Self Insurance Successful Experiences / Stories?

Asset allocation, risk, diversification and rebalancing. Pros/cons of hiring a financial advisor. Seeking advice on your portfolio?
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Quebec
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Re: Self Insurance Successful Experiences / Stories?

Post by Quebec »

IdOp wrote: 16 Sep 2017 16:29 Maybe I'll try $2,000 next year.
In our case, the impact of hypothetically going from $500 to $1k deductible was not large. It was going from $1k to $2k that really made a difference.
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Re: Self Insurance Successful Experiences / Stories?

Post by IdOp »

One of the factors restraining the amount of my deductible increase was that it was for a new car. I figured that with nervousness and/or unfamiliarity, maybe the odds of an accident would be higher than usual. So far so good fortunately.
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Re: Self Insurance Successful Experiences / Stories?

Post by Wallace »

Quebec wrote:we have two cars insured. The older one is, disappointingly, only worth $3k on kijiji/LesPacs, so with the new $2k deductible, it did not make much sense to have accident coverage, and we only kept the $2M liability on that one.
I didn't realize you could do that. This raises the question of whether self-insurance within a group of similar-risk individuals is feasible and financially viable. I believe the Mennonites in our area do this for barns, houses, cars and farm equipment. Maybe there's a place for some small, new start-up self-insuring co-ops. It could start with cars and (possibly) develop into insurance for homes, without all the administrative and real estate overhead of the big companies. A $2,000 initial investment from a group of 20 people self-insuring, for example, would cover collision for one $40,000 vehicle. After four or five years (without a flurry of claims) the cushion would be comfortable.
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Re: Increasing the deductibles

Post by Descartes »

Quebec wrote: 19 Sep 2017 19:58 1. Home: we switched from comprehensive coverage to a slightly less comprehensive form, where there are stated limits on what value they will pay for your bike, your artwork, etc. What I really want to protect 100% of is the building. I don't own a $2k TV, or a $5k diamond ring, so the new limits on some types of contents make no difference to me. The insurance company also wanted to use a reconstruction value for the building that was way more than the approximate market price of the building AND the land combined. That made no sense (the land value being almost half the property value in our case; land does not burn), and after some discussion they agreed to use the same reconstruction value as the previous year (still too much, but who knows how much reconstruction would actually cost, so better be on the safe side here). Finally there was the increase in the deductible, which was the biggest factor.
YMMV, I guess.
I had a comprehensive and downgraded it to mid-range broad (the only difference was only specific perils in the latter).
I had a 1K deductible and bumped it to 2K.
Total savings was less than a hundred bucks per year.

This was CAA home insurance.
They had no line-item editing of limits as indicated above.
They had no option of increasing the deductible beyond 2K.
..hmm.. maybe they suck.
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Re: Increasing the deductibles

Post by Quebec »

Descartes wrote: 20 Sep 2017 12:35 ..hmm.. maybe they suck.
I would definitely call another insurer (or two) to inquire about higher deductibles. The competition might also have better rates in general, who knows. Shopping around (making sure to compare nearly identical policies) is still the number one tip when it comes to saving on home and auto insurance.

Good luck!
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Re: Self Insurance Successful Experiences / Stories?

Post by Quebec »

Wallace wrote: 20 Sep 2017 10:55 I didn't realize you could do that.
In Quebec the only mandatory auto insurance is 3rd party liability. Other provinces have different rules.
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