Your Car Insurance with Matt R. Hale

31 Comments

1. Facebook means what it says Your Face is now our BOOK. KEEP POSTING. Insurance is an annuity good luck! You have nothing! ! Everyone says you are insured! Good luck!

2. Excellent discussion, highly recommended for everyone. BTW, government regulations (EPA, MPG, FMVSS, etc) have driven the vehicle complexity off the charts, and whether you realize it or not, software has become the ‘overlord’ to protect you when driving. There are well over 50 electronic modules in a modern vehicle and mechanics are not software engineers, which is why service/repair may not always fix the problem.

3. This was excellent and it came at the perfect time! I have a nice list of TO DO’s. I am thankful for the insight!

   Best to take care of the few things now before policies are needed! Next week I talk to my agent about “rate hikes”. I will be shopping some independent insurance agents.

4. Great chat! Wanted to say that there is insurance coverage to insure the difference between a potential settlement on a total loss vehicle and any outstanding loan on that vehicle which is called “Gap Insurance”. It’s often offered in Calif. by the finance managers when a car is purchased at a dealership but can be offered by the company who holds your auto insurance if sanctioned in your state. Good to ask your insurance broker about that. Matt, your tip about taking out insurance on a rental car and including the waiver on your deductible should damage to the rental car occur is a good one. I suggest folks take pictures of the rental car when they pick it up to guard against any attempted accusation of exterior damage by the rental company when they return the car. It has saved me! Your assessment of the ER Departments in hospitals being bill happy is totally accurate as well. Catherine, your advice on archiving, keeping accurate documentation and selecting a representative should you be incapacitated to help you in a situation like that are all excellent advice points and key to being successful in a claim situation. Washington is a unique state as regards insurance in many ways so your advice Matt to seek representation by an insurance broker or attorney local to your area is a great one. Just some feedback here from my 25 years in the insurance industry in Calif with 3 years as an agency claims manager. In my opinion, it comes down to having your original insurance contract, reading all the exclusions, knowing your contract, reviewing the rating on the insurance company underwriting the contract, not simply having faith in your broker, keeping premium payments current and if you don’t know your contract, hiring someone who can assist you or educate you on it.

5. For anyone interested, I have an excellent car/home insurance broker-who knows what’s going on-in northern Alabama. I sent my broker the shorty. I wish I could send him the entire video clip.

6. PS to my previous comment. How about sending this video to all of the Insurance Commissioners in each state?

7. Great interview for someone who has been hit by others six times (and still recovering years later). It would be great to have a sample car insurance policy which shows the coverage and wording. My last company would not disclose the information my attorney filed about my accident because the information (which I had 100% supplied to him) belonged to him. The attorney was a real piece of cake too.

8. Thank you for this informative interview. We will be increasing our protective coverage.
   J.D. Power does an auto claims customer satisfaction study every year. I don’t know if it has value but I like to review it. Here is a link to the most recent one.
   https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-auto-claims-satisfaction-study

9. This has been a most illuminating discussion. I will be looking for an insurance broker. I have home and car insurance through Liberty Mutual, but now am wondering if a smaller company would be better. I must admit, as many times as I have looked at my policies, I don’t think I understand them at all. Thank you Matt Hale and Catherine for your great intelligence.

10. I had a friend get hit by an uninsured motorist that ran a red light. She was pregnant with her 5th child and had brain damage brain surgery and could do math at 2nd grade level.

    The uninsured policy did not benefit them at all.

    So back 30 years ago I was young and saw an infomercial on this guy “givens” who sold a $200 three ring binder on how to buy theses things with definitions of the words at the beginning.

    At age 26 I got my first financial advisor who was fee for service and when he looked at everything in my life he said I had done well with insurance. I had followed this book at did not so uninsured but knew my collision would cover if I couldn’t cover things.

    I was hit by a car riding a bike 6 years ago life flighted etc and I only got 100,000 because the kid only had that much insurance.

    So I am thinking this through now in light of the increased accidents and think I want disability insurance that I can get paid for my disability. How would uninsured be better than just having that??

