At one time or another, we have all walked into a car rental office and met with one of the counter staff on a mission to hard sell insurance. It’s like a knee-jerk reaction. See customer, sell additional insurance. The most common add-on is called loss damage waiver (LDW) and that can seriously boost your daily rate. So what is this mystery product and should we think about buying it? Well, let’s start off with a few of the basics. LDW is a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, covering you if you put a dent in the body work or run the car off a cliff. No matter what happens, you’re off the financial hook. Most people own a vehicle of their own, have an insurance policy, and work on the basis this will cover them when driving a rental. But the $64,000 question is what cover you carry over. Let’s start with the deductibles. To get the lowest possible premium on the regular policy, most people opt for the highest deductible. They reckon they are careful drivers and can afford to self-insure the first $1,000 of any damage. Except this does not quite square with the pricing policies of rental companies. Most seem to have in-house body shops paying top rate for repair personnel or use the most expensive independents. Although you might buy the cheapest possible replacement parts, your bill from the rental company will come in at the top end of expectations and add on the much-feared “loss of use” charge. This is their estimate of the daily loss of profit caused by not having the car available for rent. And, guess what. The rental company does not feel under any pressure to get the car back on the road. Suddenly, your deductible has gone and you find your own policy does not cover the loss of use charge.
But you’re still not panicking because you remember your credit card company offers some kind of back-up insurance. Now’s the time to read all that small print, i.e. before you rent the car. The terms often fall into the so-called secondary insurance market. In theory, this covers you for those heads of claim not covered by your own car insurance. Except the world never seems to work out quite the way you expect. What works on the Gold and Platinum cards may not work on others.
Auto insurance is never an exact science but there are one or two simple rules. If you are only renting for one or two days, it’s probably better to buy the LDW because any claim you make does not show up on your own policy and you avoid any premium hike. But there comes a point when the daily rate is too big a hit. Now you are gambling you will not have an accident that takes the rental car off the road for a long time. The reality is the daily rate for loss of use probably will not fall under your own cheap auto insurance and may not fall under the credit card secondary cover. So just make sure you only have minor accidents.
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The majority of people who start up a business want to define an exit strategy. No-one intends to work until the final days before they die. Even if they want to go for something long-lasting to pass on to their children, there has to come a time when they retire, put up their feet and enjoy a few years of peace. Most surveys find around two-thirds of all business owners hope to retire within the next ten years. To make this practical requires a mixture of financial planning and retirement saving. With the economy in serious trouble, a hands-on approach is best, monitoring how the business is performing and whether current financial arrangements need to be changed. The problem is to get an overview. In one room, you have the accountants looking at the way the business is performing. In another, you have the financial advisors looking at the personal investment situation, and then there are the insurance brokers, agents and companies. If none of them work together, the advice is incoherent and the planning will not meet its goals.
So what does the business owner need to get peace of mind? The first step is to ensure the personal assets are protected. If the business is not incorporated, there will have to be personal liability insurance protection in place. That way, if something does go wrong, it will not affect the family. Some restructuring may also be necessary, moving any investments and assets from the business to a holding company and making sure that any loans made by family members get paid before the general creditors. If the worst happens and either the business fails or the owner is injured or falls ill, this will mean unemployment. Again, some provision against this possibility is desirable. Looking at the looming recession, keeping the cash flowing is best. That means keeping the tax liability to a minimum and paying by instalments. This allows you to keep payments flowing into retirement savings plans, which gives you a write-off. Looking at everyone in the family and their needs finishes the picture. Outside the business which will always be risky, all the other investments should be safe and conservative, making sure the succession planning is in place to pass the management responsibilities over when retirement is possible.
Making all this real depends on a range of different business insurance. Because the business is the family’s biggest asset, it should be fully protected. The lives of the owners need to be protected by term insurance for succession purposes, and everything that can be done to make the business successful should be done. Survival through the recession is not enough. If owners do want to retire in ten years time, the business must be ready to pass on to the family or sell on the open market. In all this, remember the planning should be fully co-ordinated, taking everyone’s interests into account. Keeping the small business insurance valuations up to date is essential to ensure agreed payments are made quickly should a claim be made. With all this in place, retirement is only a few years away.
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Whenever you start talking to your broker or to a company direct, it’s easy to assume you know exactly what insurance is. You pay a premium and, when you get into trouble, the policy pays out. Except, sometimes, it does not pay as much as you were expecting. So let’s have a quick look at the nuts and bolts of the machine and see what makes it work. According to the experts, insurance is a way of managing risk. What happens is that individuals or businesses pass their risks to a purse holder.
Each individual or business pays a premium into this purse. Think of it this way. The premium is a small guaranteed loss everyone pays every year but, because you can draw down from the purse, you never have to pay a really big loss. In the market for insuring vehicles, everyone is exposed to the same kind of risk. This makes a big class and the so-called law of big numbers applies, i.e. the larger the number of members in a class, the more likely it is the actual will match the predicted results. When you collect traffic accident statistics from all over the country every year for decades, it gets easier to predict the frequency of accidents per driver mile. But if you write commercial insurance against fire, the time, place, cause and the amount lost in each fire is more difficult to predict. You can still insure, but the premiums will rise to make sure the purse has enough money in it.
