Spring has finally sprung. Thank God! That means it’s time for a home insurance checkup, in addition to all those other springtime chores! I make time to sit down with all my friends this time of year and see what’s happened over the winter. You’d be surprised what everybody’s done that needs to be addressed in their home insurance policy, while we’ve been holed up in our dens hibernating over the winter. The liability needs to be addressed for that new snowmobile. Did you know that unless it’s on your property, there’s no coverage if it turns up missing? Dive that new ATV through the side of your garage (I know ..really?) and our policy will fix everything. I don’t know about other companies, but Farm Bureau has endorsements for your ATV that would help if you have a close encounter with a ponderosa pine on Rampart Range Road! But I can’t “click” it on, if I don’t know you found the greatest sale in the whole country December 31^st and bought each of the kids one and got your wife a new Polaris Razor! So give me a call and let’s check out how much fun you guys have been having in the snow over the winter!

Winter Storm Warning again? Yes they seem to be coming more frequently as the winter winds down. Still it’s a good time to take a look at your home from an insurance standpoint to see if you are ready. First and foremost, have you reviewed your coverage with your agent lately? That alone is the most important thing you can do to protect your home properly. When a Winter Storm Warning hits, do you have a plan? Stock up. Get some water just in case power goes down. If you want to be really prepared, have a generator on hand. These late winter storms generally have big heave flakes that knock down trees and take out power. Even though you have coverage for spoiled freezer food, when are you going to get more Elk or Venison!

When I get a Winter Storm Warning in Sedalia in Western Douglas County where I live, I usually run through the checklist:

1. Snow shovel by the front door and by the gate
2. Open the vanity cabinets below the sink
   1. If it gets really cold let he faucet drip a little

i.      This is extra insurance against freezing pipes.

1. Check the main water shutoff valve to be sure it opens and closes easily
2. Clean the filter in the Furnace. This will make it more efficient and not run as much
3. Check our safety supplies. I have a list I run through Batteries, water, food. Not too extensive, but you can be as aggressive here as you like. There are classes and courses too if you really want to be prepared. The Red Cross has an excellent and conservative list available here:
   1. http://www.redcross.org/prepare/disaster/winter-storm
   2. Back up my computer to portable hard drive.
      1. This way our Household inventory, pictures and all our important documents are safe and portable if we have to leave hurriedly for any reason.
      2. Pets and Livestock. Have leashes and food handy just in case for for the dogs Carriers for the cats. Trailers for the larger animals staged where you can get to them if necessary.

Lastly, I put a big pot on the stove and make a huge batch of Green Chili, or maybe Ham and Beans, hunker down with the family and some old movies or a good book and pray we get a couple of feet so we don’t have to do anything but stay home and watch while we have some great family time! Enjoy your Winter Storm Warning!

With Life Insurance on Children and Grandchildren providing financial security for a lifetime a Parent or Grandparent can relax a bit knowing they are protected in case of unexpected tragedy.

• Low Rates; Insurance rates increase with age, locks lower rates in now.
• Guaranteed Insurability; Future health issues won’t affect insurability.
• Accumulates Cash for College; A nice option to have in today’s uncertain times.
• Paid Up Life Insurance: If you start early, you could finish early. One less worry.
• Does something for them that you’d wish someone would have done for you.
• Provides a financial education base to build on. As the policy matures, you’ve shown the growth and explained the benefits through the years. When you transfer ownership and your child finally takes the reigns, they know what it means and how to build their finances properly.

Home Insurance in Castle Rock used to be simple. Just go with the company your parents had forever, sign the application and forget about it. Then along came a hail storm and tornado in Windsor in 2008 and a bunch of fires; including Four Mile, High Park and Waldo Canyon. Throw in the big June and July 2009 hail storms across the state, coupled with last summer’s big one in the Meadows, overshadow it all by Sandy and you can see why property rates are moving upward.

In fact, the Insurance Research Center says; in 1997-2006 Catastrophes triggered 26% of Home Owners insurance claims compared to 2007-2011’s 46%. Colorado now ranks in the top 10 states for the highest percentage of claims paid due to catastrophes. So how do you, the homeowner, figure out what to do when that renewal comes in with a big 30% increase in premium and the wind-hail deductible jumps to 1% of the dwelling amount without even an explanation?

To keep it simple, if I were you, I’d call me! Colorado Farm Bureau Insurance only writes policies in Colorado and we’ve been doing it for over 60 years. We’ve weathered all the storms, kept our reserves where they need to be for the state, and we’re here for the long term. We haven’t had any big increases, don’t anticipate any, and we settle our claims and cut you a check, in many cases, before the big boys even have their tents and banners set up.

Cattle Rock home insurance looks different through our eyes. We treasure loyalty, so it’s important to us, that we’re loyal to you. It starts at the first visit. I come out and look at your Home. We work together to determine what your replacement cost should be and make sure you know how your coverage works and what covered and what might not be covered. Like, water that hits your house first and comes in usually is covered and water that hits the ground first then come into you house, usually is not covered, unless you have Flood Coverage! Click over to RMII. They have some great articles on Catastrophes and Home insurance coverage if you’d like to learn more. Then call me and let’s see how I can help you get better insured in these catastrophic times.

Better review your home insurance now! Sandy’s done. So is the Waldo and High Park Fires and hopefully the hail season! But now it will get cold, pipes will freeze and some of us will have more claims.

When is the last time you sat down with your agent for a review of your home insurance? If you have to file a claim you need to help your insurance company understand your entire loss so they can compensate you for those losses covered under your policy. Inventory, photos, etc. are key to the process, but most important part of this is the part about “Losses covered under your policy”. If it’s not covered, you can’t get compensated and the only way you can know if it’s covered is to know your policy through frequent reviews with your agent.

