It may sound a strange thing to warn you about. After all, this is one of those holiday times when everyone is just having fun. The children are out and about trick-or-treating, while the more sensible adults have applied make-up and prosthetics suggesting they are the living dead or something equally hilarious. Yet, ignoring all the supernatural atmosphere, this is actually a time of considerable danger. The statistics don’t lie.

Let’s start off with the ever popular fires. Some people feel those lights powered by electricity are so 1980′s. I mean who would be seen dead with those? Well, actually, quite a lot of people do end up dead because many of those electric lights are not made with any care and short-circuits are a common way to create sparks. But if you’re one for tradition, you use real candles. They do give off those spooky flickering flames and, if anyone happens to knock one over, they can really liven up the party as other decorations catch the flame. Fortunately, almost all home policies cover damage by fire, including those where you rent out your home. Renters policies also include fire damage as a standard part of the cover. If it’s your own home, check whether you’re covered for hotel or alternative accommodation while repairs are under way.

Then we come to all those visitors, big and small. There’s a general rule of law that if you invite people on to your land or you give them implied permission to be there, you’re responsible if they are injured. It being Halloween, there’s a general expectation local children will come trick-or-treating. You invite people to parties. If people fall over in the dark or something goes wrong with your attempts to frighten and amuse, then your insurance cover had better be generous enough to cover all the medical bills. Before the “day”, walk through your home, the porch and any other part of your property where people might go. Clear away anything that might be a danger in poorly lighted conditions. Children, being children, put matches or anything else tempting out of reach. If you have a dog, keep it indoors. If it were to get excited and bite someone, this could be expensive.

Then we come to what you do outside the home. Because you know large numbers of excitable children are going to be running around, you drive slowly. The mandatory liability policy on your vehicle will cover medical treatment for light injuries should you be unable to avoid the child who magically appears in front of you. If in doubt, swerve and hit a tree. This is often cheaper and easier to explain to the neighbors. Put all this together and you have a two or three day window when you can destroy your own home, or maim children and friends of the family. It’s seriously worth your while to pull out the home insurance policy and read it through. At the very least, you will see whether there are any limitations or exclusions that might affect your planned entertainment. It will also speed up the claims process if you see exactly what the home insurance claims adjuster will want as evidence to support your claim.

Car insurance is a topic that may be quite confusing for those who aren’t very familiar with it. All those peculiarities and things that only experts are supposed to know can give a headache to a typical newbie. And of all different aspects of insurance for vehicles one of the most confusing is probably the one connected with genders. If you didn’t know, male and female drivers are charged differently even when buying from the same insurance providers and using the same policies with identical coverage options included. Sure, it may sound discriminatory and sexist at first, but let’s take a closer look in order to understand why is that so in the first place.

One very important thing you should know about just any kind of insurance is that companies providing it are all about calculating and assessing risks. Risk is an integral part of the insurance industry and lies at its core because insurance itself is a tool for managing risks. In case of insuring your car the risk being managed is the financial liability you would end up with in case of an accident. So the main interest of the insurance company would be analyzing how it’s likely for you to end up in an accident and how much it will cost them to cover all the damage caused by this situation. And in order to do so they may use the most awkward factors that the car owner would never guess being connected to risk, yet which in fact help the companies determine the risk to a certain degree. So it happens that gender of the car owner helps the insurance company to determine how it is likely for a particular driver to have an accident. But how it is possible?

It’s very simple really. Despite the common belief that women are worse drivers than men statistics prove male drivers wrong about this misconception. Fact is that women tend to have far less accidents than men and the overall damage resulted from such accidents is usually less than in case of male drivers. Women tend to take less risks on the road and even if they may be driving not as proficiently as some men they still file less claims. Some of you may argue that there are less women on the road in general and that’s the reason for the lower number of accidents involving female drivers. But even if taking the comparative ratio of claims filed per driver, women are still ahead with less accidents per capita.

What this means from the customer point of view is that female drivers usually get more competitive auto insurance quotes than men just because they are women and make part of a low risk group of drivers. Same as with different age groups, there still may be female drivers who file a lot of claims like teen drivers who are good behind the wheel. However because of the overall statistics men don’t get the advantage when it comes to auto insurance rates like women do. And that’s a fact you only have to deal with.

