anthonygo.com

Roving for Auto Insurance

What have I been looking for with auto insurance?  Basically lower
auto insurance, but higher coverage.  I want to get an umbrella policy
in the future.  Also wanted a bulk discount so I priced home insurance
out.  Everyone basically came out the same.  I also wanted a company
that wouldn't bs me too much and not cause me heartache.  That's why
the ratings were important to me.  Hope this helps you when searching
for auto insurance.

Summary/Tips

• Price out insurance every 2 years.  Rates change, violations roll off, etc.
• Go with the higher collision deductible, lower comprehensive deductible.   That was for my case, could be different.
• Amica, USAA and Erie seemed to be the favorite insurers.
• Don't be afraid to switch companies and shop around.  Or even call your existing insurer to reprice.

I've been with Liberty Mutual for awhile now and always thought I
was paying ridiculous rates.  Well finally, I decided to do something
about it and shop around.   I surfed around on various forums on auto
insurance to refresh my memory on what I should be looking for.  Things
I was trying to figure out were what companies should I be looking for,
what kinds of premiums I should be getting, the ratings for various
insurers and the types of coverage I needed.

Types of Coverage

Now that I look back at the coverage I used to have, it was pretty
low.  And although it was low, my premium was high and understanding
deductibles made it clear to me why that is the case.  Let's talk
coverage first.  I used to have a 100/300/100 coverage - which means
that if I was in an accident, I would be covered for bodily-injury
liability claims up to 100k per person in an accident up to a max of
300k for the accident.  The 3rd number there is for property damage, so
again, if I was at fault for an accident, then my coverage for property
damage such as the car or anything else I hit like.. say, a house...
would be covered up to 100k.  So the story there is don't hit a house
or a Ferrari.  And if you are going to - then look into having an
umbrella policy when you do it.  I bumped my coverage up to 250/500/100
in preparation for an umbrella policy.  That's typically the minimum in
order to qualify for an umbrella.  I kept the same for Uninsured
Motorist coverage - which covers you in the event that you are in an
accident with someone who doesn't have enough insurance to cover the
bills or is even uninsured.

Medical expense I didn't spend much time researching and did 5k. 
Income loss I declined because I'm assuming my short-term disability
would cover me there.  Perhaps I should check.

On to the collision and comprehensive coverage.  As opposed to the
liability coverage, these are the coverages on your own vehicle.  Here,
the numbers to look at are the collision and the comprehensive ("other
than collision") deductibles.  Collision covers you for just that - an
accident involving another car or crashing into a tree.  Comprehensive
covers accidents such as a deer hitting or theft or a rock shattering
your windshield.  So in deciding what coverages to take - I decided
that collision repairs will be far more expensive and typically you
want to take as high a deductible as you can afford out of pocket.  I
feel like if I'm in an accident, I can cover up to $1000 so that's what
I chose as my deductible.  Plus collision claims really affect your
insurance, thus why most people try to avoid filing claims.  For
comprehensive, you would think similarly however the price difference
in lowering your deductible is much less than if you were to lower it
for collision.  Also, according to a few agents I've spoken to,
comprehensive claims don't count as significantly towards your
insurance premium - obviously don't abuse it but don't be afraid of it
either.  Finally, the cost to repair something for comprehensive - say
a broken windshield - may be more than paying for the lower deductible
anyways, so why not use that insurance.  Here, I went with $100
deductible - and it worked out that I would need to be claim free for
about 2.5 years to start seeing the benefit of a higher deductible on
my premium vs say a $50 deductible.  In other words, I'll pay $25 for
example on my $100 deductible vs $50 on my $50 deductible.  After 2
years I'm ahead on my $100 deductible policy.  Many claims within 2
years, I'm screwed.  You get the point.

Suggested companies/Ratings

Now that I picked the coverages, who should I go with?  I searched
around and found a few links.  In reading, there were bound to be
people that were happy and unhappy with a particular insurer.  I did
find that some of the top ones were Amica, USAA (only for military and
relatives), Erie Insurance, and Wawanesa (in California) also seemed to
be popular.  Those findings were backed up by a JD Powers auto insurer
ratings link that I had previously posted.  Geico came out cheap to and
seems to work for many people.  Ameriprise comes out cheap also but
they seem to have a tendency to jack prices up after the first year. 
I'm currently with Liberty Mutual and will be with them for a little
bit until a claim is closed and an accident rolls off my record.  But
when I do, I'm going Erie or Amica.  Amica can come out more expensive
than most - but it didn't turn out that way when I was just pricing it
out.  But again, my accident is really hurting me so I just have to
wait it out.  I took notes on people's opinions of various companies so
if you want more - just let me know in comments and I'll try to back it
up.

Miscellaenous Thoughts

My insurance is going to get so much better in a few years.  Most
insurers charge for accidents/violations within the last 3 years,
meaning the premiums will be higher.  After 5 years, they can start
giving you the discounts, like safe driver discounts,
preferred/platinum statuses.  So once my wife's accident comes past 3
years next year, my insurance apparently will go down by 300 a year.