It should be obvious that traffic accidents and fires have one thing in common. There’s a specific cause for the loss that follows. This is a key requirement. A business cannot insure against making a loss. There are too many ways in which this might happen. This means insurance is never completely speculative. The policy identifies specific perils. If any of these perils occur, the insurer pays out. In all this, there is a balancing of interests. The loss must be represent a threat to the insured. People do not insure against small amounts. It’s the big bills that are worrying. But the premiums must be affordable. The insurer needs enough money in the purse to pay out all the big bills, cover the costs of administering the service and make a profit. If this makes the premiums too high, no-one will buy the policy. The premium must represent a sufficient saving to be worth buying.
Business insurance is all about putting numbers on the risks. If there’s a fire, how much will it cost to rebuild and restock the shelves, and how much will be lost whilst it’s closed? It’s impossible to write individual policies for everyone so it all comes down to aggregating the cost across everyone at risk. That’s why it’s so important to read the small print of the policy. That’s where the insurer caps the amount that can be paid out. If this was not done, one or two major claims would wipe out the purse and leave all the other policy holders without cover. In the business insurance market, the real problem comes from bundling different risks together. Make sure you know exactly what’s covered and for how much.
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Whenever we find ourselves in a situation that requires immediate actions it is hard to think clearly. All we want to do is solve the problem and at times reality doesnt leave us much choice. This is how most of us make big mistakes as we come across the first idea and believe it is the solution for us. We need to focus on the problem we have and think through all of the options we have before we go for the decision. So lets take a look at the possible options together and think them through:
When you need extra cash you can stay at workplace a bit longer – which means working overtime. It is tiring, but it does bring good money as overtime always pays almost twice more than the usual regular hour. There may be bonuses you can access by working longer hours. You can always ask when you are allowed to work extra hours. The brave and determined ones get most money, you know. You could also apply for the second job, if you have this idea in your head. A part-time would not do you any wrong. On the contrary, it could add you some money and develop you working skills. You do not have to search different places across town – why not start with your neighbors? What if they need a babysitter? You could do it easily!
You can sell something you have that you do not need. It works for almost all people. It doesnt bring them a fortune but sometimes the money is enough to spend it on some urgent needs.
But sometimes we don’t have choice but to borrow some money from the bank. It is not the best solution but at least you should know you have this chance and you can take it, if you are a hard-working person. The payday loan is good for you because it is not a long-term loan, so this gives you a possibility to take money, spend it, pay it off and forget you ever borrowed. This seems really cool.
There are various loan shops nowadays. You will always find one next to the nearest military bases and in almost all city centers. Then you can apply online and find offers of cash advance from multiple lenders. They will be happy to deal with you, and you will surely be happy they exist. What we want to say is that payday loans can be found anywhere you go. But we insist you compare the offers and take it seriously – take the smallest amount (try to borrow money only when you really need it) and pay the sum off when you get the first chance to do it.
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There are times when people complain about the number of laws there are in this country. How is anyone to keep track when Capitol Hill keeps adding new laws to the statute books? Even the lawyers find it hard to stay on top of all the changes. That leaves ordinary people with no chance at all. Yet, in some areas, the laws can be very helpful to ordinary people. They may not even need to know if government changes the way in which business is regulated.
The people can be protected without them ever being aware of it. So the lobbyists start to work. This is big government not little government. This is the nanny state not the rugged individualism that made the US such a great place to live. People should be allowed to stand or fall on their own without the state having to get involved. We have all heard it all before. And the reason this time? Well, there is a bill in the Senate proposing a national cap on the interest rates charged on consumer loans. The maximum annualized rate would be 36%. Needless to say, the loan industry is up in arms. It seems no-one can lend money and make a profit if interest is pegged at such a low figure.
So will the law change? Let us go back to 2006 when the Department of Defense persuaded Congress to impose the same cap on all loans made to military personnel. According to the DoD, the families of those in active service were being victimized. Many families were being forced to pay 400% and more in annual interest. Curiously, no-one chose to see the same rates being charged on loans to ordinary people. As it stands, only fifteen states have stepped in to protect their citizens. When people take cash advances against their next pay check, they are so easily caught in a spiral of debt they cannot escape. Those promoting the current bill justify the general cap by saying there will be no cost to the taxpayer and it will save billions of dollars from being sucked out of the pockets of the poorer members of our society.
We need to be clear about one thing. Payday loans do serve a useful function. When many are denied access to bank overdrafts and their credit rating is not good enough to get generous limits on their credit cards, these loans can bridge people when there is a financial emergency. The facility is available with few formalities, the money deposited in the bank account the next working day. It is a quick an easy solution to a short-term problem. But, as it stands, the lenders are acting in a predatory way, abusing those who are dependent on their loans. If the bill passes, the maximum interest chargeable on a payday loan will be 36% but states can enact lower limits. In Arkansas, for example, the cap is 17%. Help is on the way so long as the lobbyists do not sideline this protective measure.
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