On a recent family trip to the UK I learned something new about car rental insurance. During my many years of business travel, we were always told to turn down the collision damage waiver, or CDW, insurance offered by the rental company. Our personal credit card provides rental car insurance, but you must decline the CDW and reserve and pay with that card.
When we picked up our car hire just outside of Oxford we were pleased to see we’d been upgraded to a BMW 500 sedan. 

I recently posted a request for comment about the appropriate amount of umbrella insurance one should have. I was hoping to learn of some formula or rule-of-thumb stating that “if your net worth is $X, you should carry $Y of umbrella coverage.” As far as I can tell, there is no such formula or rule.
Many thanks to those who responded.
Mark Eckman wrote that most insurance companies offer a maximum umbrella of $5 million.
Patrick Brennan’s insurance representative regarded $500,000 of liability coverage on his auto policy and a $1 million umbrella as sufficient for his needs.

Many HumbleDollar readers have saved and invested regularly over their working years and were able to retire comfortably. Unfortunately, a lawsuit could threaten that financial security.
One possible scenario: If, heaven forbid, you are involved in a traffic accident resulting in severe bodily injury or loss of life, a legal judgement against you could destroy your nest egg.
The liability coverage on a home or auto policy may not offer enough protection. For this reason,

Every day brings me another insurance offer. In today’s mail, I was invited to insure against identity theft for $34.99 a month.
Last week, I was sent a “final notice” to purchase a home warranty. In the same batch of mail, I was offered a $20,000 whole life insurance policy for $132 a month.
My most faithful correspondent is my water company. Every month it invites me to insure the water pipes under my lawn for about $1,000 a year.

Recently, and spurred by the horrific fires in L.A., there’s been a lot of attention on home insurance, including skyrocketing premiums. Like many people, we have our home, auto, and umbrella policies with the same company, and have seen our premiums increase dramatically in the last few years.
I’ve occasionally heard mention, without much in the way of specifics, of a “longevity benefit” in staying with the same insurance company rather than constantly shopping around and switching.

Many people are convinced that buying term life insurance is the best option from the standpoint of both affordability and coverage. However, I bought whole life insurance a long time ago. The agent represented MONY, and at the time MONY was a very highly rated insurance company. I got married (first time) in 1978. My employer at the time provided bare minimum benefits, and I thought insurance to protect my young wife, who was still in school,

I am sure that we have all been following the current tragedy going on in Los Angeles with the large fires burning there.  One of my friends in the insurance industry told me that he had heard from someone in the reinsurance business that the total insured losses from these fires will be more than Twenty Billion Dollars.  
So, I have been thinking about how a catastrophe of this magnitude could be financed.  In insurance,

ONE SPRING DAY IN 2022, an elderly woman entered Paris’s Picasso Museum to see a new exhibit. Among the items on display was a decorative blue jacket, which was positioned on a wall next to a portrait of Picasso.
The woman liked the look of the jacket, so she took it down from its hook, put it in her bag and quietly walked out the front door. Only later did the museum discover the theft,

In a previous post I outlined what I see as the dilemma Americas face when it comes to paying for health care. 
Since then I have been tracking social media comments on the topic. If the people posting are close to reflecting a significant portion of the population, we are in trouble. 
I suspect the lack of a fundamental understanding of insurance, how companies operate and individual responsibility is not limited to health issues, but also explains a lot about how people manage their finances and use the resources available to them –

ONE DAY, AS I WAS walking through the mathematics building at the community college I attended, I saw a poster that screamed, “Math Majors?”
That got my attention. The poster introduced me to a career possibility: becoming an actuary. My job path was set. Or so I thought.
The actuarial career path consists of passing either five or 10 standardized tests. Complete five, and you become an associate. Complete 10, and you’re a fellow.

So reads a Wall Street Journal headline.
This begs the question, how do Americans want to pay for their health care?

They don’t want to spend their money- even for relatively minor expenses like a co-pay
They want someone else to take the risk, but not make any money 
They want quality care, but with little idea how to define that other than more of it at high prices
They don’t want high premiums or taxes
They don’t want to wait for care
They don’t want restrictions on accessing care or selecting a provider
They don’t want anyone approving care or denying to pay for it.

And by that, I mean shopping for 2025 health insurance.
For my 2024 coverage  (57-year-old male, zip code 64108) I’ve used HealthCare.gov to get coverage via Ambetter Standard Expanded Bronze for $803/month ($7,500.00 deductible/$9,400.00 max out of pocket/$50 copay).
For 2025 Ambetter actually reduced my premium to $731/month.
Since I’m quite healthy I wanted to get a plan with a lower premium and tried ehealthinsurance.com but the best they could offer was $827/month for an Ambetter Health Solutions Bronze HSA ($6,400 deductible/$8,050 max out of pocket/20% Coinsurance after deductible copay).

I view it a matter of when, not if, large companies will be hacked. A list of breaches from this year alone  shows hacks at Truist, JPMorgan Chase, and Bank of America. I don’t think the likes of Vanguard, Fidelty or Swchab are immune. And while I practice reasonable infosec hygene (2FA wherever possible, etc) I KNOW I’m not immune: the computers, smartphones, etc that I use to manage my accounts can be hacked.
That said,

WHEN I WAS A NEWSPAPER reporter in Florida in the early 1980s, we were preoccupied with the chance that a hurricane would spin out of the Gulf of Mexico and slam into Florida’s West coast. It would be the biggest story of our lives if a big one struck the low-lying coastal city of St. Petersburg. It never came our way, fortunately for everyone.
The most serious storm I covered back then was called the “no-name storm” because it didn’t muster hurricane-strength winds.

I’m curious about how many HD readers have arranged for long term care in some way, shape, or form.  My policy seems overly complicated, unsurprising since it is an insurance policy.  I know it was explained to me at the time.
In the year I turned 60 I used the cash value from a whole life insurance policy to purchase a long term care plan.  I no longer needed that life insurance.  The actuaries computed a maximum total long term care benefit,