How do I save money on my insurance?

Insurance rates were last seen hanging out with these two. I’d normally give credit for the photo, but I found it on Reddit. It’s Willie Nelson and Snoop Dogg. In Amsterdam. You do the math.

I’ve been getting a lot of calls lately, from my clients as well as folks with other insurance companies.

“Why is my car/home insurance so high?”

It’s a fair question.

There are two reasons rates keep getting higher and it’s true for both home and auto insurance.

1) The number of claims is going up. (You can blame bad drivers and climate change for that)

2) Claims are getting more expensive. (Inflation, worker shortages and supply chain issues get the credit here)

To put it another way, insurance is a way of spreading out the pain. And there’s been a lot of pain to go around lately.

So, the question becomes, “How do I save money on my insurance?”

1) Get a local agent. Yes, I am an agent and yes, this one is a bit self-serving. But we’re specialists. Find a couple of specialists and ask them for quotes. Make them explain what coverages they’re recommending and why. Go with the one who can come up with the best combination of price and coverage.

You won’t get that from an 800 number or a website.

An agent can also help you decide whether decide whether anything else on this list makes sense for you.

2) Take a look at your deductibles and other “extras” like rental reimbursement.

This one comes with a really big caveat: Don’t lower your liability limits or how much you’re insuring your home for. Rates are going up because you’re more likely to need your insurance. Now is not the time to start skimping.

That said, you will be able to save money by raising your deductible. You’ll have to decide whether the lower premium is worth the higher risk.

If raising your car insurance deductible from $500 to $1,000 saves you $60 a year, keep the $500 deductible.

But if raising your home insurance deductible from $1,500 to $2,500 saves you $300 a year? That’s probably worth it.

And if there are two drivers and three vehicles, do you really need rental reimbursement on your auto insurance? Or would you be able to use the third vehicle?

3) Credit score. Yeah, sorry, that one affects your rate, too.

Underwriters say there’s a correlation between how well you keep track of your finances and how likely you are to have a claim.

So, if your life is more stable than it was when you first started your insurance, it may be worth asking your agent for the company to rerate you based on who you are now.

And if you’re asking around for quotes, make sure the agent checks whether it’s cheaper to put you or your spouse as the first named insured (That’s whose credit they’ll check).

BTW, it is considered a “soft hit” so getting an insurance quote doesn’t affect your credit score.

4) Discounts. This the one that all the ads like to talk about. And a local agent can help find discounts you didn’t know you qualified for.

A quick rundown of a few you may not know about:

Bundling (Package several types of policies like home, auto, life, business, boats, etc., together and you usually get them cheaper than getting them each individually. I’ve even seen instances where the package was cheaper than the auto by itself)
Homeowner (For auto insurance)
Good student (As if you needed another reason to encourage the kid to get good grades)
Pay plan (The cheapest ways to pay are usually pay all at once or with an automatic draft from a checking account)
Where you work (Sometimes your occupation can get you a discount)
ePolicy (Get your policy emailed to you instead of a hard copy)
Early shopping (Yes, you can get a discount if you don’t need to start your insurance right away)
Updated equipment (Have you updated your plumbing, HVAC or electrical systems? You may be able to reduce your home insurance premium)

5) Auto trackers. Technically this one’s a discount, but these are worth talking about a little more.

Before I started selling insurance, I got a discount for plugging a little doohickey into my car that kept track of some of my driving habits. That was almost 15 years ago.

Now most companies have a phone app that monitor your speed, your mileage, and — probably most importantly — when you’re on your phone as you drive. (Remember when I said there are more crashes because of bad drivers? Drivers distracted by their cell phones is right at the top of the list of problems)

I was hesitant when Farmers rolled its out, but the app isn’t doing anything your phone doesn’t already do, it’s just sending the information to one more place.

These apps are a few years old now and I expect them to get more important as time goes on.

I had one client tell me she found an insurance company where she could “pay as you go.” The trick is not crossing the line between tracking and stalking.

Unfortunately, folks, there are no magic bullets, just a couple of suggestions until we get past the current craziness.

Insurance in the time of corona

March 20, 2020March 20, 2020 DaveGragg Business insurance, Business owner, Insurance agent

plague doc — Who wants to help me bring these bad boys back in style? (I guess I should have known http://www.plaguedoctormasks.com was a thing.)

