John Rush sheds light on the often misunderstood topic of insurance, emphasizing the need for annual reviews and understanding true replacement costs. With tales from his personal experiences, he underscores the importance of ensuring adequate coverage, not just for the present but to provide peace of mind against unforeseen catastrophes. Whether it’s about understanding your insurance policy or considering modern alternatives for emergency communications, this episode is packed with essential information every homeowner needs to hear.
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This is Ready Radio, preparing you to be ready for anything, now. Here’s your survival guide for Ready Radio, John Rush.
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All right, welcome. Ready Radio, KLZ 560. First live program of 2025. January the 10th is today’s date. If you’re listening to a replay, you know what the date is. And I appreciate you all listening. We’re doing this now for several years. So thank you all very much. Thanks to all of our sponsors, the folks that make this happen on a weekly basis. And please utilize. Those, if you would, go to ready-radio.com. Find all of our partners there, and when you use one of them, please let them know that you hear them here on Ready Radio, and I appreciate that greatly. All right, several things I want to cover today. First things first, the California fires, which we’ve talked about in the past here on Ready Radio in regards to even some of the fires we’ve had in Colorado as to how do we prepare ourselves. We have been victim to similar fires to what they’ve had out in California right now. Not maybe to that degree, although what happened up in the Boulder area and even what happened up in Granby, had Granby been more populated earlier, Like California was, it would have been very, very similar. But in both situations, you know, houses and belongings and everything completely burned to the ground. And things like that can happen. Now, before I get into what I feel each of us should do to be prepared for those sorts of things, and I have some life lessons along that line because, as a lot of you know, I lost a house up in Granby. and the Troublesome Fire years ago. So I have a little bit of experience with how a lot of this stuff works, the insurance side and so on. And yeah, frankly, even out in California, with a lot of those folks just like happened up in the Louisville Superior area, most will be underinsured. We’ll get into some of that today. And what’s going to happen in California next, who knows, because it may get hard for them to get insurance, period. Now, I do want to talk about some of the things that are going around the internet and so on I read some different things today and at times I do just have to shake my head at what some people post because it’s like you’re not really that ignorant are you I mean you really show your ignorance at times with some of the things that get posted and I’m not directing this at any of you that listen because I don’t think that’s you that do but for example you’ll see a meme floating around where it’s circling the ocean it’s circling the fire saying there’s water there use it something to that effect Well, let me explain as somebody that understands that end of things pretty well because in some of the things that I do, the salt component of that, in this case the water, creates some issues. It’s not as simple as just pumping it and shooting it on the fire. Some of you may think so, but it’s not. And not saying they couldn’t do that. In fact, if you prepared, which is what we talk about here on Ready Radio, if you prepared in advance to be able to do some of those things on the front side, pump ocean water up and onto some of those structures and so on, that’s a whole different scenario. Problem is, of course, they didn’t plan for that. But given the fact that they didn’t plan for that, you can’t take… the same equipment that they’re using for freshwater and pump saltwater through it. It’s possible to do it, but it won’t last long, folks. And you may put out a few structures and do some things along those lines, but that piece of equipment that you used to do that likely will have to be completely rebuilt when it’s all said and done because the saltwater and the corrosion from and so on is enormous. And again, it’s just not feasible. And for a lot of you that maybe don’t know this, and I think some of the people that post some of these things probably don’t, some of the fire trucks and fire apparatuses and so on, you know, they can start in the low hundreds of thousands of dollars per unit all the way up to a million dollars plus for a rig. So you’re going to risk as a city, county, whatever the case may be, the investment that you’ve used taxpayer dollars for in that piece of equipment and run saltwater through it. No, you’re not. So for some of you that are posting some of those memes, please stop. You show your ignorance when you do. Show you really don’t know what you’re talking about. Yes, I’ve also seen some of the planes that are able to take the seawater and then go dump it. But keep in mind, those are made for that. Completely different scenario with that. Now, I’m not saying there’s not fault with what’s going on in California, the preparedness, the water, the shortages of not cutting back the growth and so on. I’ve talked about that on The Daily Show a couple of different times now this week. I’m not giving them a pass by any means, but what I’m saying is, especially we as conservatives, when we post things that are technically not accurate, It makes us look really dumb. And I say that a lot, especially on this show, because the whole preparedness thing, you know, quote, unquote, being a prepper, a good friend of mine and I, in fact, we’ll talk to him next week. Bill, if you’re listening, we’ve talked about this and the fact that just the whole term prepper is a negative connotation