Somewhere in the distant past, people noticed a trend suggesting Ohio was a type of weathervane for political purposes. It became part of the mythology that a presidential candidate will lose unless he carries Ohio. Perhaps, surprisingly, this is still considered “true” even through John F Kennedy lost Ohio in 1960 yet still became president. In many ways people simply remember the facts that fit so they can continue to say, “as Ohio goes, so goes the nation”. Anyway, no matter what the truth of the matter, the Tea Party has been collecting signatures for a year to ensure Issue 3 gets on to the voting slips this next election. Simply, the aim of this electoral gesture is to block the state from adopting the Affordable Care Act – to be precise, the Obamacare mandate. The Tea Party want it clear Ohio will reject a federal statute as unconstitutional and take no action to enforce the mandate as and when it becomes law. For the record, Ohio is one of the twenty-six states currently fighting the Affordable Care Act. The results of this litigation are expected next year although the Supreme Court works to its own timetable. There’s no indication whether the decision will be available before next year’s election.

In the last paragraph Issue 3 was described as a gesture. It wants to use the ballot box to prevent Ohio from going down the same road as Massachusetts. Although quite what’s wrong with the health care mandate in Massachusetts is not clear. It should be said the resulting level of health care provision is very popular with those who actually live there. However, the Ohioan supporters of Issue 3 are taking a strictly libertarian approach. They want to assert their rights as citizens to ignore the law of the land. And that’s where all the problems really start.

Our great country is one nation made up of sovereign states. Except the sovereignty is not absolute. In many areas of our lives, federal law prevails. The test, of course, is whether each federal law is constitutional. That’s where the Supreme Court comes in. Should it decide the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional by imposing a mandate, no state in the union will be obliged to apply it. But if the Supreme Court decides this Act is a proper use of the law to regulate interstate commerce, every state will be obliged to apply it. That states have some degree of sovereignty does not give states freedom to decide which laws they will or will not apply. It’s all or nothing in this system.

So no matter what happens in the ballot, Ohio will not be free to do as it wishes but, as a piece of political theater, it could have quite important implications. This will be the first time the people have been given a formal chance to express an opinion on the merits of the Affordable Care Act. It will carry far more weight than surveys. Should the vote be against the mandate, it will be used by the GOP to argue all reform of health insurance should be stopped. Should this view prevail, there can be no more cheap health insurance. The premium rates will only fall if everyone is obliged to buy a plan.

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There’s a reason why most sites like this talk about discounts as the best way of saving money. It happens to be true but, to take advantage of the discounts safely, you need to think carefully. Let’s start with the most commonly mentioned. All you have to do to make big savings is to increase your deductible. Indeed, the theory is often proved correct that an increase from $500 to $1000 can save you up to 25% of the annual premium. But there are two issues to think about.

Many insurance companies are already increasing the deductible whether you asked for it or not. The reason for this is the rise in the number of claims from bad weather. No matter what your view on global warming or climate change, the last two years have seen record-breaking claims for damage caused by snow, flooding, tornadoes and hurricanes. This year is ending on another unusual note with unexpected snowfall disrupting the northeast in late October, early November. The amount of snow and disruption to more than 2 million homes has broken new records for October for West Virginia through to Maine. All these additional claims mean premium rates will be going up again next year, and the deductibles are being adjusted on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Don’t be caught out. Before you raise the deductible yourself, find out what your insurer has done. Second, if you do increase the deductible, can you afford to self-insure all the small accidental losses around the home? If not, resist rises in the deductible.

Now on to the other discounts. In the good old days before the internet, people used to rely on the agent to claim all the discounts. These people knew you and your home. They understood the inner working of the insurers. They used to protect you (well, they were supposed to protect you). Now you have moved online, you are the only one who can look out for your own interests. There are a range of monitors and sensors you can fit to your home that will save you money. The details will vary from company to company so, before you spend any money, get a list of the approved devices and cost their installation. Never fit anything unless you can recover the cost in savings within a reasonable period of time. These include central station alarm systems for both unauthorized entry and temperature rises, smoke, water and gas leaks, and so on. Whenever you renovate, ensure your rebuilding cover is increased and that you gain access to the discounts.

Finally, revisit the question of bundling policies together with the same insurer. Almost all companies will give you a discount if you give them more business. So if you have one or two family cars, giving the same company both the auto and homeowners insurance policies can represent at least 10% in savings. This needs quite careful research to confirm. Get as many quotes as possible for individual cover with different companies, and then look at what savings you will get if you bundle with any one of them. Never assume one of your existing companies will give you the best deal. Always shop around and get as many car and homeowners insurance quotes as possible.

