Personal Finance For Dummies®, 6th Edition

Chapter 15. Insurance: Getting What You Need at the Best Price

In This Chapter

• Understanding my three laws of buying insurance

• What to do if you're denied coverage

• Getting your claim money

Unless you work in the industry, you may find insurance to be a dreadfully boring topic. Most people associate insurance with disease, death, and disaster and would rather do just about anything other than review or spend money on insurance. But because you won't want to deal with money hassles when you're coping with catastrophes — illness, disability, death, fires, floods, earthquakes, and so on — you should secure insurance well before you need it.

Insurance is probably the most misunderstood and least monitored area of personal finance. Studies show that more than 90 percent of Americans purchase and carry the wrong types and amounts of insurance coverage. My own experience as a financial counselor confirms this statistic. Most people are overwhelmed by all the jargon in sales and policy statements. Thus, they pay more than necessary for their policies and fail to get coverage through the best companies.

In this chapter, I tell you how to determine what kinds of insurance you need, explain what you can do if you're denied coverage, and give you advice on getting your claims filed. Later chapters discuss types of insurance in detail, including insurance on people (Chapter 16) and on possessions (Chapter 17).

Discovering My Three Laws of Buying Insurance

I know your patience and interest in finding ...