Archive for category Arts of Money

Health Insurance Terminology

You cannot be sure that you’ve gotten the best health insurance coverage unless you understand health insurance terminology. Here are some of the most commonly used terms in the health insurance industry.

COBRA: The Act that allows for continuation of group coverage for a limited time after you leave the group.

Co-insurance: The amount you must pay for treatment after copayments and deductibles.

Copayment: The fixed amount that you must pay out-of-pocket for physician visits, medical procedures and prescription medications.

Deductible: The out-of-pocket amount you must pay before your policy benefits start kicking in.

Exclusions: Any medical conditions or illnesses whose expenses are not covered by your insurance policy.

HIPAA: A health insurance Act that sets privacy standards in an electronic world and guarantees portability of coverage and new policy issue after COBRA benefits run out, as long as there has not been a significant break in coverage (varies by state but usually at least 63 days).

HMO: A type of insurance policy that allows only treatment within a set network of physicians and facilities.

Lifetime limit: The maximum amount your insurer will pay out in benefits.

PPO: The type of insurance policy that has a network of physicians but still allows you to visit physicians and facilities outside the network for a reduced benefit.

Pre-certification: Some insurance companies require that you get preapproval from them before you have surgery or other medical procedures. This is called a pre-certification.

Pre-existing conditions: Any illness, injury or chronic disease you suffered from before you took out your insurance policy is considered a pre-existing condition.

Premiums: The fee that you pay to your insurance company monthly, annually or quarterly is your premium.

Underwriting: The process of reviewing and evaluating the risk you pose to the insurance company based on your medical history.

Waiting period: The amount of time you must wait before your pre-existing conditions are covered by your policy.

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Considerations in Auto Insurance Underwriting

When your auto insurance policy is underwritten, your insurance underwriter attempts to figure out whether or not you should be approved for the policy, what you should be charged and if there should be any special amendments to your policy. Many different factors and traits are considered during this process including:

Your motor vehicle report: Your motor vehicle report (MVR) is a report that shows your driving record. It shows all the tickets you’ve gotten for reckless driving, speeding, and not obeying general traffic laws. This report is extremely important in determining how risky you are to insure. If you have many tickets and incidents on the report that show you are not a responsible driver, then you are going to be expensive to insure because the auto insurance company is going to assume that your recklessness translates into expensive claims for anyone who insures you. The underwriters will then decide to charge you a higher premium than you might expect in order to offset the likelihood of claims.

Your age: The older you are, the more likely you are to be an experienced and responsible driver and the less expensive your premiums are likely to be-until you hit a certain age. Because as you start to get older, you again become more risky as a driver because you are less sharp witted, have worse eyesight and less hand-eye coordination. So whether you are too young, too old, or right in the middle, it will have an effect on your auto insurance underwriting and premiums.

Your gender: Unfortunately for the masculine set, male drivers (especially those who are young) are seen as riskier bets by insurers. Males are often considered to be risk takers and less responsible than their female counterparts.

Your relationship status: Married individuals are often seen as more stable and responsible by auto insurance underwriters. Singles get a bad rap and are often charged more for auto insurance.

Your car: If you drive a flashy, speedy, light and rocket ready sports car, then you are likely to be charged a higher premium than someone who drives a four door sedan. Sports cars are often purchased by people who want to test out the speed and handling of the car and usually want to push the car to its limits. That doesn’t always reflect well when an underwriter is looking to set the premium for your auto insurance policy.

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Home Insurance on a Paid-Off Home

You might think that once your home is paid off you can drop your home insurance and live a carefree life with no insurance premiums. But just because there are no state requirements to hold home insurance on your house, that doesn’t mean that this useful coverage should be ignored after your home is paid off.

Your home could endure an insurable incident whether or not you have a mortgage. After all, it is not the fact that you owe money on your home that exposes you to risk-it is the fact that risk is everywhere and could happen to anyone. You see, when you have a mortgage your lender is at risk for damages to your home because they have more money riding on it than you do. That is why they demand that you have home insurance. But if you think that you don’t need to look for home insurance quotes once your home is paid off, then consider this: if your home catches fire, floods, is vandalized or has any other insurable event happen to it then you must pay for the damages out of pocket unless you have insurance. You might not even have a home left to live in until you can find the money to pay for all the repairs and in the mean time, you will be forced to pay out of your own pocket for your temporary living space.

Of course, you can look for less expensive home insurance quotes once your home is paid off. You could consider raising your deductible since you no longer have a mortgage to pay off and can likely afford to pay more deductible out of your own pocket. You can look for lower limits as long as you stay within the range that your home is worth so you can be fully reimbursed for an event that destroys your home. You can even determine what is and isn’t covered based on how you perceive your risk.

Remember, while saving money on home insurance quotes is important, having an insurance policy that is there for you when you need it is vital. Don’t scrimp too much on the policy and make sure you look out for your own self-interest and bottom line.