to some people. It makes you sound like you’re really out there and you’re some sort of a weirdo. And that’s not what this program is about. We want you to be prepared for the what-ifs or for anything that comes along in life. That could be a big snowstorm, could be a tornado, could be a hurricane, could be a power outage, could be an EMP, could be a flood, you name it. just bad wind here in Colorado. I mean, there’s all sorts of things that can come along, and we even get into some of the preparedness end of things on what do you do if your car breaks down on the side of a busy freeway? I mean, I get into all of those different things, which your average, quote-unquote, prepper show won’t do, because I want everybody to be prepared for everything, not just that, quote-unquote, end-of-the-world scenario, which, by the way, may not ever come in our lifetime. I have no idea. I don’t have a crystal ball. No one does. So my point with some of these posts is, number one, like anything with social media, think twice before posting. I don’t care what it is. I saw somebody else posting today talking about how, you know, what’s happening in California is, you know, Revelation, whatever. And I went and actually read that particular passage in Revelation and trying to figure out how that correlates. And I know my scripture pretty well, and the reality is it doesn’t. So, again, where I’m going with this is be extra careful when you post those things because you have influence probably more than you think. And people are looking at what you post. And the last thing that you want to be known for is a weirdo that posts all sorts of things that, frankly, might have a little nugget of truth but are probably not true truth. wholeheartedly, and you’re discounted easily, meaning that when you do actually have something worthwhile to say and post, no one is going to recognize that or read it because you’re a nut job. No one wants to be known as a nut job. And sorry to say there’s too many of them out there on our side. So I just want to do a little explanation on there’s a reason why ocean water is not used to put out those fires in their current situation. Like I said, I’m not saying that they couldn’t prepare for that and have some pumping equipment and things along those lines that potentially would work for that. But you’re not going to take your normal, typical freshwater fire truck And do that. no matter what anybody out there says. Now, I’ve also heard from different people that, you know, they worry about the saltwater on the vegetation and so on. You know, honestly, I think that’s the least of their worries. You’re going to have a certain amount of things going on after a fire, regardless of what you’ve done with the salt and the vegetation and so on. All of that dirt and land and so on is going to have to be completely gone through, scraped, redone anyway. So that’s a non-issue. That part doesn’t bother me at all. And you could use saltwater to put those fires out. But you have to have proper equipment to do so. And I can tell you right now that most likely, well, I already know, they don’t have that equipment out there. They’ve probably never thought through that. Now, I’ll go one step further. Part of the problem, and I’ve said this many, many times on the weekly show, one of my biggest complaints with California is, number one, there’s no management. It’s a disaster as a state goes. The whole water management thing is another disaster. Why there isn’t desalinization. If they want to go ahead and divert all the water out to the ocean and save the fish, great. Then put some desalinization plants in and have extra water that way. Using that water for drinking and so on and saving some of the other reservoir water for some of these things that they’re encountering right now. There are solutions to this, by the way. They’re just not willing to step up and make those things happen, whether it be because of cost or environmental concerns or whatever the case may be. You know, no offense. They would rather go put money into homeless things and illegal immigration and, and, and, and, and. They would rather do that and make sure that their fire departments are woke. And then brag about all the lesbians that are now trying to put out fires. And I’m not joking when I say that because there are actual postings and things out there of these particular ladies bragging about the fact that they’re lesbians working in the fire department. So I’ll get into more of that probably next week as more of that continues to be uncovered. But my point really was be careful what you repost. Making sure that it’s accurate. So that at the end of the day, you don’t look like a fool. Because ultimately, that’s not what we want to look like. All right. A couple of other things. Now, let me get this one out of the way, too. Here’s another one I don’t believe. I saw something today that basically showed P. Diddy’s house burning, which I don’t even know if it is. P. Diddy’s house burning, and that’s the reason the fire started. Because of all of the evidence and things that are inside. Come on, folks. Really. Honestly. Honestly. That is a huge stretch. So that’s another one where you repost that and you just look like a fool. So don’t. Even if you’re tempted to. Even if it sounds great, don’t. All right. One other thing I did look at, which would have applied to this situation. Elon Musk now has given the folks the ability to be inside of that area and text and so on, and he’s worked out a deal with T-Mobile where they’re linking up to Starlink and people can now text and communicate and get in contact with loved ones and so on. I was looking at some things over vacation, over the holidays. I haven’t ordered any of these yet because I’m still doing some research, but I found a product called Rapid Radios. Rapid radios. And they’re not a ham radio. They’re still working off of the cell network that we have coast to coast, but they