Couple of insurance questions...

[MustangEater8251]

Basically, I have always been under my father's insurance, but I paid him. I am breaking away since technically its the only thing that is not 100% self sustaining of my self.

I under stands the coverages, and deductables. But what I have no clue on is the whole, personal liability, medical coverage etc. etc... You know the stuff where its like $50,000/$100,000 coverage.


I want decent coverage on my car since its actually worth something, but don't wanna kill myself in payments. And I definitley don't wanna accidently rearend someone, and be paying $100,000 medical bills for years because I saved $3 a month on insurance.

Any advice? Or places I can look for on the web for advice?

Thanks in advance.

[RallyRed 98]

i think most people are going with coverages well over 100,000 in each category these days, and since you're living in florida with a lot of expensive cars around you it might not be a bad idea to maybe go even higher.

i have 100/300/100 and it's actually pretty cheap, as long as you keep high (>500) deductibles. if you've ever played around with an insurance calculator on one of the websites you can see that pretty plainly.

your first number is the amount of coverage per person. so, with my coverage, if i wreck into a 16 passenger van and injure everybody on board, the most any one person will get is 100,000.

the second number is the amount of coverage per accident; so if everybody in that van sues and it somehow comes out to 300,000 even, i'm covered. every dollar past that i have to pick up.

the last one is my property damage coverage, which is why i said i would get a high limit if i was living in florida. if i wreck into 2 cars in a rich area i can easily rack up 100,000 in property damage right there; same goes if i smack a telephone pole or storefront or something like that.

that's called split limit coverage, if you google that you will come up with all kinds of primers about it. the alternative is single limit, and some states have outlawed that because it makes you a target with that one huge amount of coverage (usually 500,000 +).

didn't we have an insurance salesperson on here once? i'm sure they could tell you a lot more about it than i can...

['98 BlackBird]

What a nerd [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[ellik]

Since you are still young and probably dont really have much in the way of assets to loose if you were sued, its not quite as complicated. a 50/100 or 100/300 probably is plenty. although I do believe you said you were having a town house built for you and your g/f? Once you start to built up equity and actually have something that you could be sued for, you want to up the coverage on your insurance.

Say you hit someone and do irreversible damage to their person. Their lawyer looks at your assets and figures out what your worth to decide what to sue you for and make their suit accordingly. It is the job of you and your insurance agent to decide what the best policy is to protect your assets in that case. If you only have 100,000k liability and the lawyers see that you have a 300,000 house.... well, take a guess at how much they are going to sue for in damages. the 100,000 isnt going to protect your assets. on the other hand, if you are still renting and only have 10k in the bank and thats the limit of your assets, does it make sense to carry 300k worth of liability? if you have your life savings invested in a $500 1977 pinto and just scrape up enough to live in a hole-in-the-wall apartment and dont have a dime in the bank, then hit someone doing the same damage, the lawyers are probably not going to even bother. There is nothing to gain.

You also want to take into consideration the underinsured 3rd party. In case you get in an accident (not your fault) and the other party doesnt have insurance, or doesnt have enough, you want to make sure that you have the right to sue your own insurance policy and collect the same compensation as if the at fault party wasnt lacking.

The best bet is to find an insurance agent that you trust and sit down with them and discuss your situation and what policy would be best for you. Since you are still young, and with the relatively minimal costs, I would recommend finding an agent that can write you a life insurance policy and renters policy all at the same time. Having the multiple policies will help you get better rates on each of them. When I met with my agent and set up all of my policies, the multiple policy discount actually paid for my life insurance and more than half of my renters insurance.