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Equity Indexed Life Insurance

Whole (or permanent) life insurance policies are more than meet the eye. Sure they offer a death benefit that caries through the rest of your life as long as you pay your premium and keep the policy in force, but more than that they offer an additional benefit of premiums accruing into something called cash values. These cash values can grow in a few different ways:

  1. They can grow at a fixed rate like in a traditional whole life policy.
  2. They can grow at a variable rate by choosing a sub account to invest them in. Sub accounts in a variable policy may have fixed investments like money markets, they may have stocks, bonds or mutual funds.
  3. They can grow at a variable rate tracking the returns of a specific index-like the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The third kind of growth is seen in an equity indexed life insurance policy. When you have an equity indexed life insurance policy, your cash values grow as they would in a variable policy but the sub account you choose is created to mimic the performance of a particular index. If that index goes up, then your cash value will likely go up. But if the index goes down, then so will your cash value.

One of the most important things to remember about an equity indexed life insurance policy is that there is no guarantee that you will earn money. Many illustrations for life insurance will show the great amounts of cash that can be accumulated in an equity indexed life insurance policy, but there is always the chance that the index you choose for your sub account will go down in value and will reduce the cash values you accumulate. The great things about equity indexed life insurance policies, however, is that they often have a floor, or minimum amount that you are guaranteed to gain. While this threshold is often significantly less than the fixed rate of return in a traditional life insurance policy, it at least offers some sort of gain while markets are down. On the other hand, there is also often a ceiling or maximum gain you can experience which may be less than the actual increases experienced by the index that you choose.

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COBRA Coverage Explained

COBRA is the acronym for a health insurance portability act signed into law during the 1990’s. Thanks to COBRA, if you leave an employer who is providing your group health insurance coverage, you can keep the coverage for 18-36 months even though you no longer really qualify for the group coverage since you are not a member of the group. COBRA is a great benefit to many people-but not every employee who leaves an employer with group benefits should take advantage of COBRA coverage.

COBRA coverage is extremely expensive. If you are someone in relatively good health, who rarely goes to the doctor and has no pre-existing conditions, then COBRA coverage might not be the best use of your financial resources. Instead, you could search for low cost medical insurance on an individual basis and get your own policy, not hinged on group participation, that can cover you for a fraction of the cost of a COBRA policy.

For individuals with pre-existing conditions, low cost medical insurance is a pipe dream. Not only are premiums expensive for formerly ill individuals, but they may not even approve you at all depending on the risk you present. Or, they may approve you and agree to pay for your medical expenses through your policy while excluding a whole host of expenses that stem from your pre-existing condition. It is then that you are a good candidate for retaining your COBRA coverage. Even if you never go to the doctor, keeping continuous coverage through a program like COBRA is vital because it prevents another group insurance plan from declining to cover your pre-existing conditions (something they cannot do unless you’ve had a break in coverage for 63 days or longer during the past 6-12 months).

So remember, if you are young and in relatively good health, look to a low cost health insurance policy of your own for coverage after leaving a group plan. It will be much less expensive that COBRA and will allow you complete portability since its approval isn’t tied to group participation. If you have a pre-existing condition, be sure to opt for COBRA coverage immediately after leaving your job so that there is no risk of a 63 day or longer break in coverage. No matter what option you choose-make sure you always have some sort of health coverage so that you are not left to fiscally stand alone after an expensive illness or injury.

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Can Your Insurance Company Afford Your Claim?

Choosing an auto insurance policy is often considered to be all about the price of the policy. Sure you want the best coverage you can, and you want to be sure that you will get reimbursed for the types of accidents that are likely to happen to you, and absolutely you want to have the cheapest policy you can get, but what about choosing an auto insurance company that can actually afford to pay your claims?

Choosing an Insurance Company

One of the best ways to make sure you choose an auto insurance company that can afford your policy is to check the company’s AM Best rating before you take out the policy. AM Best is an insurance rating company that examines the financials of an insurer in order to determine how likely that insurer is to be able to pay the claims it receives. By checking the company’s balance sheets, income statements, insurance policy load and other information AM Best can get a good idea of whether or not they can handle their financial load.

Once they assess the financials they give a letter grade to each insurer. These letter grades give you an idea of just how capable AM Best things the insurer is. Generally, you want to choose an insurer with an A rating or higher. You don’t need a special sign in or a paid membership in order to access the ratings, you just need to go to the website and look up the insurance company.

Before you decide that you don’t need to worry about the rating of your insurer and instead can just pick the cheapest auto insurance rate and move on with your life, remember-an insurance company is only as good as its ability to pay your claims. If an insurer is unable to actually pay the claims of its premium paying clients than it is nothing more than just an empty promise-one that you pay for out of your own pocket.

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Finance Your Business

Business financing is not always easy, especially for businesses that sell their products and services on credit terms. Having too many accounts receivables can make it rather difficult for these businesses to expand because they simply lack the cash to do it. To solve this, they need to change these accounts receivables to cash flow. And a very good way to do this is by getting accounts receivable loans.

