insurance and other financial products

[edenfalling]

Today, after literally 20 years of living in assorted rental housing situations, I finally bought renter's insurance.

Yes, I know. I have been ABSURDLY lucky to avoid catastrophes this long!

But I was printing out my new car insurance cards just now, and it occurred to me that luck cannot last forever and insurance bundling is a thing, so as long I was logged into Geico anyway -- why not? And now I am insured for a year for the low annual cost of $158.00, paid in full to avoid installment charges. :)

As a random bonus, I can now explain with greater authority to rental company tenants why they should get renter's insurance and how it is both cheap and painless. *wry* Previously I always felt slightly hypocritical about that, the same way I feel slightly hypocritical about selling add-on products to my tax prep clients.

(I mean, I wouldn't pay for most of them... but then again, I actively enjoy doing taxes so I wouldn't pay for tax prep in the first place, and clearly that is not the case for my clients! Just because I personally don't care about paying for audit support and representation doesn't mean it's not a valuable service for other people. *hands* And I do think the Not the IRS tax ID theft protection and identity restoration aid service is a good deal, so that one I do wholeheartedly recommend.)

And now back to spreadsheets. *sigh*

Comments

[mindstalk]

Well, depends on the worth of your stuff, vs. your income/assets. In general it's cheaper to self-insure _if_ you can afford to absorb a major loss. I remember years ago, estimating the replacement value of my stuff, comparing it to my 1990s tech salary and the odds of needing to replace all my stuff, and figuring insurance wasn't worth it.

[edenfalling]

I cannot afford to absorb a major loss. I am no longer in the place where one bad health year wiped out all my savings (three cheers for working an office job instead of retail!), but my margin for disaster is still much thinner than I'd like it to be.

[mindstalk]

Then insurance makes sense!

[senmut]

I used to do my taxes by hand, never had a problem with it. Laziness led me to tax prep. And yes, I do audit support (been audited once as a random selectee) and id theft protection. But I HEAR you on the feeling of upselling being a little off.

I worked for furniture companies in the past, and could NOT bring myself to offer the stainguard on the lowest end furniture. If people were buying the low end, for reasons of knowing they were going to outgrow it quickly or budget, taking on another one to three hundred dollars when the FRAMING AND FABRIC weren't quality to begin with, was disrespectful. Don't put armor on a swayback pony...

[edenfalling]

Ooh, a Lucienne icon! :D

Company policy says to offer all products to all clients, and it's true that people can have unique situations that make unlikely products useful to them, but I figure that a brief mention is usually fine. If they're curious, they'll ask for details -- there's no reason to push!

Sometimes a service plan or a warranty is worth it. Other times, it's really, really not.