Steve, thanks! I'll contact them for a quote.

P.S.

quote:

Us midwesterners have to stick together!

Yes!

We have Geico for everything. They farm out the home owners to Travelers.

My main advice is get a very high deductible. The reason is you shouldn’t file homeowners claims for small stuff. You could become uninsurable after just one claim. So you pay extra for a low deductible but can’t use it. Might as well save with the high deductible.

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very high deductible

I've actually been thinking about this. What do you count as a high deductible? $5000?

(I think my mortgage won't allow me anything higher than that).

The quote I have from SF (which so far is the best quote) is for a $2400 deductible. I still have to follow up with them to get a new quote.

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We have Geico for everything. They farm out the home owners to Travelers.

I just got quotes from Geico. In my state, they farm out homeowners to Liberty Mutual.

the best way to do this is to go to a reputable insurance agent and let them do the grunt work. we ask our agent to look at all the home and auto policies once a year and find the best deals for our situation. calling all the companies yourself and getting quotes and trying to compare apples to apples would drive me mad.

we use Travelers by the way for both home and car and they have been terrific. Lost the roof on both the house and the barn and they paid for both and handled it really well. Transmission blew up on my truck due to a mechanic's error and they paid for that, too.

Pique, how did having those claims impact your premiums afterward?

Do you have any thoughts on the high deductible (moving up to $5000)?

Does your policy cover roof damage caused by space junk falling from the sky?

Who is going to pay to fix this guy’s roof?

quote:

Alejandro Otero
@Alejandro0tero
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Hello. Looks like one of those pieces missed Ft Myers and landed in my house in Naples.
Tore through the roof and went thru 2 floors. Almost his my son.
Can you please assist with getting NASA to connect with me? I’ve left messages and emails without a response.

What would Flo do?

I wouldn’t go for a high deductible with a company that might drop us after we make our first claim. We’ve been with our insurance company since we were first married, and we’ve had to make three auto claims and three homeowners claims and they have not dropped us. You want a company with an excellent customer service reputation when you actually need the insurance, not a company with the cheapest quote.

Jodi, good point.

I actually have no idea what SF does when someone makes a claim... We've never made a claim. I would imagine they don't drop you, but that your premiums would go up.

I probably should look into that...

Steve,

quote:

Does your policy cover roof damage caused by space junk falling from the sky?

OMG one more thing to keep me up at night.

So, if we raise our deductible to $5000, we would save just over $14/month, about $170/year.

I can't decide if I should think that's worth it or not.

I should add that this is SF and we already have a lot of discounts with them, theirs is the most competitive quote so far.

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Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Pique, how did having those claims impact your premiums afterward?

Do you have any thoughts on the high deductible (moving up to $5000)?

So far there has been no perceptible impact on our premiums. We chose the $1,000 deductible, based on this thought: "Should we have a catastrophe that insurance will pay for, how much do we want to be taken out of our pockets for the dedutible?" And $1,000 was our answer to that question.

YMMV. If you are comfortable being out $5k in the event of a disaster, save money on the premiums!

quote:

Originally posted by ShiroKuro:
Jodi, good point.

I actually have no idea what SF does when someone makes a claim... We've never made a claim. I would imagine they don't drop you, but that your premiums would go up.

I probably should look into that...

Steve,

quote:

Does your policy cover roof damage caused by space junk falling from the sky?

OMG one more thing to keep me up at night.

we used to have State Farm and had to make a claim. They were great to deal with (my grandmother's silver was stolen and they didn't make me prove the value or the quantity, they just paid what I asked). Our premium did not go up. But we dropped them after we moved to our current house and their premiums were just too high compared to other companies.

Our roofer has worked with Traveler's a lot and he was very relieved to hear that they are our insurer. Easy to deal with. BTW, their auto insurance includes road service, so we could drop AAA-- AND they cover emergency road service for horse trailers. A huge deal for me.

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Our roofer has worked with Traveler's a lot and he was very relieved to hear that they are our insurer

Ooh, this is an angle I hadn’t thought of. I wonder if I can get the roofer on the phone and ask him!

It reminds me of when we bought our first house and the seller’s agent said the seller offer a home warranty, and our agent said that a good thing. Sounds great we thought, we’ll take it. But the first time we had to fix something, we couldn’t find any contractor who would work with that warranty company because the co. was so restrictive in what it would cover that the contractors felt they couldn’t do the work the way they thought it needed to be done.

When I asked my real estate agent here about home warranty companies to see how she would react, she said “I don’t recommend them, they’re not worth it.” Passed that test!

Anyway, I’m about ready to go with SF, their quotes have been the best so far for us, but it’s worth maybe a few more phone calls before wrapping this up.

We tend to think about it like this: how much would we have to lose in order to risk filing a claim. That's what we target for our deductible. If we wouldn't file a claim for under $2500 or $5000, why would we pay extra for a $1000 deductible? Saving $200-300/year on premiums doesn't sound like much but it pays for itself in 4-5 years. Get the higher deductible and put the savings in a dedicated account to cover the deductible if you ever have a claim.

Honestly, after my experiences with auto insurance, I would seriously rethink filing a claim for anything short of my house completely burning down. They paid out about $12K total for my "at fault" car accident with the fuel tank a few years ago, then promptly jacked up my premium so much that they've easily made that money back and then some in the years since. And I can't even switch insurers or shop around because once that claim is on your record, you are toast -- no other company will touch you. So basically they can jack up my rates as much as they want knowing I am stuck with them for 5 years until the claim is off my record.

So we've decided that for homeowners, anything small we would never even dream of filing a claim. And now with the current climate of insurers looking for reasons to dump high risk customers/areas, it feels even more risky. I know a few people who got dropped by insurers they were claim-free with for 20 years when they filed one small claim. Insurance is a racket.