Insuranse Advices
Your entire financial plan is at risk if you do not have the right insurance. Without it, a split-second event could quickly wipe out the savings you’ve taken years to build.
Some of the biggest stories of the past few years emphasized the importance-and the challenges-of having the right insurance: the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the victims’ struggles to get their claims paid, the crisis in health insurance as rates exploded and employers slashed coverage, and the massive confusion surrounding the new Medicare prescription drug plan.
But if you know the right strategies, insurance can be affordable, accessible, and an incredibly powerful tool. It can protect your family against financial ruin from almost every situation that you worry about-a catastrophic illness, an auto accident, a disaster that damages your home, an expensive nursing home stay, or a death in the family.
Even though so much is at stake, people make big mistakes when shopping for insurance. They don’t buy enough coverage, buy the wrong insurance, or pay hundreds-sometimes thousands-of dollars more than they should because they don’t know how to deal with this complicated subject. As too many people learned after Hurricane Katrina, just having insurance may not be enough. You need to have the right type and amount of coverage.
But many people get cajoled into buying the wrong policy by a salesperson who is trying to earn a big commission, and regulators have recently uncovered several scandals involving inappropriate salas practices in many areas of the insurance business. It’s tough to know who to trust when looking for insurance advice.