Don't be afraid to switch companies.  It's not always good to stay
with the same company in the hopes that your loyalty to them will lower
your rates.

I just finished installing Movable Type 4!

Welcome to my new blog powered by Movable Type. This is the first post on my blog and was created for me automatically when I finished the installation process. But that is ok, because I will soon be creating posts of my own!

My Pants are on Fire!

Hey kids,
So it's been over a month since my last update but it's been for very good reason. I got married! Yes, married! Good times, good times. The wedding was awesome and the honeymoon was just as great. I wanted to update my website so at least I have some fresh content but I do want to give little snippets of what I probably should post more details on and those are:
1) I got married! Yes, married!
2) The Honeymoon
3) Finally, GMAIL! doo de doo
4) Saw Legend of the Evil Lake at the Asian American Film Festival - I'll have a touching review of that movie...
That's it. Stay tuned for more updates!

Let me just get one rib…

This GMail craze has gotten out of control. People bidding on ebay for gmail invitations. Websites built solely for the purpose of swapping something for a gmail account. This is the same silliness that happened back in the Internet bubble days. Everyone jumping on something that is just so ordinary - an email account - with 1GB of storage, yay!, that can already be gotten at Spymac. So why isn't Spymac getting flooded?
I'll tell you why. Because I want a gmail account too, dammit. And because I can't have one, and because it's so difficult for me to get one, I want one even more now! How do I know it's gotten so crazy? Because I'm the one crazy enough to bid on ebay for one (one dollar albeit, but I still bid). I'm the one spending time thinking of something good to swap on gmailswap.com. WTF? I already have a spymac account so I can receive 1 GB of email. But it's so lonely over at Spymac. Nobody wants Spymac, they want GMail. And I want to be where the cool kids are.
So give me a gmail invite. please. please please please.

Funny Funny

I find it impressive how some people can constantly update their blog several times a day or even once a day. It really does take a lot of energy and thought and time to write down your thoughts and expound on the origins or the greater meanings of those thoughts. SO... until I have more time, mostly after my wedding, you will only see one post a week or so. Except during my honeymoon, where you will see none.
This week has been an improv week. Tuesday I had my first show of my Level 3A class and it turned out ok. Not as funny as my Level 1 or Level 2 class shows - there was something in the air this Tuesday that was holding people back. It might have been the lack of any cold air - AC was busted and it was so friggin hot. It may have been just a pure lack of energy - I could feel it warming up doing "Hotspot" - a game where a player jumps in the middle of the circle, sings a song, and other players just need to tag them out with whatever song they think of next. It was slow, and people were slow to tag out - myself included - so I think the brains were just not functioning.
I was in the first group and we warmed up a little more beforehand. That had me feeling better, plus we had a decent size crowd so that always brings some energy. We had a good start with our initiations, really good monologues with some interesting facts. My first scene turned out to be a execution-gone-wrong scene. I was being electrocuted, but not successfully, by this inept officer who was having "moral issues". It turned out to be a decent game - one problem was I was failing to listen to him to pick up on other stuff he was saying. I know he was having deeper issues than just "moral issues" but I blanked out and went into my head so all I heard was my blabbering. I think it worked out ok and we basically had a decent game going.

So sad.

I just stayed up for the second night in a row until 5 and basically third night this week playing Warcraft III. Stupid. So stupid I will use it to break my blog silence as of late.

What? You don’t update it everyday?

Yeah, sorry - I really should be updating this as frequently as I can but I want to bring you quality writing and sometimes, there's actually too much going through my head at one time to put it all down into fascinating, scintilatting paragraphs. But just a few things I still need to write about (and you can be excited about):
1) saw Kill Bill on Tuesday
2) saw Cookin' on Wednesday
3) had my improv class tonight, which I will refrain from commenting on and rather take it to a higher plane
So stay tuned. I promise I will catch you up!

Just a quick note before I forget it

Throughout this day, combo-words have been popping up and I thought I'd share what they are and see if there were any comments on it.
Ginormous - gigantic and enormous
most people know this one
Unbamazing - unbelievable and amazing
this one just popped into my head right now for some reason. i WILL use it in my next post.
Orafice - Oracle and office
so when I say, I had the worst day in my orafice, you will know exactly what I'm talking about, you dirty-minded fool.
And finally, the combo to baffle all - Ridonkulous. Is that actually a combo? Where did that come from? Because I've heard it coming from 2 different people who are pretty much unrelated - both blood line and avenues of friendship(whatever an avenue of friendship is - you know what i mean). Someone please tell me what Ridonkulous means.

Merry Christmas!!!!

Oh yeah baby. Pulled the trigger last night on the Onkyo HTS-760 - a home theater in a box. Not sure why I needed it but this was actually what I asked for for Christmas - and now it's mine.
Got a good deal on refurbs - yea yeah, they're refurbs but they should still be just as good. Plus I got them for $256 shipped - vs 400-500 new.
I think they could be overkill for the apartment seeing as it has a HUGE ASS subwoofer, which I started semi-regretting as soon as I made the purchase. Oh well, I'll let you know how they sound once I set them up.
For now, check this shot of them out. HUGE!