If we’re lucky, the biggest threat COVID-19 poses is to the economy.

Social distancing means folks aren’t going to work, aren’t going out to eat, to the movies, etc., etc.

It’s better than watching a lot of people die, but it’s going to suck. The economy relies on people moving around and spending money.

So what can your insurance do?

Health insurance could be pretty important.

Life insurance is probably a good idea, too. You already have that in place, right? Because coronavirus probably isn’t going to get you, but that doesn’t mean something else won’t.

Other than that, I’m afraid your insurance may not be able to help a whole lot.

Call your agent if you have problems making a payment. They may be able to help — or at least make sure you know your options.

One of the things I’ve always impressed on small business owners is the importance of a provision that helps pay the bills if they have to rebuild after a covered loss.

So business income coverage that helps, right?

No.

An outbreak isn’t a covered loss.

I was frustrated when I found it out, too, but it actually makes sense.

An outbreak like this has such a small chance of happening and widespread, disastrous consequences that there’s no way to properly take it into consideration when companies figure premiums.

Either the premiums are so small the company wouldn’t bring in enough money to actually pay out as claims if they’re needed, or they’re so high that no one can afford them.

A tornado, earthquake or hurricane can devastate a region and an insurance company can absorb the loss and move on.

COVID-19 is knocking the entire nation to its knees.

There’s only one group that can help the economy keep moving in the short-term and recover in the long-term — the American taxpayer. And we’re still waiting to see how, exactly, the state and federal government plan to do that.

The worst insurance discussion I’ve had to have

July 2, 2019July 3, 2019 DaveGragg Business owner, Insurance agent, Life insurance

This one was painful.

There are some clients we only talk to every once in a while.

Then there are those that we see every month or so — to pay a bill, answer a question, whatever.

Noah didn’t wait until it started raining to build an ark. Insurance is no different — you can’t wait until you need it to get it.

J and her husband were ones we’ve seen a lot over past year or so. They came in to pay their bill in cash most months — a lot of times with their kids, including a newborn, in tow.

They also owned a business. She handled paperwork and he handled the manual labor.

She came in earlier this week and apologized for not coming by to pay the bill last week when it was due — there had been a family emergency.

“Family emergency” can cover a lot of ground so I hoped for the best.

It was the other kind of family emergency.

Her 27-year-old husband had been drinking, then grabbed his stomach and fell over.

He’d been in the hospital, unresponsive, all weekend.

They still didn’t even know what was wrong with him.

I can’t blame her for the question she asked as she held back tears.

Was there any way we could get the life insurance on him that she and I had been talking about since she first became our client?

Like I said, this one was painful.

You can’t get insurance — home insurance, auto insurance, business insurance — after you need it. You have to get it in place beforehand.

Life insurance is no different.

That’s a conversation I never want to have again. So please, if you don’t have life insurance right now, call someone.

Your family is depending on it.

Today was a good day

April 30, 2018April 30, 2018 DaveGragg Insurance agent

I helped save a man’s life.

That’s not something I get to say very often, but the man came in today and told me that’s what I did. Today was a good dya

He had walked in to the office back in November to talk about getting motorcycle insurance.

While we talked, the conversation moved to health insurance. He didn’t have any because he couldn’t afford it, he said.

The health insurance exchanges set up through the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare, if you prefer), can be confusing, so I walked him through the process and let him know what his premiums would likely be.

For me, that was the end of it.

For him, that was just the beginning.

Armed with his new knowledge, he signed up for health insurance.

Once the plan kicked in in January, he went to see a doctor to ask about his chest pains.

The doctor referred him to a specialist. The specialist tried to send a camera through his arteries, but they were so clogged the camera wouldn’t fit.

One open-heart surgery and three months of rehab later, he stopped by the office this morning to say “Thank you.”

An insurance agent isn’t just here to save you money on your car insurance or give you your ID cards when it’s time to renew your license plates. We’re more than happy to do that, but our real job is helping you choose the coverage to protect you and your family when it hits the fan.

You know what “it” I’m talking about here, right? Of course you do.

