sanity check asap - buying a tractor this weekend

[wango tango]

It's not a scam and it's not a gamble. Insurance companies don't gamble, we pay actuaries a lot of money to look at past experience and other factors and from that determine what is likely to happen in the future and what that will cost a customer to buy the coverage we are selling. In certain areas of the country they are more prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, hail, lightning, etc. so they pay more for these things to be included. Certain types of business are more prone to losses (property and liability) so they pay more. All in all, it is way more complicated than I could possibly explain and probably more so than you could understand, dickfoster and wango tango, without years of study and experience in the industry.

RPW is correct, dickfoster and wango tango, don't expect coverage for losses that you didn't buy, you likely have exclusions, lots of them, if not you could never afford to buy the policy if everything is covered. When losses are paid without the premium coming in you are cheating everyone else that is covered by that company and driving everyone's rates up. You did read your policy, didn't you? Or have your agent go over it point by point? No? ... then don't complain about what's covered or not because you don't really know. Don't like insurance? Just be sure you have the money to pay for your own losses, and you'll need way more than a few hundred thousand if we are talking liability coverage... you can easily be sued for millions, and be expected to pay it if the accident is your fault. What people don't like a most about insurance is that you are buying a promise, not something you can touch and feel. Be sure you know what promises you are paying for.

wango tango: your earlier post said the OUTSIDE faucet was left on... the water did come from the outside, not inside. Inside the house it was in the pipes. Now who is being technical?

(full disclosure: I've worked in the commercial P&C industry for 36 yrs.)

no. the water came from IN MY HOUSE. any faucet is still my house which i have a homeowners policy with. i'll agree the devil is in the details but you have to think and reason. typical insurance point of view - cannot see the trees for the forest.

thankfully there was an executive team i talked with, and they got it COVERED. my agent will be fired next, he did next to nothing to help me. they agreed it is NOT ground water LOL. if that was true, then all water would be ground water. silly.

 

[ovrszd]

Curious how many people write the hours on their filters?

I record all changes in a notebook that I keep in the shop file cabinet. I check the notebook often so nothing gets left out. No way I'd keep up by only writing on the filters. My equipment lives in two locations. I maintain 11 engines that require filter changes.

 

[ovrszd]

It's not a scam and it's not a gamble. Insurance companies don't gamble, we pay actuaries a lot of money to look at past experience and other factors and from that determine what is likely to happen in the future and what that will cost a customer to buy the coverage we are selling. In certain areas of the country they are more prone to tornadoes, hurricanes, hail, lightning, etc. so they pay more for these things to be included. Certain types of business are more prone to losses (property and liability) so they pay more. All in all, it is way more complicated than I could possibly explain and probably more so than you could understand, dickfoster and wango tango, without years of study and experience in the industry.

RPW is correct, dickfoster and wango tango, don't expect coverage for losses that you didn't buy, you likely have exclusions, lots of them, if not you could never afford to buy the policy if everything is covered. When losses are paid without the premium coming in you are cheating everyone else that is covered by that company and driving everyone's rates up. You did read your policy, didn't you? Or have your agent go over it point by point? No? ... then don't complain about what's covered or not because you don't really know. Don't like insurance? Just be sure you have the money to pay for your own losses, and you'll need way more than a few hundred thousand if we are talking liability coverage... you can easily be sued for millions, and be expected to pay it if the accident is your fault. What people don't like a most about insurance is that you are buying a promise, not something you can touch and feel. Be sure you know what promises you are paying for.

wango tango: your earlier post said the OUTSIDE faucet was left on... the water did come from the outside, not inside. Inside the house it was in the pipes. Now who is being technical?

(full disclosure: I've worked in the commercial P&C industry for 36 yrs.)

What you wrote in your first paragraph sure describes gambling to me.

7 years ago I lost my backyard shop to fire. $193,000 in damages. I gambled and purchased insurance. The insurance gambled and sold it to me. They lost. No different than playing Blackjack or any other game of chance at the local casino.

If you can afford to replace a lost item without financial distress then don't insure it. If you can't, then insure it.

 

[ovrszd]

no. the water came from IN MY HOUSE. any faucet is still my house which i have a homeowners policy with. i'll agree the devil is in the details but you have to think and reason. typical insurance point of view - cannot see the trees for the forest.

thankfully there was an executive team i talked with, and they got it COVERED. my agent will be fired next, he did next to nothing to help me. they agreed it is NOT ground water LOL. if that was true, then all water would be ground water. silly.

I find it odd that your house isn't covered from ground water damage?? Several years ago my finished basement was flooded by water coming thru the hole in the wall that my water supply line comes thru. Covered with no debate or hesitation. I don't have flood insurance.

 

[murphy1244]

I find it odd that your house isn't covered from ground water damage?? Several years ago my finished basement was flooded by water coming thru the hole in the wall that my water supply line comes thru. Covered with no debate or hesitation. I don't have flood insurance.

