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You choose a deductible—which is the amount of money you pay before insurance kicks in—for both your auto and your home policies. Your deductible can be as little as $0 and as high as $10,000 (with lots of options in between).
If you choose a lower deductible, you can generally expect to pay more in premium. Some people prefer to keep a high deductible and pay less in premium, while others prefer lower deductibles and higher premiums. It often comes down to your personal preferences and financial situation.
A better way to choose your deductible
Good news: you have an insurance agent who can help you select a deductible that best fits your needs. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you talk with us about deductibles.
Make sure you have enough money to cover your deductible. Whether your deductible is $50 or several thousand dollars, it’s important to have enough cash on hand to cover it.… Read More
How Do I Know Which Deductible to Choose?
You choose a deductible—which is the amount of money you pay before insurance kicks in—for both your auto and your home policies. Your deductible can be as little as $0 and as high as $10,000 (with lots of options in between).
If you choose a lower deductible, you can generally expect to pay more in premium. Some people prefer to keep a high deductible and pay less in premium, while others prefer lower deductibles and higher premiums. It often comes down to your personal preferences and financial situation.
A better way to choose your deductible
Good news: you have an insurance agent who can help you select a deductible that best fits your needs. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when you talk with us about deductibles.
Make sure you have enough money to cover your deductible. Whether your deductible is $50 or several thousand dollars, it’s important to have enough cash on hand to cover it.… Read More
Have you ever read the children’s book Love You Forever, where the mother cares for her growing son until, as a grown man, the son cares for his aging mother? The story depicts a parent/child role reversal that many experience in real life.
Talking about aging with parents can be difficult. But being honest about the topic is important. To help guide the conversation, here are four common concerns you may face with an aging parent and tips on how to address them.
Decide on Living Arrangements Early
Multi-level homes or complicated floor plans might make everyday living difficult and dangerous for aging parents. Discussing it sooner rather than later, while parents are active and not in a distressed state, can help them ease into the idea of new living arrangements like a one-story home or assisted living facility.
If parents insist on staying in their current home, consider homecare and installing assistive equipment, like handrails, as needed.… 
In the vast majority of cases, you won’t get a payout when your term life insurance policy expires. The exception is a return of premium policy, which returns all of the money you paid over the years back to you. However, the premium is usually much higher for this option than it would be for the average term life policy.
To avoid losing the premiums you’ve paid out over the years, you might consider converting your term life policy to a permanent policy like whole life or universal life. For many, life and financial circumstances might have made a term life policy the best choice in the past. Now might be the right time to change to a permanent policy.
The differences between a term life and permanent life policy
A term life policy tends to be more affordable, but only covers you for a specific amount of time. Policy lengths can last from as little as five years to as long as 30 years.… 
After a close call in my apartment–who knew 
There’s no denying that home-based businesses are on the rise. Right now, it’s estimated that there are 38 million home-based businesses that generate $427 billion a year in the United States.
While the market value of your home is commonly based on tax assessment records, real estate appraisals or the recent selling prices of similar homes in your neighborhood, your homeowners insurance limit is based on what it would cost to replace your home if it was completely destroyed. This is frequently a different figure from what your home could fetch on the open market.
Erie Insurance uses a program called Home Cost Estimator to determine how much it would cost to rebuild a house from the ground up. “The estimator uses information about a dwelling’s characteristics to determine the estimated replacement cost,” says Terry McConnell,vice president, Personal Lines Underwriting, at Erie Insurance. “The information is pulled from several sources to come up with a very close approximation of what it would cost to reconstruct a house.”
Factors affecting a home’s reconstruction value
Many different factors affect how much it would cost to reconstruct a home.… 
Many trends in today’s business world are exciting and encouraging. Unfortunately, the number of lawsuits and high-dollar awards in liability cases are not one of those positive trends. Here are a few recent news headlines from around the country:
Pennsylvania hotel sued for concussion from shower slip.
Fatal two-truck accident case in New York results in $3.97 million settlement.
Virginia victims get settlement checks (about $9 million) over toxic drywall.
There’s no way to prevent lawsuits like these entirely, but you can manage the impact. A business catastrophe liability policy serves as financial protection, or a cushion, against a legal judgment for a covered loss, beyond the limits of your underlying insurance policies.
A business catastrophe liability policy functions in a similar fashion to a personal catastrophe liability policy. Personal catastrophe liability —commonly known as “umbrella” – coverage can provide an extra layer of liability protection over and above your auto and homeowners policies in the event that a covered claim is made against you (or a covered family member).… 
Do you know how much it takes to raise a child these days? Are you sitting down?That would be almost a quarter of a million dollars. It costs $245,000 to raise a child born in 2013 until they hit 18, according to the 
Most of us will never own a Picasso or a Rembrandt. But we may own (or someday own) a pricey piece of art. And that brings up the issue of how to insure fine art.
When you think of separately insuring a pricey item, many people think of engagement rings and other kinds of jewelry. But extra coverage can also come in handy for anything from a valuable stamp collection to an expensive fur to—you guessed it—fine art.
Typically, your art coverage is included in your personal property limit on your 
Many people today are enjoying the benefits of being their own boss and running their own company. According to the U.S. Census, there are currently more than 5 million companies with fewer than 20 people actively operating in this country. Whether you freelance or you have created a company that employs others, you can take advantage of a variety of tax deductions on your business income.
Owners of large corporations have accountants and tax experts working for them, but many small-business owners and freelancers cannot afford that added expense. If you complete your tax returns on your own each year, make sure that you are aware of the tax deductions you can use to save. Some of the most common business deductions are listed below.
Home office
According to Entrepreneur Magazine, approximately 52 percent of all businesses in America are operated out of the business owners’ homes. The home office deduction, therefore, is one that may be useful to many.…