Two huge data breaches made front page news in the past two weeks. Home Depot discovered its systems were compromised in September exposing the data of 56 million credit and debit card holders. The good news, at least for now, is there’s no evidence the personal identification numbers for customer debit cards were compromised.
The straight line winds that struck Dallas last week sheared limbs from trees and blew a lot of trees over. Some had their trunks snapped while others were simply pushed over exposing their roots by the 75 plus mile per hour winds. When the trees fell, they landed harmlessly on a person’s yard, or they landed on the homes they shaded, cars parked in the driveway, or other structures. Seeing the destruction a tree can cause, I was reminded of a claim I saw early in my career.
A storm rolled through Dallas last Thursday with straight line winds between 75 and 90 miles an hour. The rain fell sideways and the wind snapped tree limbs, toppled trees, and knocked out power to 300,000 homes and businesses. 85,000 homes and businesses were still without power as of late Saturday.
Autonomous or driverless, cars have been in the news a lot in the past few weeks. General Motors CEO Mary Barra announced in early September Cadillac will introduce a model in 2016 which will be equipped with its Super Cruise technology. Super Cruise provides, at least initially, the ability for the car to drive itself on the freeway by handling the duties of accelerating, braking, and steering the car.
Last week I introduced 5 things no home insurance policy covers. These are acts of war, nuclear meltdown, flood, earthquake, and sewage back up (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/home-insurance-doesnt-cover/). It would be nice to think our home policies cover everything, but they don’t. In fact, last week’s list was only a partial list of what home insurance policies don’t cover. Here are three more items no Texas home insurance policy covers.
Baby boomers are retiring at the rate of 10,000 people every day and will continue to do so for the next 19 years. That means 3,650,000 people will retire in the next 12 months, or 69,350,000 people over the next 19 years. Some have prepared well for retirement, but a lot haven’t. Regardless of which group a boomer is in, many tend to share a common worry, will they outlive their money in retirement?
Yahoo posted an article by Popular Mechanics on Monday which listed 6 futuristic safety technologies arriving now on some 2015 models. It’s an impressive list that provides us with insight into where car technology is headed as car manufacturers seek to make safer vehicles.
I helped several people with their home insurance last week. They all own or are buying homes in the Dallas / Fort Worth area. In each case I discussed what their new home policy covers, but one seasoned home owner asked me something different and that was what does his policy not cover.
Pets have a profound impact on us. They can be funny, sing along with us, nudge us to scoot over, chase their tail, roll around to scratch their back, jumping at their reflection, or trying to figure out how to play with a household appliance. They can comfort us at the end of a long day greeting us with a wagging tail, rest their head on our leg to comfort us, or sit on our lap asking for some attention – now! In many ways they seem to love us unconditionally in the way few humans do.
I talked with a prospective client last week. We’d worked together in the past and he wanted to see if I could help him lower what he was paying for all his insurance policies. We reviewed his current coverage on his car and home insurance, as well as his umbrella policy and I prepared quotes on each of them for us to discuss. As it turned out, the auto quote I presented him was about $1,000 lower than his current rate, and the umbrella was about the same as what he was currently paying. The issue was he had a lower rate on the home and he wasn’t sure what to do.
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