Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t have homeowners insurance. It is priced based on average risk, plus a profit margin for the company. I am much more careful than the average person - always clean the dryer lint etc - so my house is much less likely to be damaged than the average person’s house. So it would be a net negative for me to purchase i.

You’re an idiot. Wait till a healthy tree falls over in a freak storm, which we had inspected every year. Hope you’ve got $65k for that—the amount we got from insurance. It didn’t cover the $6K we also paid to take the tree trunk down because insurance doesn’t care about that. They only covered the branch that hit the house removal.

You’re supposed have enough common sense to trim down or remove any trees that could reach your house if they happened to fall (which they do, quite often, healthy or not). I cringe any time I see a million dollar house closely surrounded by 50 foot trees. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…Prepare for the worst, hope for the best…yadda, yadda

You aren’t able to handle the basics of homeownership, so of course you need homeowners insurance to spread the risk. PP considers what could happen, takes steps to prevent it, and is then rewarded via the risk.

Some of us live in areas with tons of trees (hello PNW). Half the charm of our homes is the trees. So we inspect them and trim as needed. And also realize yes they could fall during a storm. But I'm not taking them all down.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t have homeowners insurance. It is priced based on average risk, plus a profit margin for the company. I am much more careful than the average person - always clean the dryer lint etc - so my house is much less likely to be damaged than the average person’s house. So it would be a net negative for me to purchase i.

You’re an idiot. Wait till a healthy tree falls over in a freak storm, which we had inspected every year. Hope you’ve got $65k for that—the amount we got from insurance. It didn’t cover the $6K we also paid to take the tree trunk down because insurance doesn’t care about that. They only covered the branch that hit the house removal.

You’re supposed have enough common sense to trim down or remove any trees that could reach your house if they happened to fall (which they do, quite often, healthy or not). I cringe any time I see a million dollar house closely surrounded by 50 foot trees. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…Prepare for the worst, hope for the best…yadda, yadda

You aren’t able to handle the basics of homeownership, so of course you need homeowners insurance to spread the risk. PP considers what could happen, takes steps to prevent it, and is then rewarded via the risk.

Obviously you don't live in DC, loser. Look around. You can't take down trees willy nilly, or you'll rightfully pay a fine.

In MD, we took ours down, one fell but the neighbors don’t care for theirs so that’s a risk. Ours were not healthy and the cost to trim them vs taking down made sense to remove them. The one we left came down.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t have homeowners insurance. It is priced based on average risk, plus a profit margin for the company. I am much more careful than the average person - always clean the dryer lint etc - so my house is much less likely to be damaged than the average person’s house. So it would be a net negative for me to purchase i.

Yup as long as you keep up that dryer lint trap you are fine. We have had 3 electrical fires in our neighborhood.

Very little chance of that either. I have done all my own electrical work, after very careful watching of youtube videos etc. to make sure I am doing it right, so I am very confident that there won't be an issue there.

Wild Bill Hickok (or maybe it was Bill Shakespeare) said "Fight fire with fire". I keep a open flame burning torch in my basement. Keep it live like the Olympics people do, so I'm armed and ready.. If ever, there's a fire, I'm ready.

Anonymous wrote:Tonight I learned that a family friend doesn’t have homeowners insurance. They own their home outright so it’s not required.
This is the first time someone know irl has disclosed this. I’m shocked. It seems like such a risky way to live.
I’m curious if anyone on here knows someone like this, or is this way themselves.

Yes, my father. Multiple houses in his late 80s and has never insured them. My sister and I were SHOCKED to discover this.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know quite a few people who self insure. They are all wealthy and live in multi-million dollar homes. I guess, they’ll be fine losing the money.

That’s as stupid as self insuring medical. Multi-million dollar houses are no longer rare and I can’t imagine a financially savvy person not buying homeowner’s insurance.

Only the structure is insurable. The land is not. My parents self-insured a small cottage yards from the ocean because almost all of the value was in the land, not the old shoebox house with sky high insurance costs due to environmental risks.

What happens if the land erodes into the sea

Right. That’s the issue. The primary risk to the value of the property isn’t insurable at all. Thankfully I was able to convince my parents to sell the place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know quite a few people who self insure. They are all wealthy and live in multi-million dollar homes. I guess, they’ll be fine losing the money.

That’s as stupid as self insuring medical. Multi-million dollar houses are no longer rare and I can’t imagine a financially savvy person not buying homeowner’s insurance.

Only the structure is insurable. The land is not. My parents self-insured a small cottage yards from the ocean because almost all of the value was in the land, not the old shoebox house with sky high insurance costs due to environmental risks.

What happens if the land erodes into the sea

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know quite a few people who self insure. They are all wealthy and live in multi-million dollar homes. I guess, they’ll be fine losing the money.

Seems fine for the truly wealthy, but for the average middle class or UMC even, it doesn’t seem worth the risk to me.

+1. I can't imagine not having homeowners' insurance, even though I hope to never make a claim.

You’re lucky you’ve never had an issue. We lost our insurance because our baby Yorkie nipped an elderly woman in the shin. She had thin skin and it was painful. Her kid called a lawyer and sued. He dealt with the insurance company and got $25,000. Our insurance company told us to get rid of our dog or they are canceling our policy. We obviously kept our dog and then had to get what they call insurance of last resort for uninsurable people run by the government. Cost a lot more.

