Canadian Personal Finance Blog

Archive for the ‘Insurance’ Category

As part of the gyrations I must go through to purchase a new vehicle, I must get my new vehicle insured (that is the law, no getting away from that).

The easiest thing for me to do, is to simply remove my old vehicle and add my new vehicle, and pay the difference in premium (if there is any).

This very task I attempted to do, however, I noted that since I am now a member of the Public Service, I receive a discount from my Insurance company, and I thought this would make things so much easier, however, I was mistaken.

Currently I am part of a discount plan given that I was a Nortel employee with this insurance company, and I have my cars insured using this discount. I assumed if I called the “broker” for the Public Service side of the discount, they would simply transfer me over as a customer and that would be it. Yes, dear reader, you guessed it, nothing is as simple as I think it is going to be, and thus the story takes a left hand turn.

Insurance Sequence of Events

I called up the brokers, and said, I am an existing client of the insurance company and I’d like to add a vehicle to my coverage, the young lady on the phone was more than happy to help me out, and she asked for my policy ID to “bring up my file”. I exercised my abilities in the phonetic alphabet rattling of various Alfa, Bravo, Tango and other letters and the young lady typed it all in. There was a long pause and she repeated back to me what I had just told her, and I agreed she had the correct policy number.

Her response surprised me when she said, “I am sorry sir, your policy is not coming up, do you have your policy with this broker?”, I said, “Pardon?”. Evidently since who I have my insurance with is not nearly as important as from whom I have purchased my insurance. I was told that I would need to call the “broker” I had dealt with previously to add my new vehicle.

The interesting twist on this is that the “broker” I deal with is actually part of my insurance company (from what I can tell), and thus I must call my insurance company, have them transfer me to my “broker” and then I can add my new vehicle.

I did finally succeed in getting a new quote for my new vehicle so that task is now complete.

Obtuse Insurance Games

My insurance policies actually renew in a few months, so now I will do something so obtuse that I must write it down to believe this, but here goes:

I will phone an insurance broker to get a quote for my car insurance with the same insurance company that I currently have to see if I can get a cheaper rate for my car insurance, even though the policy will be with the exact same insurance company.

I guess it makes sense given the discounts available, and the free market at work, but it always seems so obtuse that I can get a cheaper price for the exact same product, by simply calling someone else. Yes, I am naive, I assume the cheapest price should just be the normal price, but that is another story.

Interesting Brand Name Funny

When Buick introduced it’s new Luxury Sports Sedan (I have no idea what this class of car is for, but let’s stay on track here) they did not check with their offices in Montreal about the new Brand Name they were going with. This vehicles name is the LaCrosse, but in French Canadian slang, LaCrosse means … ummm … let me put this in a delicate way … male sexual self-gratification, to put it as delicately as I can. I was unaware of this, but I did check with a co-worker who is French Canadian and sure enough, that is the case.

This is almost as good as the Chevy Nova, which in Spanish translates to “No Go”!

OK, nothing to do with money, but still quite funny

For the Remembrance Day week, there was much to reflect on. We live in a great Country (Canada) and are lucky for those who have fought for us and those in our Armed Forces today. Thank You.

I was also excited to see that the Ottawa Public Library has updated their “Stone Knives and Bearskins” interface and are now testing a brand new interface which I like a great deal (and you can find me on their as bigcajunman as well). Try it out and tell the folks what you think of it.

From the Financial Blogosphere

Given the N.C.F.B.A. met this week, I always feel a level of rejuvenation in my blog, and also a level of confusion, given some of the topics that are discussed by some of the members are well over my head financially. I listen and attempt to learn as much as I can, and then go and read about the topics more (so for me it’s like going to a seminar on high level finance ideas).

