Why have I been stacking up the insurance policies lately? Well, in general, I prefer to self-insure for most risks. Despite what some people may think, it’s not a financial catastrophe if my iPhone is destroyed or stolen. Neither is it a big deal if my laptop breaks down and I need to replace it. Self-insuring means that I’m taking on the risk myself. As the insurance company, I’ll have to pay out of my pocket if I need to replace something, but on the flip side, I don’t have to pay anyone premiums. If you do this with enough stuff, you should come out ahead in the long run (at least that’s what happens to the insurance companies selling you the policies).
However, there are significant financial catastrophes that could change your life (and not for the better). I’d like to take these risks off the table, particularly when it doesn’t cost a lot to do so. As we’ll see, umbrella insurance is one of those cheap policies that only cost you a few dollars a month. The insurance company isn’t expecting to pay out, and you’re not planning to use it, so the premiums are low.
What are some other examples of financial catastrophes? Here’s the list of the big ones:
- Death
- Disability
- Healthcare Expenses
- Loss of expensive property (house, car, etc.)
- Occupation related liability (malpractice)
- Non-Occupation related liability
Life, disability and health insurance are typical products in the marketplace owned by a lot of lawyers. If you have a mortgage, you can’t skip buying homeowners insurance. While states only require you to have a minimum auto liability insurance policy, most people carry some comprehensive collision coverage as well that would replace the value of a destroyed car. Malpractice insurance? I know you have that.
The problem with the auto liability insurance and the home insurance is that their liability coverage might be quite low. New York’s auto insurance laws only require $25,000 of liability insurance for one person. You don’t need to be an emergency doctor to know that the healthcare industry will burn through that $25,000 by the time you make it to the emergency room.
Many homeowner insurance policies have liability limits of around $100,000. While that’s more generous than an auto policy, the average 3-day hospital stay is about $30,000. If you generate liability that leads to an 11-day hospital stay, that extra day is on you.
The easiest solution to increase your liability protection is to increase the liability coverage under your auto and homeowner policies. Increasing my renter's insurance policy from the minimum liability coverage to $1,000,000 of liability coverage only cost me $37.10 a year. That’s not a typo. This is cheap stuff. The same is true for my non-owner’s car insurance policy. Going from the state-mandated minimum payments to $300,000 of coverage costs an extra $89.04 a year. I can’t think of any lawyers where $126.14 a year is going to impact your budget negatively. In exchange for a few bucks, you get extended liability coverage that could prevent some unforeseen event from wiping out years of asset accumulation.
These are the kinds of risks that are great to take off the table. When the outcome is catastrophic, and the premium is minimal, eliminate the threat. It’s silly to focus on a $250 deductible on your collision coverage while cutting corners on the liability portion of the policy.
By now you’re probably thinking: Okay, but what could happen that is going to blow through hundreds of thousands of dollars of liability coverage? The five most common home insurance liability claims are: (1) dog bites; (2) home accidents; (3) falling trees; (4) intoxicated guests and (5) injured domestic workers. If any of those sounds possible to you—and you can eliminate the risk for hundreds of dollars a year—why not take the risk off the table?
So, how much coverage should have? Well, how much stuff do you own? If you’ve built up a lot of wealth, you’re going to need a lot of coverage. If you’re a law student with a negative net worth, the insurance is perhaps a little less critical since you have less to lose. But not only do you need to protect your assets, you’ll also need to hire a lawyer to defend yourself in a potential suit, so you’ll need to throw in the cost of the defense to your policy as well. Don’t forget that any potential litigant will assume that you’re a rich lawyer too, so you already have a target on your back.
After you’ve bumped up the coverage under your existing auto and homeowner (or renters) policies, the easiest way to protect against a financial catastrophe is an umbrella policy that sits on top of all of your other policies. The umbrella policy covers the costs when the other policies are exhausted. If you have a $300,000 homeowners insurance policy and a $1 million umbrella policy, you have $1.3 million of total coverage.
Most well-protected lawyers carry an umbrella policy of at least $1 million, although bumping it up to $2, $3, $4 and $5 million isn’t uncommon as your assets continue to grow. Since umbrella insurance is the last line of defense before coming after your assets, it’s dirt cheap. I bought a $1 million umbrella insurance policy this year for a little over $300 annually. In general, you pay based on where you live and factors like whether you’ve bunched your insurance policies with the same insurer. Umbrella insurance generally requires you to have an auto policy and a homeowners/renters insurance. If you don’t own a car, you can pick up a non-owners auto policy as I did.
The important thing when it comes to insurance is to focus your dollars on the parts of the policy where it will make it a big difference. The iPhone protection plan? That’s fine if you feel that you need it. But if you’re insuring against the loss of an iPhone but neglecting against the possibility of a financial catastrophe, you should rethink your priorities!
Joshua Holt is a former private equity M&A lawyer and the creator of Biglaw Investor. Josh couldn’t find a place where lawyers were talking about money, so he created it himself. Years later, he opened up an insurance agency and created a tool where you can get instant life insurance quotes from hundreds of companies to ensure you’re getting the best price.