Wow that’s ridiculous

I live in Colorado and know a fair number of people who underinsure. Seems crazy but they don’t think they will ever be impacted by wildfires. I have a high deductible and don’t plan to use it unless my house burns down. A lot of people get dropped here after 1-2 claims and can’t find a new insurance.

ABSTRACT
Theoretically, wealthier people should buy less insurance, and should self-insure through saving
instead, as insurance entails monitoring costs. Here, we use administrative data for 63,000
individuals and, contrary to theory, find that the wealthier have better life and property insurance
coverage. Wealth-related differences in background risk, legal risk, liquidity constraints, financial
literacy, and pricing explain only a small fraction of the positive wealth-insurance correlation.
This puzzling correlation persists in individual fixed-effects models estimated using 2,500,000
person-month observations. The fact that the less wealthy have less coverage, though intuitively
they benefit more from insurance, might increase financial health disparities among households.

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29069/w29069.pdf

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t have homeowners insurance. It is priced based on average risk, plus a profit margin for the company. I am much more careful than the average person - always clean the dryer lint etc - so my house is much less likely to be damaged than the average person’s house. So it would be a net negative for me to purchase i.

You’re an idiot. Wait till a healthy tree falls over in a freak storm, which we had inspected every year. Hope you’ve got $65k for that—the amount we got from insurance. It didn’t cover the $6K we also paid to take the tree trunk down because insurance doesn’t care about that. They only covered the branch that hit the house removal.

You’re supposed have enough common sense to trim down or remove any trees that could reach your house if they happened to fall (which they do, quite often, healthy or not). I cringe any time I see a million dollar house closely surrounded by 50 foot trees. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…Prepare for the worst, hope for the best…yadda, yadda

You aren’t able to handle the basics of homeownership, so of course you need homeowners insurance to spread the risk. PP considers what could happen, takes steps to prevent it, and is then rewarded via the risk.

Imagine a neighborhood with no trees.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t have homeowners insurance. It is priced based on average risk, plus a profit margin for the company. I am much more careful than the average person - always clean the dryer lint etc - so my house is much less likely to be damaged than the average person’s house. So it would be a net negative for me to purchase i.

You’re an idiot. Wait till a healthy tree falls over in a freak storm, which we had inspected every year. Hope you’ve got $65k for that—the amount we got from insurance. It didn’t cover the $6K we also paid to take the tree trunk down because insurance doesn’t care about that. They only covered the branch that hit the house removal.

You’re supposed have enough common sense to trim down or remove any trees that could reach your house if they happened to fall (which they do, quite often, healthy or not). I cringe any time I see a million dollar house closely surrounded by 50 foot trees. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure…Prepare for the worst, hope for the best…yadda, yadda

You aren’t able to handle the basics of homeownership, so of course you need homeowners insurance to spread the risk. PP considers what could happen, takes steps to prevent it, and is then rewarded via the risk.

Obviously you don't live in DC, loser. Look around. You can't take down trees willy nilly, or you'll rightfully pay a fine.

Did you know it takes decades for a tree to reach full height? The tree(s) obviously existed when the home was purchased. Very similar to buying a home next to an airport, then immediately complaining about airplane noise. Even worse is when a homeowner plants a future problem tree themselves, and is proud to have done it! Silly mistakes like these are why insurance premiums are sky-high and continue to grow. And insurance companies will gleefully let homeowners do it, charge them accordingly, and still print money after paying claims since they manage the risk so well…but mostly profit because we all end up paying more since that’s how insurance works.

LOL a word salad mansplainer.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We don’t have homeowners insurance. It is priced based on average risk, plus a profit margin for the company. I am much more careful than the average person - always clean the dryer lint etc - so my house is much less likely to be damaged than the average person’s house. So it would be a net negative for me to purchase i.

I’m a really careful driver so I guess I should drop my auto insurance…

It's the law in nearly every state to have car insurance.

And yet we all pay for uninsured motorist coverage. I've been hit 2 times (by drunk drivers); never did the the driver have insurance or even plates that match the car's vin and in at least one case, not even a license.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know quite a few people who self insure. They are all wealthy and live in multi-million dollar homes. I guess, they’ll be fine losing the money.

That’s as stupid as self insuring medical. Multi-million dollar houses are no longer rare and I can’t imagine a financially savvy person not buying homeowner’s insurance.

Exactly! And it's precisely why we buy health insurance---because we don't want to pay $1m+ if something catastrophic happens (and we've watched that happen to 2 different friends in their 40s/50s in the last few years). Sure we can pay $30K per year for medical expenses if needed, we want to avoid more than that

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Home insurance has become so incredibly expensive for some florida and California residents that they are no longer buying home insurance.

My parents in FL have homeowners insurance, but their deductible is 30k. Meaning they'd only be able to use the homeowners insurance if their house had a major loss or needed a new roof. They live 9 miles from the beach I think, not close.

I'd love to be able to have that high of deductible! Our max allowed is $10K. I want higher because I wouldn't file a claim for anything under $25-30K, because that's a great way to end up with no insurance at all. I view insurance as being for catastrophic events. Anything else, you pay for it yourself. That way you don't have to pay out if there's a fire and $300K+ of damages (not difficult to do with a fire or storm damage and a tree into a house while 3-4 in of rain is falling for 24 hours.)