do it in such a way that their packet usage, quote unquote, is done to where it’s very… low usage in the tower meaning that it gets priority when it actually goes through so even if a lot of people are using a particular tower chances of that particular packet going through is much higher than if somebody were trying to use a cell phone and because they’re able to use everybody’s towers not just Verizon or T-Mobile or AT&T or whatever they’re able to piggyback onto all towers through the agreements that they have their radios pretty much work coast to coast, even in very remote areas. Now, they’re not GPS. They’re not satellite – sorry, they’re not satellite-driven, GPS satellite-driven. They’re not ham. They are using the existing cell network, meaning that if that network goes down, those radios are inoperative. But in this situation right now in California, or anything that we would have even along the front range here – This is not a bad alternative, and they’re not too badly priced. And I know you can go out and do the ham radio thing and all of that, and for some of you, that’s a great alternative. For others, that’s way above your head, and you’ll never do it. This is simply you go buy a pair or four or six or however many you want for your family. You pull it out of the box, and it’s usable. There is no programming. There’s no dinking around. There’s no nothing. You pull the two out, and they will talk to one another. And if you buy enough of them, they’re about $170 a piece. Now, some would say, man, that seems really high. Well, if you look at what a cell phone costs and some other things that are out there, not really. It’s really not that expensive. To be able to have communication in a situation like these folks are going through in California and not having to wait for an Elon Musk with Starlink or whatever, I mean, even looking back in the Carolina region with the hurricane and so on, these radios, these rapid radios would have most likely worked even in those situations. So, food for thought. I may very well order some. I’ve got some communication going on back and forth with them. I’m not looking for any freebies or discounts or anything along those lines. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s a good solution for a lot of you listening and then be able to get some feedback. actual physical use in on them and determine whether that’s a good alternative or not and i will most likely here in the first quarter of this year do so just to get some experience with them and see exactly how they work before i actually endorse them one other product that i noticed this is in regard to the fires and even kind of some end of the world stuff And this came up as an ad. I don’t know why, to be real honest with you, but this came up as an ad, and I clicked on it and thought, oh, this really is not a bad deal at all. For a lot of you that have wells, so you’re on a well and you’re trying to figure out, how am I going to get water if all power is out? How am I going to get that water out of the well? There’s a company called Flowjack, F-L-O-J-A-K. Take the C out of jack. So F-L-O-J-A-K. They make a ready-made hand well pump kit that you literally can put on the top of your well and pump it like a bicycle, like a bicycle pump, and pull water out. It’s 500 bucks. So for some of you that are on wells where you’re thinking, hey, I need to figure out a generator system or something to where I could pump out some drinking water and things like that, this is a lot less money than trying to figure out generators and hookups and all of the other things that would coincide with that. And keep in mind, in an end-of-world scenario, you’re only going to let that work for so long until things run out, propane, natural gas, fuel, whatever. This, because it’s manual, would literally run forever. So, food for thought. I’ll put this link in our notes where you guys can take a peek at this. Those of you that have wells that might be interested in this, I’ve never seen a product like this. it’s designed for again for those of you that already have a well you’ve already got a cap you know what i mean by that you take the cap off put this on top of where the cap is and it’ll draw you can pull the water up and out of the well and it’s all diagrammed you can look at their particular website and it shows you exactly how it all works how you install it and so on so for a lot of you that i know live in some of our rural areas or even in town you may still have a well You might be on city water in a well for irrigation. This would work even in that particular case to pull water out. In the case of an all-out, complete power outage, you have no ability to get your well fired up. This would give you fresh water out of your well. with this particular device. So Flowjack, F-L-O-J-A-K. And no, they’re not paying me. I just happened to see, again, an ad for this. And when I did, I clicked on it, did a little bit of research and thought, you know, not a bad product at all. Some of you ag guys where you’re out in some of the other areas where, again, you’re working off of a well or you might have a well for the house and a well for your animals and so on. You might want a couple of these depending upon what your particular scenario is. So anyways, take a peek at that. I’m going to come back and talk about the insurance sides of things and what you should do to be prepared for a fire if, in fact, something like that were to happen like what just did in California. I want to make sure you’re all prepared for that. So we’ll get into that in just one moment. Don’t go anywhere. Ready Radio, and it’s ready-radio.com. That’s our website, KLZ 560.