An account receivable loan uses a company’s accounts receivables as collateral. This type of loan is given by factoring companies. By getting this kind of loan, businesses that sell on credit terms can really improve their cash flow. The advantage of getting an account receivable loan is that there is no need to make any payments to the lenders, and therefore borrowers will not be creating any debts to their businesses.This is a very good method of small business financing.

If you’re interested in getting an account receivable loan to help finance your growing business, use the links on this page to go to Accountsreceivableloans.com, one of the best websites on the Net when it comes to business finance. Pay the site a visit now and get your business running as soon as possible.

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Easing the process of insurance shopping

Back in the day, taking your time to compare the offers from different insurance companies in order to get an adequate and cheap coverage for your car was quite hard and exhaustive. There was no Internet, no online quote sites and in order to get all the information you need, you had to go to agents and contact the insurance companies one by one. You had to call the representatives or go to the office in order to get a single quote for your car, and shopping around meant that you had to repeat this over and over until you get enough quotes in order to compare them. And if you needed to renew or modify your policy by adding some clauses you had to go to the office again and again. It’s evident that it all required a lot of time, patience and money, of course.

These days it’s much easier thanks to the Internet. There’s no need to call the agents or go to insurance company offices. All the information you need can be accessed from your home or job and it takes only a few minutes to get numerous quotes from companies working in your area. You can even modify and renew your policy online these days as more and more serious insurance companies are entering the web and providing the full range of their services online.

There’s also a large number of independent sites that are designed to provide the users with reliable information and tips on how to get cheap auto insurance. It has become much easier to shop for policies as you can spend only a few minutes at home and get a really attractive policy from a provider, which you can read about at numerous forums and testimonials. The customers have definitely benefited from the development of internet.

However, with so much accessible information you can easily make a lot of mistakes and get a policy that won’t give you the coverage or the support you need. When comparing auto insurance quotes online you should also bear in mind that insurance companies are quite different. There are big corporations and small local companies that compete for the buyer online and it’s hard to tell whether the provider is reliable enough when buying your policy online.

That’s why there are few tips that you have to follow when looking for auto insurance online. First of all, when comparing quotes make sure you know about the companies you are looking into. Learn about their payout rates and see if there are any complaints about any of them. The best places to find reliable information are the specialized forums or your state insurance department. You should also remember that cheap doesn’t always mean the best. You can find cheap insurance offers online, but the amount of coverage or additional fees will make the policy even more expensive as a mid-range offer from another company. The price isn’t the only factor that should determine your choice. Consider the amount of coverage and additional services that are provided with your policy and make sure to buy insurance from a reliable provider.

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Payday Loans Online


Why payday loans online? Well, here’s why. During tough times like these, it’s not uncommon to see people caught between paychecks. When prices go up everywhere and salary remains the same, it’s just getting more and more difficult to get by. When this happens, we usually have to rely on loans to get us out of the tight situation. But getting a loan means that we have to pay it back within a certain period if time. Failure to do so would result in bad credit history. This in turn will make it really difficult and sometimes nearly impossible for us to get loans in the future. Although credit history can be fixed, it’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and time is a luxury that we often do not have when it comes to money problems.

So what do we do if we’re in need of some quick cash, but is unable to get any loans from the bank because we’ve missed a few payments in the past? The answer is payday loans online or cash advance loans online. What’s so great about a type of loan that can’t give you more than$1500? Although it’s true that payday loans are rather small in terms of amount, the real beauty lies in how easy and quick it is to get, especially if you opt for online payday loans. The whole application and approval process takes less than half an hour usually, and the cash can be available in your bank account within one business day. What’s even better is that bad credit history does not matter here because lenders will not do a credit check.

So now you see, this type of loan is just perfect for those with bad credit history who need cash quickly. For all your payday loans, cash advance loans and installment loans for bad credit, be sure to to click on the link above.

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Performance Car Air Intake

Are you looking for something to enhance your car’s horsepower? If you are, then you should really get a set of performance air intake. Just let the name suggests, this accessory will enhance your car’s performance and give you that extra roar you’ve been dying for.

It’s not difficult to find a car air intake nowadays as most auto accessory stores will have them. But if it’s real quality you’re looking for, then I highly suggest CariD.com, the biggest online car and truck accessory store today. There are lots of different models of car air intakes for you to choose from. You’ll find air intakes for Audi, Aston Martin, BMW, Ford, Chrysler, Cadillac, Fiat and many more. All of these performance air intakes are high quality original products so you won’t have to worry about them breaking down after only a short while. Another advantage of shopping at CariD is that you’ll get to enjoy great service and fast shipping. Just give it a try and you’ll find out why CariD is the leader in its field.

So what are you waiting for? Your car needs that extra boost in horsepower, doesn’t it? Click on the link above and give it what it needs.

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