    1. There is not enough space here to cover this topic thoroughly. Disability insurance is its own can of worms. The probability of getting in a collision by an uninsured and not being left disabled but with a stack of medical bills is high. Disability insurance kicks in usually for a period of time when you cannot do your own occupation then when that benefit exhausts, you have to prove you cannot do any occupation. Disability insurance companies love to use these definitions to not pay claims.

11. Very helpful!

12. Sounds like we are approaching a post-law model. Why have insurance that pays for you, and them, and the insurance company? It’s one sided. We are in a Law-less environment. I feel strongly that I should just stop paying for a service that I will never be able to rely on. The government clearly wants chaos and wants to deplete our resources dry. Just look at the border situation and the south Chicago situation.

13. Wonderful discussion!
    Not only has our local insurance broker educated us, but he also allows us to pay our premiums with cash – and it keeps our business dollars local while building community relationships and trust.

14. Best to ALWAYS drive with a QUALITY front & back dash camera ….and another hidden camera recording the same as well ..in the event your visible dash cameras get stolen from your vehicle while you lay in your car injured. Hide your purse inside the car while driving…dont leave it on the passenger seat where it’s visible to passerby folks. In Los Angeles, I’ve heard gals gets their purses stolen from inside their cars by bystanders while the gals sit injured in their car before the cops get there. So, plan ahead. It’s a terrible culture these days, so plan strategically.

    1. Sound advice, especially for numerous urban areas.

    2. Hi Cheryl, sound advice. It has been years since I tried to solve the problem of having an always on recording front and rear video recording cam. At that time, all the tech was absolute junk. I learned years ago by watching Russian driving videos that the only protection that Russian drivers ever had was to record everything all the time the vehicle was on.
       In the commercial transportation industry, there are cameras that are installed permanently in semi trucks.
       Have you identified a viable technology for this need?

15. I thought I knew more than I actually do about both insurance & electric vehicles. Very illuminating discussion I did not expect! As far as drivers and driving goes; there is no question both are going down hill fast. Started w/the plandemic. Must be coincidence!

16. I live in a beach community in NJ. I work from home. When I use my car its scary. People are not paying attention.

17. With special nod to Garrett B. Gunderson over at Wealth Factory, my insurance philosophy is:

    Insure the catastrophic, pay cash for the inconsequential.

    Transfer as much catastrophic risk as possible to your local, reliable (& as Matt Hale mentioned perhaps a non-publicly traded) insurance company.

    I have AAA also. For auto I have MAXED out PIP and Uninsured/underinsured at 500k/1MM – I also pay for a total loss replacement rider which will pay for the current new cost of my car if it’s totaled. I also have home insurance with AAA & a 1MM personal umbrella policy. It costs me an extra $160 annually for the umbrella coverage. It did go through underwriting, but that is a small price to pay to transfer an additional 1MM in risk in my opinion.

    Just ask your agent (in person) to run the numbers and purchase as much coverage as you’re allowed by your jurisdiction. You will be amazed at how little the extra coverage costs you and you can decide if it’s worth the extra cash.

    This is entirely opposite of what most people do – they economize and cut back on insurance when times are tough (as Matt stated in the interview).

    I do get irked by the nuisance premium increases every 6-12 months though. Perhaps this is due to the increased cost of EV claims and reckless endangerment and accidents we are seeing on the roads now.

    I highly recommend this interview! It’s OUTSTANDING. Thank you Matt and CAF 🙏

    1. Thank you! Good advice. Love the replacement rider will look into that!

    2. FWIW, I currently have $2mm uninsured motorist coverage with a $250 deductible. It is possible to get. I am certainly going to be finding out how that blends with the rest of the limits which seem to me need increasing.

18. Tip: Everyone needs to keep Arnica 10M and Aconitum 10M in their glove compartments for when you’re in an accident. Aconitum is for shock and Arnica is for physical blows. If you ride a bike, you can duct tape then to your crossbar.