His only complaint? He really hadn’t had a chance to use his motorcycle insurance because the rehab was keeping him from being able to ride.

Me and the Mother Road

July 17, 2017July 17, 2017 DaveGragg Business owner, Insurance agent Business owner, Car insurance, Route 66

My insurance agency sits on one of the paths Route 66 took through Springfield., Mo.

It’s not the first time America’s Main Street and I have bumped into each other, so it made sense to have a few mementos of our meetings as I decided on the office decor.

Jerry Rice Downtown Springfield — “Downtown” shows downtown Springfield, Mo., as it appeared in 1964, when the square was open. You can see the Heer’s Building as well as the Fox Theater. Artwork by Jerry Rice

Most of my decorations are the kitschy stuff you can get anywhere, but I do have a couple of pieces I’m proud of.

I got to add a piece to the collection I’m proud of this week.

Jerry Rice paints Route 66 scenes from the Mother Road’s heyday in Southwest Missouri.

This one, that he calls “Downtown” shows the square in Springfield back before they added the park.

Bill Curry Route 66 Celebration.jpg — “Tourist Enchantment,” commemorates Route 66’s Diamond Jubilee in Tucumcari, N.M. Art by Bill Curry

My first run in with Route 66 was in 2000, when I became the editor of a semi-weekly newspaper in Tucumcari, N.M., one of the little towns that thrived during Route 66’s peak.

The Mother Road had its Diamond Jubilee the next year and the celebration committee asked artist Bill Curry to commemorate the event with a painting.

This print has been traveling around with me since 2001.

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Cars,” the movie has several nods to real towns and people connected to the road. Tucumcari Mountain, there behind the Corvette, inspired the mountain that looks like a radiator cap in Radiator Springs.

As part of that 75th anniversary celebration, my paper put out a brochure that talked about the history of the Route. One of the articles in the brochure was written by Route 66 historian Michael Wallis, who was the voice of the sheriff in the movie.

The one I’m probably the most attached to, though, isn’t traditionally considered a work of art and isn’t even centered on Route 66.

It’s an 50-year-old map that my grandparents had. It shows the Southwest United States, including most of the places Route 66 went.

My granddad had a gas station in Urich, Mo., so I’m not sure if this map is from the time when gas stations handed out road maps or if it was a map my grandparents actually used to visit California.

As a side benefit, the map shows most of the places my life has taken me.

The map doesn’t quite go far enough north to get to Kirksville (where I went to Truman State University) or small enough to get Montrose (the tiny town where I grew up), but the rest are there: Not only Tucumcari and Springfield, but Dodge City, Kan., and McAllen, Texas.

I also have a number of prints from the early days of Farmers Insurance. No direct tie to Route 66, there, either, although Farmers started in 1928, two years after the Mother Road’s start in 1926.

Gofundyourself

December 14, 2016March 9, 2017 DaveGragg Car insurance, Home insurance, Insurance agent, Life insurance

There are few things as infuriating to an insurance agent as a Gofundme request floating across a social media feed.

This is going to sound like Dave Gragg is, among other things, a cold-hearted jerk. And there’s probably some truth to that.

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Because I’m not talking about potato salad.

I’ve seen tragic stories. Gofundme accounts have been set up for folks who lost everything they owned in a house fire, people who had a stroke, families who just lost their father and sole provider and more.

The infuriating thing is that insurance exists — the entire reason I have a job — is to prevent tragedies like these from devastating the rest of your life. And insurance does it faster and better than begging your friends and family to beg their friends and family.

Lose everything in a house fire? Good home insurance would have rebuilt your house, replaced your possessions and found you a place to live while your home was being rebuilt.

Impossibly high medical bills? That’s why medical insurance exists. A $6,000 deductible is rough, but it’s nowhere near as rough as a $200,000 hospital bill.

You have no idea how heart-breakingly frustrating it is to see a family lose their home because dad died in a car accident and know that life insurance could have saved that home, paid the bills and put the kids through college.

Yes, insurance can be expensive, I’m not going to try to tell you otherwise.

But it’s no where near as expensive as not having it.

Thank you

October 27, 2016October 27, 2016 DaveGragg Business owner, Insurance agent, Telemarketing

5th anniversary.jpg

I’m sorry. I really am.

