (33:21) Same. Same. I don't know. I'm not really an auto person. I don't know too much about the ins and outs of them. Just give me the point A and B safely. That's all I care about. But yeah, apparently windshields, even windshields have the technology in them. Whatever it is, I don't know. I probably should look it up because it would be fascinating for me to read. yeah, as technology grows, all of these costs are going up. speaker-1 (33:48) It's fascinating, you know, the rule of thumb isn't the rule of thumb anymore. speaker-0 (33:52) Right, right, it has changed so much in the past 20 years. speaker-1 (33:56) Wow, that's crazy. What should we know about toys? Let's bring it back to toys. We'll have to wrap up soon. speaker-0 (34:06) Okay, yeah, toys. for any of your little things that you buy, as I said earlier, electronic bikes, the e-bikes and golf carts, we're seeing a lot more people purchase those. And depending on the value and the size, you may have some extended liability coverage on your home policy. But if you purchase them at all, again, call your agent, see if you should have coverage on them. If they do. it go over that little extension limit on your policy because you want to make sure that you have liability if you're in your golf cart and you're up north which is where most people are using these things to just drive around their little neighborhoods up north are you drinking while doing it I hope people aren't but it happens are you riding without any safety precautions on this golf cart are so if you cause an accident in any way do you have coverage for it on your current home policy more than likely with the way they're built now? No, you want to have a separate policy for those so you have the liability coverage. If they are very expensive pieces of equipment, get the physical damage coverage on there as well. These RVs, these new RVs are upwards of what, 80, $90,000? Depending on if you're a glamper or just a regular camper, those are things you want the liability on that. more than anything for me, that's a big investment. I would want to make sure If I was in an accident in an RV like that, obviously I want the liability, but I want to make sure that I get the money for that RV or I get it replaced somehow. So that you want to make sure that if you buy any kind of a toy at all, call your agent and just have a small discussion. Most agents, we're not trying to upsell you and give you things you don't need, but things like that, you do want to make sure you have coverage just to be on the safe side. Never hurts to ask. speaker-1 (36:01) And you know, insurance, the tough thing is you pay every year or quarter or monthly, however you have your plan set up and you hope to never get your money back on it. However, when you do, you feel like you won the lottery because it was there and it you hopefully what you needed if you had the right policy for your situation. yeah, insurance is a necessary evil. I have had to use my homeowner's insurance. ⁓ Once or twice there was a leak in a pipe, think, whatever. And so we had a water feature in the kitchen, you know. And it was amazing because I figured they would paint that wall and that ceiling, because when it came out, well, no, this wall leads to this wall. And the next thing, you know, my whole downstairs was painted. And these are the benefits of having the right insurance for you. speaker-0 (36:56) That's because you know, just that little bit of water damage from just a pipe, you'd think if it's a small leak and you notice it right away, you think, I'll get this done. I'll nip it in the bud before it gets serious. But water spreads fast. After five minutes, it's causing damage. We do recommend and a lot of insurance companies recommend now if water sensors in the house. This is something I actually I've purchased them from my house. I've yet to set them up. They're still on my kitchen counter, but I have them just not. working yet, but they are such an affordable first line of defense. You can get them at any of your hardware stores or online. It's a little pack of four or five disks that there's two different types. One, they're Bluetooth, so you can get alerted on your phone, or there's the noisy ones that could be very headache inducing. But you would throw those disks underneath your pipes in kitchen, bathroom, furnace area. If it detects any kind of a leak, you're going to know right away. If you're out of town, if you go on vacation and you have a friend or a family member that has a spare key and you get that alert that there is a leak, you can call your friend right away and just say, hey, can you just go over there and shut off the water? And then you are avoiding a very big claim and just a big headache. Having your claims paid for and having everything fixed is great, but how long is it going to take? It's a stressful situation regardless. speaker-1 (38:18) Yeah, I've watched a couple of neighbors over the course of my life, not like my area is going up in smoke or not, have fires in their house while you're in an issue or whatever. you're just watching a house and between the smoke and the water they send in and all of that, it's insane. speaker-0 (38:39) It's devastating. And it's heartbreaking too when something like that happens, whether it's somebody you know, or you don't, that's somebody's livelihood that is gone. And now they have to start from scratch. So there is one coverage on your home policy that I feel is important. It's not talked about enough, but it's loss of use or additional living expense. It depends on how they word it on the policy. But in the event something like that happens, where your home becomes uninhabitable, your insurance policy should have this coverage, which will pay for additional expenses for something like this. They'll give you the temporary housing. They'll give you a storage unit to put the things that weren't damaged that you need to get out of there and still use. They will give you a food expense, maybe some clothing expenses. It's going to help you live as best as you can while you're getting pieced back together. So I think that's something most people don't know that they're insurance policy has on their home but I think that's one of the most important coverages there is. That can help you out big time in a tragic situation. speaker-1 (39:43) Wow, this has all been so informational, so useful. I'm really thrilled we got to sit and talk here. Can you think of anything that we didn't cover that you want to make sure we can spread out there? speaker-0 (39:55) the top of my head no, but again, 20 minutes, I'm guessing that I'll probably think of something that we could have talked another 45 minutes being in the insurance industry. get questions from friends a lot and family members. I enjoy talking about insurance. I've been doing it so long. I like talking about it. as soon as you do, you know, they regret asking a question because the eyes glaze over and they are thinking of anything else than what I'm talking about. hopefully this was not entertaining because it's insurance but it was more informational in a good way and not putting people to sleep. If I did put somebody to sleep I hope you had a really nice nap. speaker-1 (40:31) We got the audience. Well you have a lovely voice, so I guess they should. speaker-0 (40:38) Thank you! speaker-1 (40:41) Cheryl, thank you for taking this time with us today to talk about insurance. Thank you. To my listeners, I will be sharing a link to Sweet Insurance where you can find Cheryl and that will be in the show notes. Please check them out. They have a great blog with a lot of good information about insurance on their website. ⁓ Don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, and stay tuned. I'll see you next time. This has been Monty Marcy on Marcy Talks. Money and life.