Insurance...

Since we purchased Miss Doozie on July 1, this is when our insurance policy comes up for renewal. There are not many options for insuring RVs that are lived in fulltime... most insurers only write policies for RVs for "vacation" use. In addition to Miss Doozie being our home, she also contains a lot of our belongings. So, since our insurance was going up significantly this year, I decided that I should do some research and see if I could find a more reasonable cost.

I found out that the company we are currently with (Nationwide/Allied) is not writing new policies in Texas because of the number of claims that they have had there. That is probably also why our rates are going up so much, even though we have not personally had any claims.

A couple of years ago, we had Miss Doozie professionally appraised, in preparation to obtain an "Agreed Value" policy. Subsequently, when I talked with Nationwide/Allied, the lady I spoke with indicated that Miss Doozie had a valuation on her that was higher than the appraisal, and she counseled that I shouldn't change to the "Agreed Value" policy. I realized afterwards that the valuation that they had would not make any guarantees on what we would receive in case of a total loss, so I should have pushed for it to be changed to an Agreed Value policy.

So, in doing comparison shopping, I have found another company (Progressive) who will do an agreed value policy for about the same (higher) rate that Nationwide/Allied has offered for renewal for us doing "Actual Cash Value". Actual Cash Value, even though it sounds similar to Agreed Value, for RVs like Bluebirds that do not often sell publicly, is not very representative. They determine "Actual Cash Value" through sources like Kelly Blue Book or NADA - which represent prices of buses sold publicly. For Bluebirds, generally the only units that sell publicly are those that are sold at auction which have not been cared for - so the value is not representative. At the time of total loss is when you find out what they value your bus for... and at that point, it is bad news.

While looking at insurance, I realized that the amount of insurance that we had on the contents of the bus (personal effects) did not reflect what we actually have in the bus. So... I wanted to increase that amount. Again, different insurance companies have different rules on what values I can specify. For Progressive, I can set the personal effects value, but needed to have appraisals on any single items that were valued at more than $500. We have some jewelry and some camera equipment that we would want covered for more than $500, so now we needed to find someone to do appraisals on them for us. When calling around on Tuesday, I found that Jared's Galleria of Jewelry was having an appraisal event in store on Tuesday, so made an appointment to take jewelry pieces in. Not only did the appraiser appraise the items that I needed to get appraised, but he was kind enough to look at all the items that I had questions about value, determine which ones would appraise for more than $500 (and do the appraisals) - and he also gave me ballpark estimates on the "less than $500" pieces so I can better do our personal effects estimate.

It is hard to know what to do about insurance... we want to be good stewards of what God has blessed us with, but we also know that it is all in His hands for protection.