When employers were still mostly human, they offered their employees a range of benefits in addition to pay. One of the more common add-ons was a group life plan. The general idea was to provide for the employees’ welfare through health, retirement and life cover, and so encourage them to greater effort. The advantage from the employer’s point of view was that it was usually cheaper to buy the various benefits in bulk than to add pay sufficient for the employees to buy as individuals. Since pay was low, it avoided struggles for the employees to buy their own benefits. Everyone was happy with this arrangement. As we move toward the end of the last century, this philosophy was retained in the public sector, but more greedy capitalists began chipping away at the benefits. As unemployment rose, there was always a good supply of labor queuing up for every job advertised. If benefits were cut and employees left, there were always people willing to take on the work. This allowed employers in the private sector to bank more profit for themselves, leaving employees held in their posts by the fear they would be unable to find alternative jobs if they left.

The latest survey finds nearly one-quarter of all families relies on group insurance for life benefits. Most of these individuals are either in public service or they are relatively senior management and above. Research shows the actual value of these policies is inadequate to meet most families’ needs. The policies are bought with an eye to the cheapness of the premium rates for the employer rather than for the quality of the payout for the beneficiaries. The average plan offers a benefit equivalent to one or two times the annual pay of the individual. The standard in an individual policy is to provide between five and seven years of pay. A further problem is these plans are often not transferrable so, if you leave your current job, voluntarily or not, the plan is unlikely to follow you.

The majority of private sector employers offer term insurance. The key advantage is this cover is underwritten at a flat rate without the need for a detailed medical assessment of the individual employees. This one-size-fits-all approach often means some of the standard benefits you would expect are actually missed out, e.g. cover for long-term care.

It’s therefore to the advantage of your dependents to buy supplemental cover, i.e. to fill in the gap between the benefits provided by your employer and the actual needs of your family. Most employers’ plans allow you to buy additional cover. So this must be a carefully costed decision. Look first at whether this additional life insurance can be transferred or left free-standing when you retire. Then consider the cost as against the life insurance quotes you get from private insurers. The most common advantage of the private sector is to sell policies with a cash value you can borrow against or sell should you need cash. Mostly the employers’ plan is term which has no cash value building up in your favor. In other words, buying from a private insurer is probably best, but do a proper evaluation before making up your mind.

The problem can be stated simply. If you take your eyes off the road, you will not see the other vehicle coming toward you. This makes you a danger to other road users. The group most likely to fall into this trap are young drivers. Not only are they the least experienced behind the wheel. They are also the ones with the most peer pressure to reply to the text message or answer the cell phone call immediately. The evidence cannot be more clear. Looking at all the different ways in which teens die through disease and accidents, crashes in motor-vehicles are the leading cause of death. The government estimates that, in 2009, about 5,500 people were killed and more than half-a-million injured because one of the drivers was distracted.

In a perfect world, this would be resolved by a discussion at home. As a parent, you would sit down with your children and explain the risks. The statistics are available on the internet to back up your warnings. Your children would nod their heads wisely and swear by all they hold holy not to continue this dangerous practice. Except this would not work in most families. What teens say to their parents is not how they act when they are outside the home. So now comes the hard choice. Do you sit back and rely on prayer every time they drive off into the wild blue yonder, or do you take positive steps? First, a little law: it’s a criminal offense to operate any transmitter that will block or jam wireless communications. So you would face big fines if you were found jamming mobile phone signals. But it’s probably not an offense if you instal equipment in your vehicle that acts as a passive block to the signal. The reason for the distinction is that if you created a cone of silence around your vehicle by transmitting a signal to jam all the cell towers, you would cut off all the other users in your area. While this might make the roads safer, it would seriously inconvenience everyone else. More importantly, it might interfere with emergency calls for the police and ambulance. So passive shielding is probably legal because it does not interfere with any other vehicle or person on the sidewalk. Taking this simple step means you no longer have trust issues with your teen (until he or she works out how to turn it off or get round the shielding, e.g. by putting an antenna outside the vehicle).

More intrusive are the camera systems now offered by some insurers. In return for allowing active monitoring of the way in which your teens drive, they get cheaper premium rates. So if your teen signs up for a policy and agrees not to text or use the cell phone, enforcement just became easier. Similarly, if there’s agreement limiting the number of passengers, you have it on disk. Yes this is cheap car insurance for your teen courtesy of Big Brother, but it’s also helping to keep him or her alive. Statistics show a remarkable improvement in driving when teens know the cameras are watching. So this all comes back to your door the next time you are looking for car insurance quotes. How far do you want to go?