    In an accident you can take one pellet of Arnica 10M every 15 minutes (if you’re of average sensitivity). Throw in some Bellis perennis 10M (for internal injury) every 15 minutes for good measure. Aconitum every hour.

    Do that for a good 24 hours and you’ll save yourself a lifetime of hurt. Then get yourself to a qualified homeopath (which is the hardest part).

    That’s what I did when I had my accident. If I remember correctly, I needed 15-20 different remedies in high potencies in the six weeks following the accident (I didn’t have any broken bones). And my accident was severe – I had a near death experience.

    1. Great advice, Elizabeth. Thank you.

    2. Wow, thanks Elisabeth for your advice. Makes sense to me; I love Homeopathy.

19. May I suggest that with the lack of police around to investigate accidents it makes having credible witnesses even more useful. Was a passenger in a truck that was t-boned in an intersection and a lady who worked as an insurance claims adjustor approached me to volunteer her statement affirming that the other driver was the cause of the crash. Nearly dismissed her as she patiently waited to inform me of this as I was preoccupied with other matters. Talk about a very credible witness that swung the legal decision in the correct way while having no police at the scene.

20. This was an excellent expose. It isn’t the TV screens in the vehicles causing distractions as much as it is the driving skills and hubris of drivers pulling illegal stunts that is creating a dangerous driving environment much like the third world now. Every day I am stunned at some illegal maneuver where the driver crosses multiple lanes to make a left turn–or a right turn in front of other people and more audacious maneuvers. This situation has escalated parallel to the increased immigration policy–no matter what geographical area these immigrants come from.

    In California, we now have cyclists and e-bikes utilizing major thoroughfares with the refusal to submit to a large vehicle and causing chaos on the streets. They ride in the same lanes as a vehicle driver. Kids on their bikes, no matter the type, have been bred to have the right-of-way so refuse to even look before they dart out in front of a car. One young girl almost ruined my life the other day (financially and emotionally), deciding to dart out and cross the street on her bike in front of me, without looking or pausing to see if she was cutting anyone off. I had to slam on my brakes when I was driving the speed limit a block from my house. This is becoming a very large problem. The entitlement is taught in the schools and the home.

    I stay off the freeways as much as possible. It is constant lane changing and speeding when there is no where to go.

    1. I did not make it clear in the interview that I was including cell phone in the “screens”. I do agree though. People just don’t seem to care about others on the road.

    2. I have a very different perspective on the freeways or interstate. Those roads are more heavily monitored and responded to. State patrol often responds and patrols. Priority is given to the interstate roads. You will have less problems from other drivers because of the ability to keep a consistent pace with less stopping/starting, and the lanes are much larger with shoulders that are usable.
       I recently drove back from Georgia to Wisconsin and was a complete idiot thinking I could go north out of Atlanta avoiding the interstate because I felt like driving on the interstate around Atlanta and through Nashville was like a game of frogger.
       On the way there, I did the interstate. On the way back, I was a fool and took the state highways north which were often 2 lane through some of the most bonkers landscape with 10 mph switchback turns and a slew of local drivers behind me who wanted to kill me because I was going the speed limit.
       Driving through the mountains was equally unenjoyable on the 2 lane highway. I managed to get back on the interstate and soon appreciated the 6 – 8 lanes with separation from oncoming traffic and the ability for other drivers to have their speed needs met in other lanes.
       I have also read enormous amounts about when you drive through small towns, the local police are looking for non-locals to exploit, if that is how they roll. There are some very predatory jurisdictions who also exploit their locals.
       I have to look at it in terms of total risk management. I will be sticking to the interstate in the future.

21. Will the interview cover any information for a pedestrian hit by a car? One of my friends was hit by a car while she was out walking in her neighborhood. She had surgery and has been in recovery for two months. She’s just starting to walk. She has an attorney. I’m wondering if there are important things she needs to know as she works with the attorney. Thank you!

22. Yesterday I received notice that my auto insurance is going up AGAIN! I’m looking forward to this timely interview.

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