Tag: dallas insurance agents

BFF Wrecks Your Car. Who’s Car Insurance Pays?

You and three of your best friends are headed to the Texas Hill country for a weekend to get away and catch up with each other. You’ve been looking forward to it for weeks! It’s been a very long week with late nights to wrap up a project before heading out of town and you’re tired. You ask one of your friends to drive your car while you rest. They accidentally clip another car while passing. No one got hurt, but it’s your friend’s fault and your car.

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Air Bags: Recalls, Mysteries, and Driving Changes

Most of the time, I rarely think about my air bags. My car has full frontal air bags along with side curtain air bags. I have no desire to ever see what they look like or even discover how they work, but I’m very glad they are there. I have been in one major accident in my life, before the cars I owned had air bags. The seatbelt saved my life and protected me from suffering any major injuries. I’d like to avoid experiencing that again.

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3 Types of Rental Property Insurance Policies

I have a number of clients across Dallas / Fort Worth who own rental property. Some are first time landlords while others own multiple rental properties and have done so for many years. It’s exciting for me to be a part of helping someone reach their financial dreams by protecting an asset that should grow in value over time. When working with a person buying their first rental property, I begin that discussion with a brief overview of the three types of rental property insurance policies.

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Commercial Insurance and Business Interruption Coverage

Hurricane Dolly struck South Padre Island on July 23, 2008 with winds near 100 miles per hour, a four foot storm surge, and 12 to 15 inches of rain. Damage to structures on the Island and in Port Isabel, across the bridge on the Texas mainland, was pretty moderate and consisted of mostly damage to roofs. Power was knocked out to most residents and businesses for one to two weeks. Anything perishable, whether in a business or home spoiled.

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Car Insurance and Driverless Cars

Driverless cars are coming, and they’re coming sooner than most of us think. One only has to search “driverless car” on Google, Yahoo, or Bing and there will appear over 3,000,000 results for your reading or viewing enjoyment. Google has retrofitted Lexus and Toyota models for testing, not to mention their 100 mini commuter cars that look very similar to a Little Tykes car my youngest son had.

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Long Term Care Insurance: 3 Trends and 3 Questions

The Dallas Morning News published an interesting article on long term care (LTC) insurance over the past a few days ago. It was an excellent reminder that LTC insurance should be a part of everyone’s financial planning, especially baby boomers. Boomers are retiring at a rate of 10,000 people a day and this number is projected to continue for the next 19 years. That’s over 3.6 million people a year!

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Car Insurance and Not-at-Fault Claims

Early in my insurance career, I was attending a larger party with a number of friends when a woman came up to me with tears in her eyes. Her husband, who was coming in their other car, had been involved in an accident not far from where we were gathered and she did not know what to do. We left the party together in her car and I drove us to where the accident had occurred, a southbound service road of North Central Expressway in Dallas.

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Home Insurance and Replacement Cost Factors

Last week, I outlined the difference between the two broad types of home insurance policies; replacement cost and actual cash value (see http://bit.ly/1qLPE5W). This week, I want to build on that post and outline what goes into determining a home’s replacement cost value.

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Texas Car Insurance Rates Rise

If you think Texas car insurance rates are on the rise, it’s not your imagination. Based on a report released earlier this year by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, Texas premiums now rank 11th highest in the nation. Two years ago, we were ranked 14th highest in the nation. The average Texas car insurance premium, based on the 2009 data used for the NAIC report (the most recent nationwide data available), is now $1,022 a year. The national annual average rate is $901.

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