Here you need to live in a FEMA flood plain to get flood insurance. I don't know exactly how it works as I would never buy land in a flood plain.

 

[ovrszd]

Here you need to live in a FEMA flood plain to get flood insurance. I don't know exactly how it works as I would never buy land in a flood plain.

I agree about the flood plain issue. It was considered an Act of Nature, no different than wind, hail, etc.

 

[whizdbiz2]

"What you wrote in your first paragraph sure describes gambling to me.

7 years ago I lost my backyard shop to fire. $193,000 in damages. I gambled and purchased insurance. The insurance gambled and sold it to me. They lost. No different than playing Blackjack or any other game of chance at the local casino."

It appears you don't know the difference between gambling and insurance. Gambling is the act or practice of risking the loss of something important by taking a chance or acting recklessly. The gamble for you would have been NOT insuring the shop. It's a zero sum game, no fire you win, with fire you lose it all.

Insurance on the other hand is coverage by contract in which one party agrees to indemnify or reimburse another for loss that occurs under the terms of the contract, in consideration of a payment proportionate to the risk involved. For the insurance company, they know they will have to pay so many dollars out of the total pot of premium collected for losses, no gamble there, it's a statistical certainty based on the experience of the kind of business they write (remember those actuaries I mentioned earlier?, that's what they do). There is no zero sum, you and everyone else pay in a small amount (compared to the total value of what's being covered), and a rather large percentage of that goes back to the folks in the group who have losses, the company (hopefully) can pay expenses and make a profit from what's left and from investments they are required by law to hold to pay those losses when they exceed premium. The company gets your premium, you get your shop paid for... win/win.

 

[Gary Fowler]

You don't say where you are...... I'd be looking at a cabelas if you are anywhere near a store, and 30k is a lot for an old tractor.......

I have to agree. I just looked up the original price on Tractordata and it says $24K new in 2004. It shows a picture of a cab model but I didn't note if the price included a cab. I don't think I would pay $6000 more than new price for a tractor with almost 2000 hours of use. Being owned by a college doesn't mean it got proper maintenance either depending on if they had a company hired to run it/service it or if they used college students to mow the grounds and they just cranked it and ran it.

 

[paulfun9]

"What you wrote in your first paragraph sure describes gambling to me.

7 years ago I lost my backyard shop to fire. $193,000 in damages. I gambled and purchased insurance. The insurance gambled and sold it to me. They lost. No different than playing Blackjack or any other game of chance at the local casino."

It appears you don't know the difference between gambling and insurance. Gambling is the act or practice of risking the loss of something important by taking a chance or acting recklessly. The gamble for you would have been NOT insuring the shop. It's a zero sum game, no fire you win, with fire you lose it all.

Insurance on the other hand is coverage by contract in which one party agrees to indemnify or reimburse another for loss that occurs under the terms of the contract, in consideration of a payment proportionate to the risk involved. For the insurance company, they know they will have to pay so many dollars out of the total pot of premium collected for losses, no gamble there, it's a statistical certainty based on the experience of the kind of business they write (remember those actuaries I mentioned earlier?, that's what they do). There is no zero sum, you and everyone else pay in a small amount (compared to the total value of what's being covered), and a rather large percentage of that goes back to the folks in the group who have losses, the company (hopefully) can pay expenses and make a profit from what's left and from investments they are required by law to hold to pay those losses when they exceed premium. The company gets your premium, you get your shop paid for... win/win.

The more you describe it the more I have to also consider it a gamble. One of the main reasons I have dealt with rate hikes on insurance is because they gambled and lost and then had to raise their stake to try and cover those losses before the next round hits.
Fancy words, terminology that makes it sound like anything besides a gamble is just that. They are gambling that they will have only so much loss based on their research and will come out a good bit ahead just like a good gambler.
Fact is a good gambler knows the odds very well and is willing to risk nonly so much just like the insurance company will only risk so much which is why they write so many exclusions into the policy. Just like a gambler they will gamble on paying you for some of those exclusions but the buy in will be more.
Fancy words and terminology do not take the basic theory away and in the end its still a gamble no matter which way you slice it.

 

[ovrszd]

The more you describe it the more I have to also consider it a gamble. One of the main reasons I have dealt with rate hikes on insurance is because they gambled and lost and then had to raise their stake to try and cover those losses before the next round hits.
Fancy words, terminology that makes it sound like anything besides a gamble is just that. They are gambling that they will have only so much loss based on their research and will come out a good bit ahead just like a good gambler.
Fact is a good gambler knows the odds very well and is willing to risk nonly so much just like the insurance company will only risk so much which is why they write so many exclusions into the policy. Just like a gambler they will gamble on paying you for some of those exclusions but the buy in will be more.
Fancy words and terminology do not take the basic theory away and in the end its still a gamble no matter which way you slice it.

Yep...