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All right, we are back. Ready Radio, KLZ 560, and talking insurance now. And for a lot of you, this is a hot topic. It is for everybody. I shouldn’t say a lot of you. It’s always a hot topic. No one likes buying insurance. I saw a Facebook post earlier today, insurance is a scam. Well… No, it’s not. I mean, some may feel like it is, but insurance is a business whereby they collect premiums based upon what they feel the risk is for a particular thing that they’re insuring. And they ask you to pay a fee for said insurance, and they realize that they have a risk that they may have to pay out on a claim for whatever it is you’re insuring against. That’s how insurance works. Now, they also know that it’s rare for everyone to turn a claim in at one time. It doesn’t happen very often. And insurance companies also know that. This is where it gets interesting in places like California where you burn down – there are some estimates that about 4,000 homes have burned. I don’t know if that’s true. I have not been able to verify any of that. I know here in Colorado, we lost about 500 or so. Maybe – I think it was close to 1,000 homes actually. So – When that happens, yeah, that’s hard on insurance companies. They don’t plan on those sorts of losses. Let’s call it that. So, yeah, it’s a sore subject to a lot. A lot of us pay a lot of money for insurance, and it’s everything from your home to your car to your business to, in some cases, you guys have toys, motorcycles, boats, planes, things like that, life insurance, disability insurance, you name it. There’s insurance for all sorts of things. And as you guys know, you can pretty much buy insurance for whatever you want to, depending upon what it is and how much you want to pay for a premium. At one point in time, didn’t J-Lo have part of her butt insured or something, Charlie, I want to say? So, yeah, you can buy insurance for anything. Lloyd’s of London, I think. You can buy insurance for about anything. Now, in most cases, if you have a – not in most cases. In all cases, if you have a mortgage, you have to have insurance. If you don’t, they’re going to provide it at a very inflated price over what you could go to the open market and buy. So you want to go out, shop, and have your own insurance because otherwise your mortgage company will do it, and it’s going to be a lot higher price than if you had it on your own. So, yes, if you have a mortgage, insurance is a must. If you don’t have a mortgage, that’s your call. You want to insure it? Fine. If not, fine. You probably should at least have liability insurance in case somebody slips and falls or falls off the roof or something along those lines. But whether you insure the structure or not, if it’s paid for, that’s your call. You’re kind of self-insuring and taking the risk on your own if you decide to do it that way. And I don’t know how many of these homes in that California area might fall into that. Some of those people are very wealthy. They may very well have just said, you know, we’ll do liability only and we’re not going to insure the structure. We’ll take our chances. I don’t know. I’m sure some of that will come out in the news as time goes by. Now, most people can’t do that. Most cannot self-insure. Very few can self-insure. Now, there are things when it comes to insurance you can do to save money and have good coverage. and that is doing some self-insurance by having high deductibles. In other words, don’t nickel and dime the insurance company. Have a high deductible, $2,500, $5,000, $7,500, whatever the max is. Anytime I go to quote insurance, first question I ask, how big of a deductible can I have? Because I know the higher the deductible, the cheaper the premium. And I’m willing to take a risk on a claim and pay a higher deductible than I am to pay higher rates. Because in a lot of cases, fortunately for me, I have a lot of contacts and the ability to do things on my own and so on. And in a lot of cases, unless it’s a catastrophic claim, I can handle it on my own. Fender benders, things like that, I can pretty much take care of those things on my own without ever turning a claim in. You have to sit down and determine that on your own. What can you bear if something were to happen? So if you had a total loss, and everything’s wiped out and you’ve got a $10,000 deductible, are you okay at the end of the day? That’s only a question you can answer. But what I will tell you is most people don’t do what I just said. They sit down with an agent or they go online, they plug in a few things, they answer a few questions, out pops a premium, and off they go. And they don’t even bother going through some of the things that I just mentioned. I’m going to talk about limits in a moment, but first things first. If you want to save money on insurance, raise your deductible. And those of you that have auto insurance, if you really want to lower your auto insurance, drop your windshield coverage. You just heard an ad for Novus a moment ago. Yes, windshields are getting expensive. Insurance companies know that, and they’re building the price of that windshield on that particular car back into the premiums, knowing that you’re going to put one in every so often. So if you want to save money on insurance, drop your windshield coverage. Drop your glass coverage. So food for thought. There’s all sorts of ways to save money. And my good friend Paul Leuenberger, who’s a good advertiser of ours, you can always call him and he can walk you through some of the things that I’m talking about. And he knows how to save money on insurance. And where I’m at with this is most people never ask. And most people are undercovered. They’re more worried about having a low deductible and a low premium and this, that, and the other. And at the end of the day, they get that, but they’re also underinsured. So when a total loss does come, they’re left holding the bag, just like what happened with folks that had a lot of money up in the Louisville Superior area, and the same thing is going to happen in California. So first things first, and I’m a big one on this, you should review your insurance policies, plural, all of them annually. You know