Home Insurance Ratings

Cheaper Home Insurance?

Are you looking for cheaper home insurance? Your average homeowner pays $50-$100 per month in premiums for a home-owner's insurance policy, depending on the price of the home being insured. This cost may seem insignificant compared to how much most of us pay for auto insurance. Because of the huge difference we pay insuring a car vs. our home, Home Owners insurance may seem like an afterthought to many of us. In my last 23 years as a home owner, I never gave much thought to shopping for cheaper home insurance. I've been insured by four different companies: State Farm, All State and California Casualty.  In each case, I saved about 5-15% on my home insurance policy by having a couple of my cars insured by the same company. In other way to save on home insurance premiums is to raise your deductible from $500 to $1000.  Sometimes, you can save as much as 25%.

Besides looking for Cheaper Home Insurance, though, the most important thing you can do is choose a company that is highly rated. Thankfully, AM Best rates home insurance companies the same they do automobile insurance. You can look up an insurance company's risk factor and financial stability online at anytime. Choose a company with a high rating of integrity and security. Even better, JD Powers has provided a very useful ranking of the top Home Insurance Companies. As they did with the Car Insurance Ratings a few months back, JD Powers has ranked the top insurance carriers. Home Insurers are rated JD Powers on Five Key Factors: Insurers are ranked by JD Powers on Five Key Factors: Overall Experience, Customer Interaction, Policy Offerings, Billing & Payment, and Price. I've selected 10 of the most popular home insurance companies and posted the results below.  Amica Mutual is number one with a perfect score of 100% in all five categories. No other company comes close. In case you didn't see the article on Car Insurance Ratings; Amica won that contest too back in 2009. One thing worth mentioning: Read the rest of this entry

Are Extended Car Warranties Worth it?

Extended Car Warranty?

One of the most attractive benefits of leasing or buying a new car is the peace of mind you get from knowing you’ll have no car repairs for 3-5 years. Most of the brand new car makers provide a warranty for the first 36-60 months of the car or 12,000 miles per year; whichever comes first. Obviously, one huge benefit of leasing a new car every 36 months is that you will spend very little of your time and money in the shop for repairs or maintenance. Most cars will last three years without needing brakes or tires. The most you will need to do is change the oil 2 or 3 times a year. So, what if you want to keep your car longer than its 3 or 5-year warranty period? Should you consider an Extended Car Warranty?

What Does an Extended Car Warranty Cover?

• What brakes on a car after 3 years? Not much.
• What brakes on a car after 5 years? Not much.
• Will you need new brakes and tires? Very likely.

Will an Extended Car Warranty cover new brakes and tires? Not at all. A few years ago, when I was finalizing the paperwork on the 4-year lease of my Pontiac G6, I was presented with an assortment of Extended Car Warranties. The car dealer explained to me that since my warranty would expire after 3 years, I would be left with a 3-year old car that was not covered by a warranty in my 4^th year of leasing it. Oh, the horror! The cost of extending my car warranty ranged from around $30 to $60 a month, depending on the size of deductible, coverage options and benefits. Benefits include things like hazard and road-size assistance. I was not impressed, nor even slightly inclined to pay for warranty coverage on a car that would be only 3 years old and have less than 40,000 miles of use. My previous experience with cars that I kept longer than 4 years was a 1996 Infiniti G20 and a 2000 Chevrolet Venture Mini Van. Read the rest of this entry

Is Dental Insurance Worth it?

Individual Dental Insurance

If there is one thing worse than a visit to the dentist it is having to pay for the grueling torture inflicted upon your mouth. I honestly don't know what is more painful; getting your teeth drilled or paying for cleanings, fillings, crows and root canals. I was one of the lucky ones, who stopped getting cavities after age 12, so I never considered Dental Insurance a necessity kids. Even then, I began asking myself, "Is Dental Insurance Worth it?" Kids do get lots of cavities so at the average price of $100 - $250 per filling, I decided I wasn't going to be without dental insurance. A good Dental Insurance Plan covers up to 80% of the cost of fillings and provides free check-ups and cleanings after every 6 months. (That's about $200 per child). If you don't have kids and don't get many cavities, there's yet another reason to consider whether or not dental insurance is worth it: All of those fillings you had as a child have likely started to weaken and cause cracks in the structure of your teeth. I've had three crowns since I was about 22 years old and my dentist says I will likely need about 3 or 4 more. At the uninsured price of around $1,000 each, this could get very expensive. And, that it's only for me, not including the wife and kids. Face it, a mouth full of teeth is one of the most expensive liabilities we all share. Are Dental Insurance for Individuals and Family Dental plans, PPO Dental Plans, etc., worth the cost of having no Dental Insurance at all? To answer this question, I did some basic research. This is what an uninsured dental patient can expect to pay for the most common procedures at the dentists office: Read the rest of this entry

Is Sccat a Good Cat Repellent?

SSscat Cat Deterrent

Do you wish there was a way to keep your cat out of the kitchen; away from the garden, off the counter-tops or off of your furniture? Or, worse yet - has your cat decided to use a portion of your house as his/her litter box? There is nothing that smells worse or is more difficult to get rid of than cat urine on your carpet. Well, okay, I'd say skunk odor has a significant edge over cat urine, but that's a different topic for another day. In fact, if you have pets it is worth discussing Skunk Repellent and I'll explain why in an upcoming article. Meanwhile, let's get to the issue at house: How to keep Cats away from and off of certain areas and places in and around your house. What products out there succeed as a useful, affordable and practical Cat Repeller?

Several weeks ago, we brought our 8-year old male cat back from the vet. Our young, female cat immediately sensed that he smelled different and became terrified of him. Weeks later, we began noticing the odor of cat urine. One day my wife called me while I was at work to report a cat owner's worst nightmare: Our nervous female cat was using our dining room floor as a cat box. The tedious task of solving this maddening Cat Urine problem had just begun. From our past experience, breaking a cat of this habit is not an easy thing to do. The first thing to do is to completely remove the odor. As long as an infected area of your house continues to smell like cat urine, your pet will continue to use it. We had to take action. First, we got the carpets as clean as we possibly could, then we began saturating the area with enzymes to remove the odor. We used a product called, Anti Icky Poo. There are plenty of other similar products out there such as Nature's Miracle and Urine Destroyer, but the Anti Icky Poo seemed to have the best reviews. I was confident we could get the area cleaned and odor free, but I knew the hard part would be to deter the cat from coming back to it. This is where the Cat Deterrent and Cat Repeller part of the job come in to play. I began searching the web for the phrases, "cat repellent", "cat deterrent" or "cat repeller". My research led me to a couple of ideas that I could utilize immediately without spending a dime.
Read the rest of this entry