Having a car involves many responsibilities, some of which may be not as pleasant as driving a car and involve additional costs. Yes, we are talking about vehicle insurance. It’s definitely one of the most irritating aspects of owning a car and a cash-consuming one. Ask any driver and he will tell you that his or her insurance could be less expensive, since it takes a good bite off the family budget. If you are in the same situations as millions of drivers in the country and want your car to be not as expensive to insure as it is now the following money saving tips will definitely help you optimize your costs effectively:

Modify your policy

Vehicle insurance comes in many forms and delivers many options to choose from. When there are many different coverage options included into your policy it becomes very expensive. So your aim when optimizing your insurance costs is to strip off all the unnecessary coverage features and leave only those that are really needed. In fact, the only type of coverage that is legally required is the third party liability whereas all others are optional. Sure, it doesn’t mean that you have to strip down your policy to the bare minimums. But make sure to take some time and think about the things you really need with your policy and things you can leave behind. This will certainly cut your insurance costs effectively.

Adjust the deductible

As you may already know, deductible is the amount of money to be paid by you before the coverage actually starts to apply. It is used to prevent insurance claims due to minor damage to your car. And the higher you set the amount of deductible the lower is the premium. You can set the deductible up to $1000, however make sure that you can actually afford such an amount. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense decreasing the premium and not being able to get any coverage when needed since you can’t meet the deductible.

Shop around

Comparison shopping is the best way to get the lowest price no matter what type of product or service you’re looking for and auto insurance isn’t an exception. With so many quote comparison sites on the web it’s really easy to shop around for vehicle insurance since it takes only a few minutes and you get plenty of quotes to compare. Try to get as many quotes from different providers as possible – this will raise your chance of finding a very good policy with plenty of coverage and reasonable premiums that will save your money.

Switch the car

Many car owners tend to forget that the most important factor contributing to the cost of auto insurance is the car they actually drive. Some cars are less costly to insure while others will automatically give you higher premiums even if you shop around a bit. In general sports, muscle, luxury and large cars are more expensive to insure. So if you feel that your auto insurance costs are unbearable consider buying a car that is less costly to insure in the first place.

The world would be a better place if everyone was trustworthy and honest. Sadly, human nature seems to have come with a selfish gene. We want what we haven’t got. We don’t want to pay for what we need. There was a recent piece of research which staged accidents at intersections involving a bus. The point of the study was to discover how many of the innocent people on the sidewalks would run on to the bus and claim to have been injured. Needless to say, the results did not show city dwellers in a good light. So, when people were first working through the basic statistics of assessing risks, it was obvious there was less risk if people drove only a few miles a week. But if they were commuting long distances on busy interstates, the risk of accidents grew high. The insurers reasoned it would be good to pitch the premium rates to reflect the risks. Except how could they trust the drivers to make an honest declaration of how many miles a week they drove? The answer, sadly, was that no one was trustworthy if allowed to self-certify mileage. When insurers ran a trial, asking drivers to bring in their vehicles for their odometer readings to be taken, everyone quickly learned how to wind back the count of miles.

Well, now technology has arrived that eliminates the risk of cheating – until someone learns how to hack the black boxes, that is. For now, insurers like Progressive are selling a basic policy plus monitoring equipment to plug into your vehicle. The insurer can then monitor when, where and how far you drive. Some insurers are even fitting a GPS transmitter. This is useful if your vehicle is stolen or you report a breakdown and a tow truck has to find you.

Many consider this new technology an invasion of their privacy. The question you have to answer is whether you want the discounts. As a low mileage driver, you pay a monthly premium based on how far you drive and whether you avoid driving at peak times. Before you answer, note some insurers also collect data from your vehicle showing how often you break suddenly, whether you swerve from side to side, and other features of your driving style. Should you have an accident and make a claim, the insurer has a record of how you were driving at the time. If you claimed you hit the other car because you were swerving violently to avoid a moose, the recording may show a slightly different story (ignoring the problem of explaining how there came to be a moose loose in your part of town).

Insurers are, of course, enthusiastic. They believe this new technology will encourage drivers to be more careful. If there are fewer accidents, this will result in lower auto insurance quotes for all of us. Federal government is also watching carefully because we may all be encouraged to drive more slowly. This will be good for the environment, reduce our dependence on imported oil and prevent global warming. Ironic that we might be thanking the insurance industry both for cheap auto insurance quotes and for saving the planet. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea.

When an airplane crashes, we’ve all been brainwashed into watching the search for the black box. That’s the onboard recording device that captures what the pilots were saying as the plane fell from the sky as well as storing all the technical information from the instruments. We’re told it’s vital to be able to explain why each aircraft crashes. After all, the larger planes carry many passengers and, if one were to crash into a city center, it could do a lot of damage. We all have an interest in reducing the risk of air accidents. That’s why we’re hooked as television cameras record submarines going down to search the seabed to recover these vital boxes and as many bits of the plane as possible. Remarkably, experts rebuild as much of the plane as possible to see more clearly what damage was sustained before the plane hit the ground or fell into the sea.

