Omnibus recap
May. 2nd, 2005 12:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drscottWe're still time-short, so I'll take this opportunity (since Mike cancelled his planned visit this morning) to post a placeholder entry representing some of the great stuff I would have written about....
Insurance: I researched getting new homeowners and a new auto policy for Paul (I was happy with my car insurance with Mercury.) Mike had his car insurance with State Farm, and it was easiest when we bought the house to go with them for homeowners, but it was pretty clearly a high-priced policy, and coverage had not kept up with the inflated price of reconstructing the house in the event of disaster. We had cancelled our earthquake insurance through them (and the California state government's captive pool) several years ago and moved that part to Geovera, a nationwide independent company which is cheaper, online-friendly, and offers equal or better prospects of being able to pay in the event of The Big One, but the main homeowners policy with State Farm had crept up in price to nearly $1,000 a year and offered coverage about $100K lower than likely rebuilding costs.
Researching companies in California is assisted by the state's Dept. of Insurance web site, which has premium and complaint-level surveys for all authorized companies.
General comments on insurance: Insurance is a contract to reduce the risk of untoward events by paying someone else to take it. [rest of detailed discussion elided to save time!]
Car insurance is a well-developed marketplace, with old-line insurers fighting a rearguard action to keep online and independent insurance companies like GEICO and Progressive from eating away at their business. The insurance business is notoriously "sticky," meaning the cost in time and trouble of changing providers is high enough to deter most consumers, so it pays the companies to provide kickbacks to car dealers, auto loan providers, and others to steer your business their way when you first insure. The new-model companies can generally give you a price that's enough better than old-line companies (e.g., State Farm, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, and Allstate [avoid!]) to make it worth your while to switch, so you will often see ads suggesting big savings are available, but that is only the case when your current insurance is with an old-line company -- rates between the new-model companies are usually roughly comparable. So it rarely makes sense to waste time even asking for a quote if you already insure with one of the new-model companies.
I have been with a California new-model company, Mercury, since I bought my car in 1997. They did an excellent job with the one claim I've filed, for roughly $4K of body work when I (oops) rear-ended a Swiss guy working at HP's mass spectrograph division (he stopped suddenly at an entrance ramp at just the moment I was checking traffic in the rear.) They also offer a discount for having a BS in the sciences, which I find strangely satisfying. So I first checked with their website to see if they offered homeowners -- they do -- and found a nearby agent, since mine had moved to Pleasanton.
Wednesday of last week we both went to the agent's office (Complete Insurance Services) to set up and sign the papers. The agent, Juli, turned out to be a bright, knowledgeable older woman; one of the things that attracted me when I first called her was her ease with the idea of domestic partners. It turned out one of her staff, a bearded guy about our age, set off our gaydar, so it does seem to be family-friendly. In about 1.5 hours we had set up three new policies and transferred my auto policy to her agency.
Paul's new auto rate saved him about $400 a year over Farmer's. The homeowners was both higher coverage and about $300 less per year. So we saved about $700 a year, which means after about a year we will have amortized the effort and time expended.
Friday we had dinner with John (of John and Mark) then went to see The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which while a fun way to spend 90 minutes really lost a lot of the flavor of the book and radio series to Disneyfication. The BBC did better with its video version, but since the imperatives of the movie business now require happy endings, romance, and marketable special effects, it would be unreasonable to have expected more. I particularly hated Marvin the Paranoid Android's appearance. OTOH, the worldbuilding yard sequence was breathtaking.
We had planned to get up to the city on the weekend for the exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand 1350–1800, but there was way too much to be done, so we stayed home; I did yard work while Paul finished up the last Convention newsletter. We also ordered new maple bookshelves for Paul's office, which unfortunately will take a month to arrive.
Insurance: I researched getting new homeowners and a new auto policy for Paul (I was happy with my car insurance with Mercury.) Mike had his car insurance with State Farm, and it was easiest when we bought the house to go with them for homeowners, but it was pretty clearly a high-priced policy, and coverage had not kept up with the inflated price of reconstructing the house in the event of disaster. We had cancelled our earthquake insurance through them (and the California state government's captive pool) several years ago and moved that part to Geovera, a nationwide independent company which is cheaper, online-friendly, and offers equal or better prospects of being able to pay in the event of The Big One, but the main homeowners policy with State Farm had crept up in price to nearly $1,000 a year and offered coverage about $100K lower than likely rebuilding costs.
Researching companies in California is assisted by the state's Dept. of Insurance web site, which has premium and complaint-level surveys for all authorized companies.
General comments on insurance: Insurance is a contract to reduce the risk of untoward events by paying someone else to take it. [rest of detailed discussion elided to save time!]
Car insurance is a well-developed marketplace, with old-line insurers fighting a rearguard action to keep online and independent insurance companies like GEICO and Progressive from eating away at their business. The insurance business is notoriously "sticky," meaning the cost in time and trouble of changing providers is high enough to deter most consumers, so it pays the companies to provide kickbacks to car dealers, auto loan providers, and others to steer your business their way when you first insure. The new-model companies can generally give you a price that's enough better than old-line companies (e.g., State Farm, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, and Allstate [avoid!]) to make it worth your while to switch, so you will often see ads suggesting big savings are available, but that is only the case when your current insurance is with an old-line company -- rates between the new-model companies are usually roughly comparable. So it rarely makes sense to waste time even asking for a quote if you already insure with one of the new-model companies.
I have been with a California new-model company, Mercury, since I bought my car in 1997. They did an excellent job with the one claim I've filed, for roughly $4K of body work when I (oops) rear-ended a Swiss guy working at HP's mass spectrograph division (he stopped suddenly at an entrance ramp at just the moment I was checking traffic in the rear.) They also offer a discount for having a BS in the sciences, which I find strangely satisfying. So I first checked with their website to see if they offered homeowners -- they do -- and found a nearby agent, since mine had moved to Pleasanton.
Wednesday of last week we both went to the agent's office (Complete Insurance Services) to set up and sign the papers. The agent, Juli, turned out to be a bright, knowledgeable older woman; one of the things that attracted me when I first called her was her ease with the idea of domestic partners. It turned out one of her staff, a bearded guy about our age, set off our gaydar, so it does seem to be family-friendly. In about 1.5 hours we had set up three new policies and transferred my auto policy to her agency.
Paul's new auto rate saved him about $400 a year over Farmer's. The homeowners was both higher coverage and about $300 less per year. So we saved about $700 a year, which means after about a year we will have amortized the effort and time expended.
Friday we had dinner with John (of John and Mark) then went to see The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which while a fun way to spend 90 minutes really lost a lot of the flavor of the book and radio series to Disneyfication. The BBC did better with its video version, but since the imperatives of the movie business now require happy endings, romance, and marketable special effects, it would be unreasonable to have expected more. I particularly hated Marvin the Paranoid Android's appearance. OTOH, the worldbuilding yard sequence was breathtaking.
We had planned to get up to the city on the weekend for the exhibit at the Asian Art Museum, The Kingdom of Siam: The Art of Central Thailand 1350–1800, but there was way too much to be done, so we stayed home; I did yard work while Paul finished up the last Convention newsletter. We also ordered new maple bookshelves for Paul's office, which unfortunately will take a month to arrive.
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Date: 2005-05-03 01:08 am (UTC)