when your renewal date is. It should be on your calendar, by the way. So if you renew 1st of March, let’s say, right now in January, you should be looking at that policy changes too and or is there somebody else out there that can offer me a better deal? And shop it and do that every single year. And some of you would say, well, why would I waste all my time doing that? That’s how you save money, folks. And that’s how you do some of the things I just mentioned a moment ago in regards to deductibles and limits and, and, and. Now, for a lot of you listening as well, not maybe all people, but for a lot of you, you should have an umbrella policy as well. An umbrella policy is an add-on. It’s an umbrella to what you already have, depending upon the claim and the coverage you have and so on. It’s a good thing to have, and it’s not very expensive. All insurance agents, including Paul, can explain how that works. So first things first, make sure you’re properly insured. Try to save the most money by some of the things I just said, some of the tips I just gave. And then, for the love of God, make sure you have enough coverage. And most people are underinsured. They don’t look at what the actual replacement costs of a home would be. If it’s completely wiped out, something happens, there’s a natural gas explosion, a fire comes through, you name it. most don’t know what that cost is. And I’ll be the first to tell you, a lot of agents don’t even know. Paul does, but a lot of agents don’t even know. Rule of thumb in our area, by the way, a low-end house, figure 250 to 300 a square foot to rebuild in a high-end house can be anywhere from 400 to 600 a foot. So do the math. 2,000 square foot house, 400 bucks a square foot, 800K. And it adds up fast. Now, keep in mind, that’s just the building cost. And this is where you’ve got to be careful on your policies. That does not include cleanup. That does not include anything else that might have to happen to get it into the shape of actually having to rebuild. May not include digging out the old foundation. You may have plumbing things to deal with, sewer lines, on and on and on we go. You need to make sure that you’re asking all the right questions of your agent so that they’re building the policy necessary so something like what happened in California were to happen here. And it has happened here. And some people out there are thinking, because I’ve read some of the comments, how does an entire neighborhood burn down? One house ignites, fires are very strong, or winds are very strong, 80, 90, 100 miles an hour, and one house burns, the next house burns, you get the drill. It just jumps from house to house to house to house to house. And the other theory that I have on it after being through this is, as you guys all know, fire seeks oxygen. That’s how fire stays alive. A house, by the way, is full. Of what? Inside air and oxygen. So the minute that a window or something along those lines breaks, door blows in, whatever the case, where do you think that fire is going? Right inside the next house. Most people think that the fire kind of jumps up and sparks on the roof and then it starts to ignite. No, that’s not how that works. Typically speaking, a window, something like that, gets so hot, it shatters, it breaks, and the fire just goes right into the house, and it burns from the inside out, not the outside in, in the case of what’s happened in California. So some of you think, well, man, I’m immune. The next house over is a long way away. Is it? You know, is it? We saw houses up in the Boulder County Superior area that were on acre to two acre lots that still burned from one to the next to the next to the next. And they were a long distance away from one another. So you don’t have to be on a postage stamp lot and be an arm’s length distance from your neighbor to have it jump from house to house to house. Because again, like I said, it seeks air, the fire does. And when it finds it, off it goes. So once again, make sure that you’re fully covered. Look at all of the things that go into the policy, especially when it comes to total loss. Look at how each individual insurance company handles a total loss. And what I mean by that is some insurance companies will insure your contents several ways. One of those ways might be just flat out blanket. You tell us what the value was inside. You go out, buy replacements, and off you go. Some of them will require receipts showing what you actually owned prior, what you paid for certain items. It can get very intricate and you have to know what your policy says. Don’t assume that you just have full replacement cost without asking and reading the policy. Because it might surprise you what your coverage actually is. In some cases, you may be generating an entire spreadsheet of personal items. And this goes back to Joe from Jersey always saying, with now having the ability on your cell phone to take a video, walk through your house periodically with your cell phone to record all of the items you own. So that as time goes by, if something like this were to happen, you can document it. And folks, it comes all the way down to even the groceries you had at that time. How many box of cornflakes were on the shelf? Did you have a case of ramen noodles? Did you have this much in silverware, utensils, pots and pans? You get the drift. Those are all personal items that will have to be replaced in a total loss situation like what’s happened out in California. I mean, everything from your toothbrush, personal items, all of those things have to be replaced. And you guys all know it’s not cheap to do so. So once again, go through your policy. I’m not a big one for buying things online because most of them will not have the ability to walk through what we’re talking about right now. So talk to an actual agent, somebody like Paul, preferably Paul, and go through that process so you know exactly what you have and how it’s covered. Some things