Financial Samurai

Slicing Through Money's Mysteries

To Get The Best Life Insurance Rate, Be Careful About Seeing A Doctor

Posted by 34 Comments

To Get The Best Life Insurance Rate, Be Careful Seeing A Doctor

I wrote this post before the coronavirus pandemic. Now that it is here, many of us are now worried about our health and our wealth like never before. Before continuing, I want to clarify several things:

* If you are gravely ill, please contact a doctor. Your health is far more important than your wealth.

* If you are ill or have some type of health issue but don’t feel ill enough to warrant a doctor’s visit, this post is pertinent to you. You should consider getting life insurance before seeing a doctor. Consider telemedicine as a stop-gap. Telemedicine is efficient, usually cheaper, and provides some peace of mind.

* If you have some mild health issues, pay a lot for health insurance, and also want to optimize your finances, this post is most relevant to you. If you visit a healthcare professional to treat a mild issue (beyond your usual checkups), you *might* end up paying a lot more in life insurance premiums as a result. Let me share what happened to me. Hopefully, some of you will share your experiences as well.

If you have a spouse and children, owning life insurance is probably a good idea. If you have a non-working spouse, toddlers, and a tremendous amount of debt, then owning life insurance is a must. Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Please protect your loved ones.

Even if you can self-insure because you’ve got way more assets than liabilities or you’ve got enough passive income to cover for all your family’s ongoing expenses, getting life insurance may still be a good idea depending on the cost.

For over 15 years, life insurance has provided me peace of mind through various stages of my financial journey. Too bad a $1 million 10-year term life policy runs out in 2023 and I’m not getting a new one.



Read More…

The Average Cost Of Family Health Insurance Is Now Outrageously High

Posted by 91 Comments

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average cost of family health insurance offered by companies is now a whopping $20,576 a year, or $1,714.66 a month. Employers paid for 71% of that cost on average.

Meanwhile, the average premium for single workers was $7,188 a year, or $599 a month. Employers covered 83% of that cost on average.

The KFF surveyed over 2,000 companies.

If they had asked us what we paid, we would have brought up the average because our health insurance cost is jumping by 7% to $23,131.38 a year, or $1,927.64 a month for a family of three! Previously, we were paying “only” $21,788.88 a year, or $1,815.74 a month.

With one child we have a PPO Platinum plan with a $250/$500 deductible (single/family), a $3,200/$6,400 out-of-pocket max (single/family) and 80% co-pay insurance.

The Average Cost For Healthcare Soars


Read More…

What’s In A Home Insurance Policy: Know The Details Before Your House Burns Down

Posted by 44 Comments

Sam asked me to write this post after we lost our home overnight to the Tubb’s Fire in Northern California. We were living a good doctor’s life. A $1.2 million dollar home with a killer sunset view. Life was good, but with my mortgage and student debt I was still quite stressed. The kind that affected me not only internally, but also externally. Affecting both work and relationship with my wife.

Crazy to think that stress and a mortgage can be that powerful, but it was. In fact, I would walk around my home and think about how we had about 1,000 square foot of home more than we needed. It was 3,300 square foot and I determined that 2,000 to 2,500 square foot were a much better fit for us.

But here we sat, 11 months after buying a big home without many financially reasonable options. Then overnight… POOF! It all went up in a flash. We were lucky. Someone knocked on our door at 2 am waking us up. We left with our lives and health, although not much more. Others were not as fortunate and I have seen and felt the impact of those losses in our community. So I write this post knowing how lucky we are. And I am thankful for that.

Interesting points from EJ’s guest post:

  1. Why being a homeowner may be better than being a renter when disaster strikes
  2. How home insurance can make you much wealthier
  3. Know exactly what is covered under your home insurance plan
  4. Itemize everything in a spreadsheet and a picture catalog
  5. It may be better to have a complete loss rather than partial damage

    Read More…

The Right Amount Of Life Insurance To Protect Your Family

Posted by 42 Comments

Inner TubeIf you haven’t done so already, calculate your net worth to assess how you did this past year. Hopefully, you’ve grown your net worth in this incredible 10+-year bull market through aggressive savings, retirement company matches, a diversified investment portfolio, rental property cash-flow, and more.

Once you’ve calculated your net worth, make sure your life insurance levels equals this amount, especially if you have dependents, or a spouse who makes much less than you. If you die, and want your loved ones to maintain a similar standard of living, consider matching your life insurance amount with your family’s net worth amount.

Some might not agree with this life insurance guideline and wonder whether it would be better to have insurance that equals a family’s debt level only. Having enough life insurance to pay off all of your family’s debt is better than no life insurance at all.

If you’re single and have no dependents, do you really need life insurance?  Probably not.  If you die with a million bucks in debt, you’re living large!

Example Of Life Insurance For A Family

Read More…

PolicyGenius Review: An Easy Way To Get Affordable Life Insurance

Posted by 14 Comments

PolicyGenius InformationPolicyGenius is a leading online life insurance marketplace that helps you get the best term life policy that most appropriately suits your needs. They have the technology and know how to help you sort through the dozens of different carriers and thousands of different policies so you don’t have to, for free. The alternative is to apply to each carrier one by one and waste a ton of time.