But sometimes my penchant for dad jokes demands to be set loose (Although let’s be honest, it’s not a real tight leash to begin with.)

Regardless, it’s my five-year anniversary as a insurance agent here in Springfield.

Five years. That’s the wooden anniversary, so it’s a doubly bad pun. (I really am sorry about that.)

It’s my name on the door, but I had a lot of help keeping that door open.

It would take me a long time to name everyone to whom I owe a debt of gratitude, from family and friends to business associates and the telemarketers who have worked for me.

And that’s not even including my clients, without whom none of the rest would matter.

But while space on this blog is limitless (or very close to it), attention spans are not. Nor is the amount of time that I have to write this post.

So I must leave it as a blanket, generic “Thank you” to all of the above.

It absolutely wooden’t have happened without you.

Why are my car insurance rates going up?

March 3, 2016 DaveGragg Car insurance, Insurance agent

Insurance is like a fire extinguisher.

It’s one of the few things you buy and hope to never use.

So it makes sense to get it as cheaply as you can, right?

Not really.

Just like a fire extinguisher, if your insurance doesn’t work when you need it, then you’ve not only wasted your money, there are potentially disastrous consequences. Regardless, no one wants to pay more than they have to.

So when your rates go up (and all insurance companies, including Farmers Insurance, raise their rates some times) we all want to know why.

In the past year or so, most of the insurance companies in Missouri have raised their auto insurance rates, for two big reasons:

Cheap gas is raising auto insurance rates — The high cost of gas meant fewer people were on the road, which was helping keep auto insurance rates lower. photo credit: wow. via photopin (license)

1) Cheap gas. The lower price at the pump means more people are driving.

Distracted drivers are raising auto insurance rates — Insurance means you’re helping pay for this guy’s claims and he’s helping pay for yours. Hopefully his rates are higher. Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net (license)

2) Distracted drivers. Since there are more drivers, there are even more people fiddling with their cell phones instead of paying attention to the road.

Those two factors combined mean there are more accidents, more property damage, higher hospital bills and insurance companies have to pay out more in claims.

Insurance — car, home, health, whatever — works by spreading out the pain of a claim. So you’re going to feel the pain of increased claims, even if you’ve never had to use your insurance.

So how do you keep from paying more than you have to for auto insurance?

My advice is to work with an insurance agent. Not only can an agent advise you about potential pitfalls, but he or she can make sure you get all the discounts you’re eligible for.

As always, if you have any questions about your insurance coverage, please give me a call. I’m always happy to help. 417 708 9583

Why should you have an insurance agent?

January 12, 2016 DaveGragg Car insurance, Home insurance, Insurance agent

I have two examples from today that show exactly why I have a job — and why you should have an insurance agent.

House move — He was moving a shed, not a house, but you get the idea. **photo credit:** Morris House On the Move via photopin (license)

The first was a guy who bought a shed and planned to move it to his new home in Arkansas.

Before he could get a state permit to move it, he had to show that he had $750,000 worth of liability coverage.

He called Geico (where he had his auto insurance) three times and got hung up on three times before he called me.

Simple solution: Auto insurance with a $1 million umbrella and he’s good to go.

My second example doesn’t have a simple or happy ending.

Al and I had originally started talking about moving his home and auto insurance to me last April. He just couldn’t quite bring himself to pull the trigger and switch just yet.

Unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to help him nearly as well now as I could have then.

Why? Because he’s tried to collect from his current insurance company twice in the past year.

Neither of the claims he filed are covered by his current insurance, but it doesn’t matter.

Most insurance companies don’t want you if you’ve had two claims within a three-year period.

So how would have an agent been able to help him? Because his claims were both caused by flooding. Floods aren’t covered by home insurance. An agent could have told him that before it reached the claims stage so it didn’t count against him.

I’m still in the middle of this one, so I’m not sure how it’s going to end. But as I said, it’s not going to be an easy one.

Do you know the four disasters your home insurance doesn’t cover?

July 13, 2015July 14, 2015 DaveGragg Home insurance, Insurance agent, Life insurance Home insurance, Insurance agent, Life insurance

An attack by Godzilla is probably covered. Photo credit: http://godzilla.wikia.com/

Unless you have some weird, cut-rate version of home insurance, all policies are going to cover the basics.