• Michael James wrote about Veterans’ Pensions and just how little we pay permanently disabled soldiers and members of the military (shockingly low, but might be tax free).
• Speaking of disabilities the Canadian Capitalist wrote about The Sad Story of Nortel LTD Beneficiaries which is another scandalous issue. These folks are going to lose their benefits (or already have lost them), because of how Nortel ran their program. Read the posting, and then ask yourself how your company does Long Term Disability benefits.
• Soon to be Television Personality Preet at WhereDoesAllMyMoneyGo put up a useful video on What is a Mutual Fund for those wanting to learn more about how that investment vehicle works. Preet will hopefully soon be seen on the W Network on a weekly basis, stay tuned.
• Larry MacDonald (who promises to write a follow up one day of his successful book Nortel: Telecomm Empire) writes a useful posting on the Quotable Guide to Passive Investing where he gives you some quips from some very good books about passive investing.
• The Four Pillars asked Should the Government Bail Out Pension Plans? I think my answer is maybe, but they should definitely REGULATE them much more closely! What has been allowed to transpire at GM and Nortel is at least an abomination if not actually criminal.
• Gail Vaz-Oxlade tells you 8 Reasons Why You Don’t Save right on target as usual (wish she wasn’t sometimes).
• Promod at Riscario Insider write about Three Reasons Why Financial Literacy Eludes Us again, wish he wasn’t right.

Have a great weekend all, remember it’s time to put your Snow Tires on!

Water, Water Everywhere… Please Get out of my Basement

In Ottawa we are having a very damp summer, OK a downright wet summer really. It has been mostly an inconvenience for those who love the outdoors but the volume of rain falling is now becoming something worse.

For the farmers around Ottawa there is too much water and crops are being spoiled by the deluge we have seen in July.  This could mean less local produce in our stores, which is disappointing and more likely more expensive for the consumer.

The other issue now is basement flooding. Some folks are in lower areas and are getting water coming into their homes through their foundations and that problem is causing a run on contractors who repair and waterproof foundations, and a run on the sale of submersible sump pumps as well. This kind of damage may or may not be covered by home insurance, depends on what insurance the homeowner has, so there are a lot of houses with a lot of damp carpet on the front lawn and damaged furniture in the trash (from water damage).

The other more fun issue that is arising is backing up sewer systems. This is where the drains in the basement of the house “backs up” and the sewer instead of taking water away from the house, does the opposite and brings the sewer contents into the basement. This damage is much worse and may not be covered under your insurance either (you need to check closely in your documentation). This kind of backup is very bad because not only are your basement contents ruined by the water, you have contamination of your basement by “sewer contents” (if you catch my drift). Your basement becomes a Bio-Hazard and you may not be allowed back in your house until it is cleaned up.

Evidently there is a “valve” device that you can put on your basement drain (the one in the floor of your foundation) that will attempt to stop this kind of “back up”, however, I can’t find any examples of this on line. If anyone cares to comment on the insurance side of things, or the preventative measure of this valve, please feel free to add your comments in.

Read your home insurance and weigh the value of getting coverage for home flooding.

For those of you like me who have procrastinated about getting their Tax payment in today is the day in Canada (unless you want to pay interest and have the CRA come and look closer into your lives).

Go buy Quicktax and get it done!

Unemployment Car Insurance Discount?

I phoned up my Car Insurance company to tell ask a question or two about my insurance and to add my daughter who is learning to drive on to the policy. The second question asked was, “… are you still employed at…” to which I answered no I was not, which caused an interesting sequence of events.

1. Adding a driver who only has their G1 in Ontario with this insurance company costs nothing, because they are not allowed to be driving without another licensed driver in the car, so that was nice. When she gets her G2, then it is going to cost me some money, but that is a few months away.
2. Since I am no longer commuting to work (i.e. Unemployed) I get a $23 a year discount because I am not driving my car to work. Interesting!

I had not thought about (2) but they did have down on my policy that I commuted in my car to work, so the discount does actually make sense. If I return to work and drive there, the discount no longer applies, unless of course, I take the bus to work (in Ottawa that is a stretch, unless I am working downtown).

iPhone, iPod, Android and Blackberry Readers

If you fit that category go on over to my working site How Not to Make a Fortune on the Web, and try out the new theme for mobile users and tell me what you think. I am testing it over there and may bring it over here some time in the near future, if it seems to be working ok. It’s kind of slick and I like it, but I am also a very bad judge of what other folks like and dislike.

I had forgotten about a great wealth of very interesting talks that exist at Ted.com which is an amazing site to wander through and just watch the amazing talks by some amazing people.

In this amazing video David Hoffman (filmmaker and writer) he talks about his loss of his “things” 9 days previous due to a fire. Now Mr. Hoffman did not lose EVERYTHING, but he did lose most “every thing” he owned in his house and it is very interesting to hear someone speak about their loss so soon after a major fire. 

This is a short video, but well worth watching. Is your home insurance paid up? Do you have a home inventory of all that you might lose in a fire?