get excluded. You might have a gun collection. It may very well not even be in your current policy. You might have to buy an addendum for that. A rider, they call it. You might have some heirlooms, some paintings, jewelry, something along those lines. You have to make sure you’re covered on those things properly or you won’t be. You’ll be either without those when it’s all said and done or you’ll be out of pocket on your own to replace them. And again, that’s something you have to determine on the front side, what risk do you want to take? But far too many people say, oh, I’m insured. Are you? Really? Pull your policy out and let’s look. I can’t tell you on the coaching side how many businesses through the years I’ve pulled out policies and looked at what they have for even their business insurance and found it not to be enough. The same is true with people on their homes. Just because it covers the mortgage, which by the way satisfies them, doesn’t mean you have enough insurance. Now, I also am not telling people to be insurance poor. You don’t need to buy more than you need. But far too many people, the vast majority, are underinsured. They do not have enough for what’s going on. Now, and here’s my complaint on that. You heard Joe Biden yesterday talking about how 100% federal government, taxpayers, we’re going to kick in and write a check for everything that’s happened out there. Now, I don’t know if he’s talking about homes or just infrastructure or just cleanup or what. I mean, he didn’t give all the specifics, but we’re on the hook for 100% now because that’s what he promised. People in other disaster areas didn’t get that, by the way. Ironically, Blue State, California gets 100%, but North Carolina didn’t. Florida doesn’t. Other places don’t when that happens. That’ll be something, again, I talk about next week on The Daily Show. But the reality is my beef when folks are underinsured is they then expect the government to come in and pick up the tab for the difference. No, folks, we as conservatives believe in personal responsibility. You should have all that covered on your own. And if you didn’t insure for enough, that’s on you. Sorry, I do not feel sorry for you. That’s on you. You had the opportunity prior to do the insurance side of it the way you needed to. You chose not to. That’s now on you. So at the end of the day, if you can’t rebuild your home, put the lot up for sale, sell it off, do something else. And no, I don’t have any sympathy. I have sympathy that you lost your home, but I don’t have sympathy that you can’t rebuild it because you didn’t plan ahead. So I know I sound a little… angry at that but i am because it costs all of us taxpayers money when people are underinsured because then they expect others to come in and backfill and that’s not how this should work We should be filling in on our own with our own insurance. Now, if you’ve got to fight the insurance company, that’s a whole other conversation, which I could get into. But reality is, make sure you’re covered properly. And if the insurance policy says X, Y, Z, you’ll get the money. Trust me. You can hire a public adjuster if you have to and get the money. So reality is, you’ll get the money. But far too many people are underinsured because they don’t take into account all of the different things that I just talked about. So please, by all means, get all that done. I’ve got a few more things to say about the insurance side. If you have a comment on that, you can text me, 307-200-8222. You can call in as well, 303-477-5600. We’ll be right back. This is Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 07 :
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SPEAKER 02 :
All right. Welcome back. Ready Radio, KLZ 560 website, ready-radio.com. Got a great question that came in on the text line. How do you establish values for certain things? Your house, a pole barn, etc. Let me go through some of that. Now, really quick, I also want to put a plug in for one of our great sponsors, BP Appraisals, because when it comes to certain things like cars and gun collections… Burt Payne can actually give you a written-out, factual, here’s what things are worth, stick that in a file, give it to your insurance agent, and off you go. That’s easy. Now, when it comes to other items, it gets a little more difficult. Now, depending upon your house and the value, some insurance companies have their own team that will even come out and analyze what’s a rebuild cost for this property based upon current market conditions. And then they will update that depending upon what inflation does and supply chain issues and so on annually. Now, if you’re in an area where that’s not going to happen and they’re basing everything off of what you feel values are, do some comps. you can pretty well look around and see, okay, if I were to go buy this new, if this completely burned to the ground and I had to rebuild from scratch, what are the going rates? And like for like, by the way. So in other words, if you’ve got a house and it has construction grade type countertops and doors and sinks and so on, then you need to look at the per square foot cost along those lines and you’re not going to be in that $400 to $500 a square foot range. On the same token, if you’ve got more of a custom home and things are a little nicer and you’ve got different types of even toilets and sinks and faucets and so on – because, by the way, those things add up really fast. And there’s a huge difference between contractor grade versus the other end – That’s where that price per square foot starts to increase. We talk to Dave from Veteran Windows and Doors during the week all the time, even windows and doors and things like that. Dave Hart from Roof Savers of Colorado, who you heard an ad for a few minutes ago. Even the way the roof is done, huge difference in the bottom of the barrel shingles to top-of-the-line shingles, even on asphalt shingles. So those are things