Fire, tornado, theft, falling space debris, you know, the usual stuff.

An attack by a giant, fire-breathing lizard?

Probably covered.

But there are four disasters that are not going to be covered unless you specifically add them.

You think it’s dreary with day after day of rain? Wait until that rain starts coming in a house without flood insurance. photo credit: Decatur FD Flood via photopin (license)

1) Flood. That’s the one that’s on everyone’s mind right now, for stuff like this and this.

Flood insurance is handled by the National Flood Insurance Program and it’s a separate policy from your regular homeowners insurance.

If you live in a 100-year flood plain, your mortgage holder will require you to buy flood insurance (and they’ll notify you of the requirement before they give you a mortgage).

As side note, a “100-year flood plain” does not mean the area’s going to flood once a century. It’s shorthand for an area that has a 1 percent or greater chance of flooding in any given year. In other words, there’s a 26 percent chance of flooding during a 30-year mortgage.

I’ve seen places on a 50-year flood plain — which means there’s a 2 percent chance of flooding in any year — flood twice in five years.

But even folks who aren’t on a flood plain need insurance: According to the NFIP, 20 percent to 25 percent of all flood claims come from low-risk areas.

2) Sinkholes. What could be worse than the ground opening up to swallow everything you own? Finding out that most home insurance policies exclude “earth movement.”

That’s kind of a big deal for those of us here in Missouri. There’s a reason the Show Me State is also known as the Cave State. See, here’s one. And all the recent rain is making them even more threatening, like this one.

There aren’t many insurance companies that will help you here. I know of two and although Farmers isn’t one, Foremost (one of the companies we work with) is. If you’re worried about a sinkhole, you may be better off with the Missouri FAIR Plan’s standalone policy for sinkholes, similar to what the National Flood Insurance Program’s flood insurance.

photo credit: 080630-1010560 via photopin (license)

3) Earthquake. The “earth movement” exclusion falls into play here, too.

But there’s not much to worry about here, right?

A few small temblors around the Ozarks, mainly on the south side of the Missouri border, but nothing to be afraid of.

Except there’s that one thing you learned in school. Here’s how the state’s Department of Natural Resources puts it:

Most Missourians have heard of the more recent 1811-1812 flurry of quakes that were in the range of magnitude 7-8 and centered near New Madrid, Missouri. Because few people lived in Missouri in the early 1800s, impact to human life was minimal. The three major earthquakes in late 1811 and early 1812, however, did permanently change the course of the Mississippi River and created the Reelfoot Lake in the northwest corner of Tennessee.

Yeah, the largest earthquake in the country happened over on the east side of the state. Not a whole lot of people in Missouri two hundred years ago, so no biggie.

Any idea of what it would do now?

Out of the four big gaps in your home insurance coverage, earthquake is typically the easiest to fix. You just tell your agent you want to add an earthquake endorsement. It doesn’t add much to your premium — typically somewhere between $35 and $100 a year. However, the deductible is usually between 5 percent and 25 percent of your home’s value.

And in case you’re wondering, the earthquake endorsement only covers earthquakes, not sinkholes.

Yes, I'm totally just looking for a reason the show you a picture of my kids & grandkids. Aren't they adorable? These are some of the people who will be emotionally devastated by my death. But life insurance will make sure they won't feel it financially. — Yes, I’m totally just looking for a reason the show you a picture of my kids & grandkids. Aren’t they adorable? These are some of the people who will be emotionally devastated by my death. But life insurance will make sure they won’t feel it financially.

4. The death of a breadwinner.

This is the one that should be keeping you awake at night if you don’t have a policy in place to protect your family.

We like to think about our home being our biggest asset, but it’s not. Our biggest asset is our ability to earn money. If you’re not there to earn that money, what happens to the house? What happens to the people inside it?

Life insurance is not for you.

Life insurance is for the ones you leave behind.

It’s to make sure they can keep the house you’ve been working so hard to provide.

It’s to make sure they have food on the table and clothes on their backs.

It’s to make sure they can keep living the life you wanted for them.

All four of the disasters on this list are scary.

But No. 4 is the one that would have the longest impact on your family.

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Insurance in the Springfield, Mo., area

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