Personal Finance Tips

There’s a strange contradiction about insurance. It’s an annoying burden every month when the time to pay the premium comes around but, if the worst should happen, it’s a wonderful thing to have had that insurance policy in place. With the family budgets really tight as the recession shows little sign of going away, the monthly bank statement shows the insurance instalments disappearing. You look at your own health. That’s great. You have never had a day of serious illness in your life. It’s the same for your partner. You cannot avoid feeling a little resentful. All those dollars, every month. And then there’s an accident or one of you does unexpectedly fall ill. It’s then you discover whether that plan you have been paying into is actually worth the money.

The market for health plans is divided in a slightly complicated way. It’s really to ensure the insurance companies make a profit as the cost of treatment keeps on rising way faster than inflation. So it reflects a balancing act between allowing the patients some say, and denying them any real control, over access to treatment. The plan most popular with the insurance industry is Managed Care. This requires you to get the insurer’s permission before you attempt to access treatment. The first contact doctor must be from an approved list, and he or she must refer you on for further diagnostic tests or treatment. Failure to get this referral usually means the insurer will refuse to pay. The second option is a Fee For Service Plan where you pay a lump sum at the beginning of each year, followed by monthly instalments. This covers you for the medical services listed in your policy. Basic plans only cover consults with your doctor and a simple set of tests. More expensive plans have a better range of coverage but there are usually co-payments.

Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) are networks of healthcare professions. If you stay within the network, your medical needs are covered although, in most plans, co-payments will be required. The next step up is a Point of Service Plan (POS). This is a variation on the HMO and allows a networked doctor to refer you to an outside expert. Finally, there are Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) which offer more choice than an HMO or POS both in the doctors you can access and the treatments you can have, e.g. usually include preventative medicine.

Because the service offered by this site is free, you can get as many health insurance quotes as you like for each of the main types of plan. This gives you more information on which to make your decision. But it’s fair to say the decision is not an easy one unless you read the detail of each plan with some care. With all the health insurance quotes available, you are often forced to balance coverage against cost, i.e. you buy the amount of coverage you can afford. This makes the choices something of a gamble. Do you pick emergency care in the event of an accident or focus on a list of the most common diseases or disorders? Do you include long-term care against the possibility you might be more permanently disabled by whatever happens? There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. In the end, it all comes down to what you can afford and what helps you to sleep best at night.

If you were building a time machine, you need only find a way of travelling back two years to find a land of plenty. Remembering how good it was almost brings tears to your eyes. Every week a bank, credit card company or finance company would mail you their latest offers. Cheap overdrafts, reduced interest with expanding credit limits or yet another way of converting that positive housing equity into cash for spending. There seemed no possibility of this coming to an end. Yet suddenly the price of gas was up to $4 and more a gallon. That proved just a passing straw in the wind. A month or so later came the bank failures, the credit crunch and a full recession with major problems of unemployment. Comfortable lives disappeared. Family budgets suddenly had to pay for debt reduction. Everyone was looking for ways to save money.

Lives must go on but the problem was how to stay mobile. During the good times, towns and cities had exploded. Gone where the high density housing developments close to workplaces. In their place came suburbs and then exurbs. People were organizing their lives around private transport and expecting to commute further and further to get anything done. What do you do when you find you cannot afford to replace your current vehicles but live too far away from work, schools and convenient shops? There is no private transport so, as a first response, you are looking at constantly patching up your old vehicles to keep them moving. But small repairs become major repairs, particularly if your mileage is high or you get into a traffic accident. You look around the neighborhood for carpools. This can work for routine journeys, but it ties you to other people’s timetables. That leaves renting.

If you decide to drive other people around and take payment, you need to check whether your existing policy covers you. The majority of insurers believe taking money makes you a taxi business and they want a higher premium. As with all insurance, use the online search engines to find affordable cover. But, in some parts of the US, it’s now economic to give up ownership. There are new rental systems allowing you to take a vehicle from a local pick-up point as and when you need it. Booking online, you only pay for the vehicle for the hours you use it. Economists have calculated the average yearly spend on car ownership is about $8,000. The average hourly rental rate is $15. That’s 533 hours a year in a rental car before you pay more than an owner. But here comes the warning. The rental car always comes with cheap auto insurance, but the companies are only interested in protecting their capital. You are usually asked to pay more to top up on cover against medical expenses for your own injuries. But even with this extra premium, it’s often significantly cheaper to rent as needed. Even better, you do not pick up from local offices where sales agents pitch extra options. Pick-ups and drop-offs are in local garages with no formalities. Check out what services are on offer in your area. If the cheap auto insurance terms are right, you will save to go down this road.

This is being written as we approach Thanksgiving and most people will be meeting up with family and friends to celebrate. As we plan for these big holidays, the main focus tends to be on planning the menu for the feast, buying the food and deciding who’s going to be responsible for laying in the alcohol. Not that many take out the auto policy to check nothing will go wrong with their insurance. This is a mistake. There will be bumper-to-bumper traffic on all the main routes as everyone gets on to the road to get where they are going. These are the busiest times of the year on the road. At peak times on regular days, the usual suspects are making their commuter runs to and from work or dropping off the kids at school. These are the seasoned drivers with years of experience. Switch to a national holiday and you have a completely different look and feel to the roads.

The moment more drivers spend more time on the road, the chances of an accident increase dramatically. Instead of making short runs along familiar roads, whole families are suddenly loaded into cars for longer journeys along less familiar roads. There are a lot of weekend drivers all around you. With one driver and no passengers, it’s easier to concentrate and, with fewer distractions, there’s less risk of an accident. Fill the back seat with kids and the distractions are hard to ignore. The short, boring commuter trip is suddenly converted into a stressful epic. Worse, some drivers never think to have their vehicles go through a routine maintenance before setting out. The family car may be alright on short runs, but curl up and die when asked to cruise at high speeds down an interstate. Precautionary time in a repair shop will reduce the risk of an engine or tire blow-out but, in a recession with family budgets under pressure, most give this a miss. Those who are worried about their vehicles or know they need something bigger to fit in everyone and their baggage, rent a car. This puts them behind the wheel of something unfamiliar and the chances of an accident just increased again. Many carpool with family and friends – the people who still have SUVs find themselves in demand.

Put all these causes together and the chances of accidents are high. Now look at the auto insurance quotes and resulting policy. If you are proposing to share the driving in your vehicle on a long journey, are you insured for more than one named driver? Are you insured when driving a vehicle belonging to someone else, whether a family member, friend or rental company. If you have rented a vehicle, what’s the relationship between your own insurance policy and the policy the rental company may be selling? Now the hard questions. If you only drive with the mandatory minimum cover, what happens to the medical bills if you and your family are injured? It may be worth looking at short-term medical cover for yourself and your passengers. It may be worth covering the cost of repairing or replacing your own vehicle if it’s damaged or totaled. Get multiple auto insurance quotes to get the best protection. Stay safe on the roads and and have peace of mind.