where, number one, what do you have now? And what’s it going to cost to replace that like for like? You know, I don’t believe in insuring for more than what you own. You just want to be made whole again if something like this were to happen. So you want the ability. This is my opinion and how I look at it. If you have a total loss and at that point you’re looking at a total claim of X. So let’s use some round numbers. You’ve got a house and property and so on, and you’ve got the house valued in our area. It’s not hard to get to the $500,000 range. That’s a nice round number. So you feel you’ve got a house that to replace it would be 500 grand. So you’re going to insure it for 500, most likely minus the land, plus, though, the contents. So let’s say that you’re going to insure it for 400 because you feel the lot is worth $100,000. but you know you’ve got 100 of contents, and I’m just using round numbers. So we’re still back up to the 500 range on what you’re insuring. So you get a policy for 500K. Now, most policies will allow for some increases. The other thing you’ve got to be really careful of, will they allow you to build the new home up to code because your old home probably isn’t? Unless it just got built, it’s not up to code, trust me. There will be things when a new builder comes in to rebuild what you have, Codes have changed, and they will have to upgrade certain things, which adds to the per square foot cost. Some policies will include that code updating in the policy. Again, you have to get with your agent and find out exactly what it says in each one of these areas. So, going back to, we’re insuring it for 400 contents of 100, so we’re going to get 500. Now, A lot of insurance companies, you could just settle up right off the bat, have them write you the check for $500, and you determine what you want to do from there. Some will require you to rebuild before you get a check. This is where, by the way, public adjusters come in. What a public adjuster does, by the way, is they look at their entire policy, all the ins and outs of it, everything that, by the way, you probably don’t know, and not even your agent, but the adjusters won’t tell you. They determine what the whole claim should be, what the policy will cover, and they go after that full amount. Yes, you pay them a fee to do that, but you will get much more money out of a claim with a public adjuster than you ever will yourself. That I can guarantee you. And that’s true for me. My cabin that burned down up in the mountains, same thing. I got a public adjuster, got far more out of that with them than I ever would have gotten on my own. And I tried it on my own for a while and started getting jacked around by the insurance company. And so I went a different direction, got a public adjuster, and off we went. So going back to this $500K, you think you’ve got a lot that’s worth $100K. So let’s say you go the public adjuster route and you get a 500K check. You know your lot’s worth 100. Well, at that point in time, you can make the decision, am I rebuilding? Am I buying a bunch of new stuff? Or am I moving? And for a lot of people, by the way, just because of the memories of what’s gone on there, they don’t want to live there anymore anyways. They’re going. They’re going to go someplace else. So at that point, you take your 500K, you put the lot on the market, you get your 100K back out of the lot, you now collected 600, and off you go. Go buy the next place. So my point with insurance is you want to be in that position. At the end of the day, if something happens, you want to have that scenario to where you’ve got enough cash in the bank, literally, because you’ll get a check. You have enough cash in the bank to then make a decision. Am I rebuilding? Or are we going to sell a lot and move? What are you going to do? And trust me, this is personal experience speaking. When the money’s in the bank… And you can then go look at all the different options that you have on what you want to do. It makes it a whole lot easier than when you don’t. And I’m a big one on, and this is what I would even advise these folks in California, they should be hiring a public adjuster today. House is burned to the ground, go get a public adjuster. Be first in line. Get a settlement from the insurance company on the front side. Worry about rebuilding later, but have that money in the bank now. Whatever the maximum is, contents and so on, get it now. And my point is you want to have enough insurance to where if and when that day comes and you’re looking for that payout from the insurance company, it gives you the ability to make those decisions necessary, like I said a few minutes ago. That’s the position you want to be in, not a position of, oh, I’ve got a five hundred thousand dollar house that I insured for three hundred. It’s going to cost me four hundred to replace it. And I kind of forgot about the contents and and or didn’t value those correctly. So I’m under there. So now what do I do? And this happened in Louisville. By the way, I’m giving you real-world examples. These things were in the news that happened in our own backyard up in the Louisville, Boulder County area, Superior Louisville area, where people literally found themselves in that position. And by the way, these were not poor people. These were people with means, but underinsured. In some cases, keep in mind, they lost cars that were in the garage. All sorts of things happened. And they didn’t have enough insurance, so they were really left trying to figure out what do we do next. And for a lot of them, they had to literally just sell the lot, try to recoup as much as they could, pay their mortgage off, and hope they could go somewhere else. That’s not the position you want to be in. That is the last place you want to find yourself in. You want to be on the opposite end. You want to have all your ducks in a row, go to a public adjuster, get as much money as you possibly can out of that