Health Insurance

Do you Really Need Insurance?

It’s impossible to anticipate the accidents and disasters that may happen throughout the course of your life. This is why it’s important to have insurance. While some policies are essential, there are some that just aren’t necessary. Here’s a rundown of the plans you need and the ones you can live without.

Must Have Coverage

There are certain policies that are essential. For example, health/dental insurance, car insurance, homeowners/ renters insurance, and life insurance are some important policies. Unless you have tens of thousands of extra dollars lying around, insurance is the only way to prepare for unexpected accidents, disasters and health issues. Imagine if you developed cancer and didn’t have insurance. The treatments alone would almost guarantee you’d be in debt for the rest of your life. What if your home burnt down or flooded and it ruined all of your possessions? Do you have enough money to replace each item? Let’s pretend your car was totaled. Do you have enough money to go out and get a new one? These are just a couple examples of instances when insurance becomes essential. It might not be fun to pay for, but when you need it, you’ll be so glad to have it.

Skip this Coverage

There’s a surprising number of insurance policies that you typically won’t need. Chances are you can skip travel or flight insurance, cancer or other specific disease insurance and mortgage life (sometimes called credit life) insurance. You can also avoid rental car insurance, extended warranties on electronics and appliances, flood insurance (unless you live on a flood plain), credit card or credit card loss insurance, unemployment insurance and accidental death insurance. With most of these policies, it’s a much better idea to save the monthly premium money yourself. This will allow you to deal with problems as they arise instead of handing over money every month.

How to Save

There are a lot of insurance policies to purchase and each one of them costs a pretty penny. But there are things you can do to lower the costs.
First, don’t buy insurance coverage that you don’t need. It’s a complete waste of money. Second, bundle policies where you can. Commonly, people bundle their home and auto insurance. Most companies will give an even bigger discount if you work life insurance into the bundle as well. The third way in which you can save money is to not consistently purchase the cheapest policies. This sounds counterproductive; however, selecting the cheapest policies often means the coverage isn’t very good or expansive. If you simply have the bare minimum, the likelihood of your insurance not covering a disaster or health concern is much higher. At that point, you’ll be spending a lot more money than if you would have originally purchased a marginally more expensive policy.