PolicyGenius focuses on term life insurance policies ranging from 5 years to 30 years and have coverage between $25,000 – $10,000,000. Additionally, they provide consumers with access to several other insurance types, including renters insurance, long-term disability and pet insurance. They do all the legwork involved with making tough insurance decisions on behalf of their customers, and then help them with the application and purchasing process – explaining policies and the entire process in plain English so you know what you’re getting.

They were founded in 2014 by Francois de Lame and his partner Jennifer Fitzgerald, ex-Mckinsey Consulting professional who went to Harvard Business School.

I’ve met them both, and they are great. PolicyGenius is based in New York City and have raised over $25 million in funding from leading institutions such as AXA, MassMutual, and TransAmerica Ventures.

Read More…

Understanding Personal Property Insurance For Your Valuables

Posted by 18 Comments

Auto insurance for broken windowRecently, one of my tenants had his car “broken into” while it was parallel parked outside the house. The robber took his new set of golf clubs worth ~$3,000. I put “broken into” in quotes because no window was smashed. He apparently left his car unlocked.

So who pays for the damage and loss if your car is broken into outside your home? Well as it turns out, it’s not your auto insurance that pays, but your renter’s, landlord’s, or homeowner’s insurance!

Read More…

How Insurance Companies And Appraisers Scam Their Customers

Posted by 74 Comments

House On Golf Course In HawaiiI’ve always trusted my insurance company, which I’ll call TRICKY DICK in this article, to do the right thing. After all, I’ve been a client of theirs for 22 years. They’ve benefited from my growth in assets and I now have auto insurance, homeowner’s insurance, valuable personal property insurance and an umbrella policy with them.  Furthermore, I’ve got a relatively large chunk of change in CDs deposited with them as well.

I had a unwelcomed change on my credit card the other day and had to call Tricky Dick to cancel my existing card on file and add a new one. Imagine my surprise when looking over my previous statement that they were billing me 45% more a month in premiums!

What the hell, I thought to myself.  Clearly there must be a mistake.  Oh how wrong I was.

Read More…

How Much Life Insurance Do I Really Need?

Posted by 57 Comments

Life insurance needsOne of the most important insurance policies I have is my 20 year, $1 million term life insurance policy. I took it out on my 35th birthday because before then, I had life insurance through my employer based on 4X my base salary. I left Corporate America in 2012 at the age of 34 and now have to pay for all of my own insurance. Cherish your work benefits folks!

The reason why I have life insurance is because I have mortgage debt. But in 2017, I had my first child! So now I’ve upped my life insurance coverage further. In case of early death, I don’t want those who inherit my assets to feel any financial burden.

I’ll use my own example and share other examples as well to help you better understand the life insurance process. This post will go over:

  • When to get life insurance.
  • How long of a life insurance term to get.
  • How much life insurance to get.
  • A sample chart comparing costs based on different amounts and terms.
  • Where to get life insurance.

Read More…

Cheap Health Insurance Options For The Unemployed, Self-Employed, Or Early Retiree

Posted by 34 Comments

Cheap Health Insurance Options For The Unemployed, Self-Employed, Or Early RetireeWhether you are unemployed by choice or due to unfortunate circumstance, having health insurance is a must. According to The American Journal Of Medicine, 62% of all bankruptcies in 2007 were health related and that’s before the economic meltdown. What’s more frightening is that back in 2001, health related bankruptcies were “only” 45% of total. The epidemic is growing!

Say what you will about Universal Healthcare, with a nation as rich as ours going bankrupt at the rate of 62% due to health expenses is an absolute travesty. Genetics and a drunk driver hitting you while crossing the street doesn’t discriminate between rich and poor. So why should one die while another lives when all it takes is money to save a life?

In 2009 roughly 2.3 million people were unemployed for longer than six months. By June 2012, the ranks of the long-term jobless soared more than 100 percent to 5.3 million. The employment market is thankfully recovering with a rise in corporate profits, but we are still at levels much higher than the natural rate of full employment.

You do not want to be unemployed AND uninsured. You’ve already lost your steady paycheck. The last thing you want is to have a medical disaster that wipes out your savings, emergency fund, and retirement funds.

If you lose everything while unemployed, it will be brutally difficult to rebuild. You might very well enter a cycle of poverty and never get out.

Read More…

Should I Get Roadside Assistance Coverage Insurance? Hell Yeah!

Posted by 22 Comments

1989 BMW 335i CoupeRoadside assistance is important.

Every winter, I make the 180 mile trek from San Francisco to Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe to enjoy the epic snow. There is truly nothing more magical than spending hours riding on powder and having a beer or two in the outdoor hot tub when you’re finished! Oh, the stories I could tell you about what happens in the hot tub.

On the other hand, there’s nothing more frustrating than getting a flat tire at night in the mountains while it’s snowing. I know how to change a tire, but I sure as hell don’t plan to risk my life changing a tire in darkness on a one lane road in the mountains while cars zoom by. I might get a nice settlement if I do get into an accident. But, I also might lose a leg in the process!

Every month, I spend 98 cents to get roadside assistance insurance for Moose. Add up the cost over 84 months of ownership, and we’re talking $83 worth of premiums. And you know what? My roadside assistance insurance is worth every penny! I already mentioned how my alternator died just as I was pulling into my garage thank goodness. A tow truck came when I got back from vacation to follow me to my mechanic thanks to roadside assistance. What I haven’t told you about are my other more traumatic incidences!

Read More…