claim, be made whole, and then make a decision, am I rebuilding or am I selling my lot? What am I going to do? And by the way, as far as selling a lot goes, when you have all the money in the bank off of everything else and you can go make a decision on where else you want to live, you don’t have to make a decision on selling that lot right then. You could wait a year or two and decide. You could wait for some of the values to even come back up if you wanted to. Totally your call. The pressure, my point is the pressure of what you have to do goes away. Because you planned ahead. That’s what this show is all about. We want you to plan ahead. Yes, we call it Ready Radio because we want you to be ready for anything. But we’re big on planning ahead so that you have things handled on the front side and you’re not trying to worry about it on the back side trying to figure it out then. And folks, I’m giving you real world examples. You’re going to hear all sorts of sob stories coming out of California. And while I feel bad that people lost their entire homes, I really do because that’s not fun. I do not feel bad for people that are underinsured. They had plenty of opportunity over the past decades to figure out how to be insured properly. And if they aren’t, that’s on them and should not be my responsibility as a taxpayer to make them whole. nor your responsibility as a taxpayer. So this is one of those things, and for a lot of you, a lot of us think, where I live, that’s just not going to happen. There’s not enough trees and brush and things around me. That’s not how to look at it, folks. Again, all it takes is one house igniting, Strong winds, which we have in Colorado, and pretty soon it’s house after house after house after house after house. And as you guys have seen, even from what happened here in Colorado, it burns the cars on the streets. It burns everything in the house itself. I don’t think most people have any comprehension of how hot it is. those fires actually are and what they do. A lot of folks even that put the memes and things out there, these are people, frankly, that have no clue how hot fire is and what it actually can do and what happens when you blow that fire at 100 miles an hour. And they want to blame all sorts of things, government, not saying that there’s not some nefariousness going on inside government and so on, but they want to blame it on everything other than the fact that things happen And unless you’re prepared on the front side, you’re going to lose. So in the case of the folks in California, those that were insured really well, that had everything all dialed in, they will be made whole. They will not have any issues. Yes, there’s always sadness over the things that you lose because it’s your personal items. But financially speaking, those people that are insured correctly will be just fine. That’s what I want for all of you. Be insured correctly so that if something comes along that is what we call a total loss, you have the ability to be made whole again, and you’re now in control of your future and somebody else isn’t. And again, I will guarantee you that inside of my own listening audience, there are a lot of people that don’t understand the things we’ve just gone through this past 55 minutes or so, And they have no idea whether they’re insured for enough or not. And going back to the question, how do I know if I am? Do some research. Do some comps. What’s it going to take to replace what you own? The pole barn situation a moment ago. Stay up to date on that. Those things go up in price on an annual basis. What is a, you know, if you’ve got a 20 by 20 pole barn or a 40 by 40 pole barn, what does that cost to replace right now? And by the way, you’ve got to figure in not just the replacement value of the building going up, but what’s inside of it. electrical and heat and so on, if that’s what you’ve done. Did you put a concrete floor in? On and on. So you’ve got to look at everything along those lines, factor that all in, and then insure it correctly. And what I will tell you is, most of the time, it’s more money than you think. And real quick as a reminder, please make sure in your policy you have cleanup costs covered. Most will include it, But look at that and determine, is it enough for all of the cleanup? If there’s a total loss like what’s happened in California, am I going to be able to even afford to get all this stuff hauled off and even start over again at that point and be where I need to be? Because in a lot of cases, your policy will be way low in that. And I will tell you that those cleanup costs add up really, really quickly. When I had my cabin burned down up in Granby, I think the cleanup costs alone were about $15,000. just getting everything leveled off, cleaned up. That wasn’t taking the foundation or anything out. That was just getting all of the debris and everything that had burned to the ground out of there. It was about 15 grand. Most would say, holy cow, how did it get so high? Trust me, folks. They don’t haul the stuff away for free. And whoever’s taking the debris doesn’t take it for free. And it doesn’t load itself into the dump truck for free. You’re paying people to do all of those things, and there’s a cost to it. And in some cases, it’s hazardous material at that point, and there’s even costs on that, which, by the way, also makes sure that you’re covered inside of your policy for as well. So, guys, that’s it. If you have any questions on that directly, you can always text me, 307-200-8222. We’ll be back with our next program. Don’t go anywhere. Ready Radio, KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 06 :
The views and opinions expressed on KLZ 560 are those of the speaker, commentators, hosts, their guests, and callers. They are not necessarily the views and opinions of Crawford Broadcasting or KLZ management, employees, associates, or advertisers. KLZ 560 is a Crawford Broadcasting God and country station.
