Food & Finances Friday--Switching Things Around

We've switched to a new insurance company. After spending/wasting all of the daylight hours given in one day, I managed to find us MUCH CHEAPER auto and homeowner's insurance. It all worked out nicely that the new insurance kicked in the day that the previous insurance ended. The new insurance company seemed excited to add us. The old insurance company was very casual about losing us. I thought they might ask why they were losing profit customers after 4 years. But, no, they didn't seem to care at all. Odd folks.

I took the insurance savings amount and moved it over to the medical expenses line item of our budget. It became quite clear, recently, that we needed to budget much more money for medical expenses. Of course, those bills are flowing in almost daily this month. I had a couple days of dreading checking the mail. I have to keep reminding myself that it was not always like this, and it won't always be like this....it's just the way we roll right now. The budget is adjusting.

In an attempt to plan savings for the upcoming surgery expenses, I asked The Referee to track down more details about our medical insurance. After paying our co-pay for office visits, we have an annual deductible to meet, before the insurance company will pay 90% of our medical costs. The remaining 10% is termed "co-insurance," which really means our out-of-pocket expense. Thankfully, there is a maximum co-insurance that we are responsible for in a given year. I am so grateful for this, because 10% of a quarter-to-a-half-million dollar open-heart surgery is A LOT of money!!!! I am so glad we do not have to pay that. Instead, we pay a maximum of $3000 in expenses classified in the "co-insurance" category. Whew! So, my next budgeting priority is saving up for co-insurance, along with the travel expenses, and post-surgery medication & frequent cardiology check-up expenses.

I'm confident that we can do this! We've completely turned our budgeting habits around in the past 4 months, so I am hoping that our efforts will continue to grow and improve. Time will tell....

Insurance Blanks

Just when I thought that we have dealt with the worst that the credit card companies and insurance companies had to offer, we receive the statement about our new home owners insurance premiums. Much like the automobile insurance (we have both with the same company), our homeowners insurance premiums are about to go up in price. The company included the same form letter, explaining their "insurance credit" scoring formula that supposedly somehow ties into our credit report. Only this time, they should have proofread their letter, because the first explanation of why our premiums are increasing was blank.

BLANK

They sent us a letter that says that our rate increase was due to the following reasons....and they gave 2 reasons.....

1)

Number 1 was completely blank!

2) Lack of Department/Furniture Store Credit Account Information

What? You have got to be kidding me! Are these people nuts? They can't even offer a primary reason for the rate increase. And, then they are complaining because we do not have credit cards at furniture stores or department stores?

How does this relate to our homeowner's insurance?

What happened to getting good rates because we are not arsonists, we haven't had to file any claims with them (thankfully), and our premiums are faithfully paid in full every year?

Ugh.

Ok, enough blog ranting. Time to shop around for a new insurance company.

Food & Finances Friday--Auto Insurance

Just when I thought things had about settled down, our automobile insurance renewal and billing paperwork arrived in the mail. Considering we both have clean driving records, as well as a clean payment history (payments are automatically deducted from our checking account), insurance renewal is normally an unremarkable event.

Not this time!

Apparently, insurance companies have the privilege and desire to run a credit report, to determine qualification for their lowest rates. Huh? So, driving record and years of being a profit customer are no longer the criteria for the lowest rates?

Nope. Instead, they've come up with consumer credit based insurance scores.

Well, that shouldn't be a problem, because as I have blogged before, our credit union says we've got outstanding credit scores and credit worthiness (keeping in mind that this repeat blog topic is due to our past mistakes of buying on credit, instead of living within our means...which we are dedicated to improving immediately!)

Imagine my surprise to learn that our automobile insurance company has decided to raise our insurance premiums based on their new insurance scoring criteria. The first credit-related factor listed is the number and balance of credit card accounts. No surprise there....that is the mistake that keeps on giving to us lately! We have more credit card debt than we should. We know that, and have been working hard to remedy that fact for the last few months.....but not fast enough to avoid every business source from exploiting that fact for their own financial gain--raised interest rates, raised monthly payments, and now raised insurance premiums.

It's the 2nd credit-related factor listed that shocks me....

LACK OF REPORTED INFORMATION ON OIL COMPANY ACCOUNTS

There are no oil company accounts on our file! We do not have any gasoline-themed credit cards, and our automobile insurance company has decided this is a problem! Are you kidding me? First they say we have too many credit cards, and then they say we don't have enough gasoline credit cards? Seriously?

We do not have a gasoline credit card.....so our automobile insurance company has decided that we no longer qualify for their lowest rates. Unbelievable.