Have you heard of event data recorders (EDR)? These are the little black boxes for the vehicles we drive on our roads. In 2008, a report published by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) admitted between 65 and 90% of vehicles were already fitted with EDRs. The reason for the big range in the estimate is easy to explain. Almost every new vehicle rolling off the assembly line has an EDR fitted. It’s been a standard component for many years. But it’s not entirely clear how many older vehicles are still driving around without one of these recording devices inside. All we can say is that, as we slowly throw the old vehicles away, we’ll slowly move up to 100% installation. How can you tell whether your vehicle has an EDR? Curiously, until 2011, manufacturers did not have to tell you. Now, if you look in the driver’s manual, you’ll find confirmation.

Why should you care? Well, the NHTSA lists all the information these devices are supposed to collect. It’s very comprehensive, showing exactly what you were doing in the minute or so before the accident, i.e., how fast you were driving, whether you swerved, applied the brakes, whether you were wearing your seat belt, and so on. Anyone getting hold of this information can reconstruct how the accident occurred. You’ll be pleased to know EDR data is increasingly used to prosecute cases of vehicular manslaughter. Your insurance company will be able to compare your description of the accident with the EDR data. So, if you said you had to swerve to avoid an alligator on the road as you drove through the Everglades, you’d better be sure the EDR will tell the same story of a violent maneuver while braking sharply.

The EDR holds out the possibility of being able to detect more fraud, e.g. that you weren’t driving fast enough to cause the whiplash injury you now claim. If insurance companies can filter out more dishonest claims, this will reduce the overall cost of loss and, if the insurers are honest, reduce the auto insurance rates. Across the US, it’s estimated that several billion dollars in fraudulent claims are successful. Reducing this means more affordable if not cheap auto insurance for all us honest drivers.

Sometimes acronyms work really well. They lodge in the mind we’re forever stuck with remembering them like Washington’s self-fulfilling prophesy in the the VOTER Act, i.e. Voting Opportunity and Technology Enhancement Rights Act. Other times, we wish someone had taken out a gun and shot the clever idiot who thought up these mixtures of letters. Well, here comes an organization begging for a bullet. It’s the Insurance Information Institute or III for short. Obviously it was a day when inspiration was lacking.

Anyway, this cleverly named organization has just issued a Pulse Survey in which the insurance industry discovered that slightly more than half the people who buy their policies think the amount of cover is based on the resale value of their property and not the cost of rebuilding it. Slightly more than one-third reported reducing the amount of cover because the value of their homes had fallen and their mortgages were now underwater. Forgive the confusion here. It would be reasonable to reduce cover if the household budget was so strained they could no longer afford the full premium rate. But this finding suggests many mortgagors may now be in breach of the terms of their mortgages. Why, you ask. Because all mortgages require the borrowers to carry an adequate amount of cover. In this case, the amount should cover the cost of rebuilding assuming the building was a total loss. If the borrower fails to put adequate cover in place, the lender can substitute its own policy and add the premium to the monthly payments. It’s just too bad if that makes the mortgage payments unaffordable. As far as the lender is concerned, it’s your fault for cutting down on the amount of cover.

Let’s say you avoid the lender discovering your reduction in the cover but you then have to make a claim. Now the shock is going to become very expensive. Because the cost of materials and the labor to rebuild has been rising while the resale price of the buildings have been falling, it’s quite common to discover the amount insured is not enough to pay for the rebuilding. This should emphasize the importance of reviewing the amount amount of the insurance every year. Get at least two quotes from reputable local builders as your guide. This is particularly important if you have lavished special care on the building. The more you fit custom fixtures or improve on the fabric, the more it’s going to cost to reinstate. If there’s a shortfall, the difference comes out of your pocket. Those lenders have never been the most forgiving of people, so you could end up with your home as a pile of rubble and a civil action to recover the amount of the loan not covered by the homeowners insurance policy.

So before you decide to reduce your cover, remember the purpose of insurance. It’s supposed to protect you from financial disaster. Arbitrarily saving a few dollars on the monthly payments may turn out a false economy. Always look for alternative strategies. When you use a site like this to obtain your homeowners insurance quotes, run the process several times to find out whether you are eligible for discounts. It’s better to save money legitimately than to hide your head in the sand.