Failing to Review Your Insurance Can Cost You
The personal insurance plans you have may need to be adjusted from year to year. The life, health care, disability, car and homeowners’ insurance that you have may no longer do what you need them to do. Each plan should be reviewed and adjusted as necessary.
The life insurance needs of your family may have changed since the last time you reviewed it. You may have too much life insurance. You may have too little coverage. You may have the wrong kind of life insurance.
If you are earning a better salary you may need to adjust the limits of the life insurance you have. One of the more important reasons to buy life insurance is to replace lost income. Having too little life insurance can mean that your spouse has too little income.
If you have more obligations now than when you purchased your plan you may want to update your contract. A now larger family can increase your requirements for insurance. The opposite is also true. If your children are adults and son their own, you may need less coverage than you did before.
When is the last time you thought about your medical insurance plan? Your medical insurance plan may have a maternity rider that you no longer require. Or, it may not have coverage for pregnancy and you are planning to expand your family.
Your policy’s deductible may be too low or too high. You can easily over pay by buying a plan with a deductible that is too low.
The limits on your plan may be lower than you need. The cost of a hospital stay goes up each year. Medical providers charge more each year. Unless your policy has unlimited lifetime and annual limits it may fall short if you have a major health problem.
Disability insurance gives you an income when you are unable to work due to a sickness or accident. If your income has grown, your disability insurance should also rise.
If your need for income is less than it was before, you may want to reduce your coverage. If you are able to live off of your investments now you may no longer require this coverage.
Your car insurance plan has probably been adjusted when you bought and sold cars. It may not have been updated to make sure that you have adequate liability limits. It may not have been adjusted as your autos have grown older and perhaps no longer require physical damage insurance.
Your home insurance needs adjustment on a regular basis. The amount of coverage you have on your dwelling needs to equal the cost of rebuilding your home. (Not the cost of purchasing a new dwelling.) This amount changes from year to year and your plan should be updated.
If you have bought jewelry since you bought your home contract, you may want to make sure that you have enough jewelry insurance. You may need to purchase a rider or a separate plan to cover your jewelry. The standard home insurance contract will only cover a limited amount of jewelry.
Checking rates with various companies to get the best price is an important part of reviewing your insurance. Your needs change from year to year. So do the prices of the various insurance carriers. Although it is more important to be sure that you have the right kind and amount of insurance protection, it is also important that you not pay too much for it.
The only way to ensure that your insurance policies are still appropriate for you is to review your needs and your insurance contracts one by one. Having too much coverage means your coverage is more expensive than it should be. Having too little insurance isn’t good either. It means that you get paid too little when you need it the most.
Author Bio: You can lower your insurance costs by getting prices for Alaska car insurance or home insurance in California on the author Alston J. Balkcom’s website. You can also call 866-945-2930 to get a free auto insurance quote.
Category: Finances
Keywords: insurance reviews,healthcare,medical policies