quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Living in California usually means great weather, outrageous rates for renting a home and even more outrageous prices for buying a home (even in a poor school district - if you want something in Palo Alto or Cupertino you better be a low numbered employee at Google or Apple or whoever will be the next Google). Assuming you do find a house to buy you are faced with the next big question - insurance. Usually a mortgage company will insist on it (which is only fair as they usually own more of 'your' house than you will for several years). The biggest degree of freedom come to the one universal scourge of California living, the earthquakes and the question of do you want earthquake insurance.
You might think that is a no-brainer but the sting in the scorpion's tail here is what does your earthquake insurance buy you in the (statistically small) event that a majour quake hits your neighborhood and damages your house. Reading the fine print tells you that you may only get a percentage of the value of your home (which may or may not be actual replacement value) and any payout is based on the number a people who file claims - think how Class Action lawsuits pay out to the plaintiffs.
Makes me wonder if the aforementioned Google and Apple have similar Business Insurance deals? Perhaps that's something as a stock-holder one should really find out?
____
"Who will guard the guardians?"
-from the Roman poet, Juvenal
You might think that is a no-brainer but the sting in the scorpion's tail here is what does your earthquake insurance buy you in the (statistically small) event that a majour quake hits your neighborhood and damages your house. Reading the fine print tells you that you may only get a percentage of the value of your home (which may or may not be actual replacement value) and any payout is based on the number a people who file claims - think how Class Action lawsuits pay out to the plaintiffs.
Makes me wonder if the aforementioned Google and Apple have similar Business Insurance deals? Perhaps that's something as a stock-holder one should really find out?
____
"Who will guard the guardians?"
-from the Roman poet, Juvenal
posted by -idogcow at 12:17 PM
2 Comments:
Having been a CA-licensed broker-agent for property & casualty insurance for several years, I know about EQ policies. Pretty much not worth the high premium for such limited coverage in my book, plus if my house is still standing fine through Loma Prieta, it'd be a seriously major quake that toppled mine. If you take the premium and invested it yourself, you would have your own cushion to use if something happened, then if nothing happens, you still have the money. This decision is called "self-insuring". Of course it only works if you actually reserve enough money to take care of a possible loss when you need it...there's the rub. ;)
^Good advice. Have often read that for most electronics you'd do better to bank the $$ you would pay for an extended warranty and if you hadn't used it by the end of the product's life you'd have a downpayment on the replacement....
[me]
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