I’m in the middle of my third year in agency and chat with other agents with 30 and 40 years’ experience. Frequently we all learn something that is newly interpreted as being covered under the policy. On the other side, things you have taken for granted as being covered, might not be. The only way to know for sure is to ask your agent. And the more times your review your home insurance with me the more we learn about things that might have been overlooked last time we chatted! I get questions all the time. Some I can answer, some I have to call the underwriter. But either way, it’s better to ask the question, than have that $5,000 bronze sculpture you’ve gust placed in your water feature destroyed by the tree falling on it and find your policy has a $1,500 per item of art work limit unless it’s scheduled! Call me, I’ll come out anytime and run through your coverage.

So now you have a claim. Under your responsibility are ‘all reasonable efforts to ensure further damage does not occur’. This could be a simple as throwing a tarp over a broken window to calling every disaster restoration company and plumber in the book until you find one that can come out and shut of you water because the pipe broke and the valve was rusted and broke off when you tried to shut it off yourself!

RMII has a great little Claims guide here you can download.

As ever call me anytime you have a question, day or night and every time you think you might have a claim!.

One way to save on home insurance is to never have a water claim!

While most homeowner’s insurance policies cover water damage from freezing pipes, you really don’t want to have to file a claim. Many companies penalize you, thinking that you should have known better and kept it from happening. You wont save on home insurance by filing a water claim. Rack up two claims in a short period of time and I’m seeing the big national company’s non-renewing long time customers! With last summer’s fires, and the hail damage many insured’s received, a little common sense now can help save your home insurance! Back to back claims stand out big time now.

Snows coming folks! They’re calling for storms Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. The highs are only supposed to be 32 degrees!

Time to get your home winterized if you haven’t already. Blow out the sprinklers, shut off and drain the hose bibs if you can, get all those areas where water pipes come close to the basement or exterior walls insulated real good! Click through to the article below for more ideas. You don’t want a water claim from a busted pipe! Double check the sprinkler feed where it exits your home that’s where most are vulnerable!

The Insurance Information Institute has more ideas here.

Take a look at those trees around your property; will a wet snow drag them down? Are all the leaves gone? If not, could a limb break and come crashing down on your new roof? You might want to get out the chain saw, or call the Arborist!

Do you know where your water shutoff valve is? Better to find it now than at 3 AM with the basement filling with water! When you do find it, give it a twist. If you haven’t shut it off in a while it could be stuck from disuse. Run it all the way closed and turns on a faucet to see if it shuts off the flow. Better safe than sorry!!

Above all keep you home warm. If it gets really cold and blizzardy, (Is that a word?) open up any cabinets under sinks on outer walls, and any closets that might have pipes behind them. When in doubt, let a little water drip out of the faucets. The movement will help keep it from freezing.

Then light a fire in the fireplace and sit back and enjoy our Colorado winter!

If you’re buying a new home and looking for home insurance, please call me at 303-688-5193 first!

With all the fires and the hail we’ve had in the state this summer it’s increasingly difficult to get home insurance on certain homes, in certain areas. Farm Bureau Insurance is great because our underwriters will actually look at the risk before they make a decision, but there are still some that won’t fly. I have a better chance of helping you with your home insurance than most of the national companies because we only write in Colorado. Most of the national insurers are switching to computerized software that use satellites, CAT maps and gradients; showing where the hail hit, what size, how many trees are in your yard, how much slope is on your property; and then just arbitrarily kicking you out as uninsurable. They are even doing this to their home insurance customers they’ve had for years!

Farm Bureau Insurance and I take a different path. With our local experience we know what works and what best practices are for Colorado. Our policies and approach to protect your assets are tailored to each individual insured and we really work hard to be sure you are getting the right coverage, no more or less than you really need. I visit all my insured’s properties, meet with the inspectors during the inspections if possible, to really get a feel for the property and try and ferret out any deficiencies, then go over them with you, before we decide on a course of action. There’s nothing more frustrating that getting a call from an insured, all excited about the closing of a new home, only to find out that their home insurance is going to be three or four times higher than they imagined, just because of a zip code! Call me first! You’ll be happy you did!

Home Insurance in Castle Rock is not too tough to come by. Finding a good insurance company that you trust and that will stand by you for the long haul is. Go farther out; out to Sedalia, Elizabeth, Kiowa or Elbert and it becomes *$@% near impossible!

Farm Bureau Insurance is a “Horse of a Different Color” though. In many ways, we’re more like a family than an insurane company. When other companies are looking for ways to cut their losses after this years disasterous summer of fires and hail, Farm Bureau is more known for looking for ways to get our insureds paid!

Let me give you an example. When I started as an agent here, they gave me a few existing clients to look over. One of them, had a little modular on his property next to his home, that he was renting out. Now if you have a rental, you don’t need liability on the policy, you can extend it from an endorsement on your Homeowners policy and just have a “Dwelling” policy that just covers the rental structure. Much more economical. This particular homeowner though just had the liability endorsement covering the rental on his Homeowners policy and his Dwelling policy with Farm Bureau had expired. Not a big deal, as he could get a dwelling policy anywhere, but the underwriter asked me to check it out.

I spent three months trying to reach him; e-mails, phone calls, voice mails, letters; all unanswered. Finally I got him on the phone. It turns out he was in ministery and spent most of his free time taking youth on missions all over the United States.

After a brief introducton and bit of conversation, I asked him who had the dwelling policy on his modular. He replied: “You do, why?”. Then I explained; “No we didn’t”. That it had cancleled a while back, after sending cancel notices with out ever getting a responce.  He then said he’d be right over to bring it back on line.

I was feeling good that I found him and emailed the underwriter saying so. Telling her also it was also good we’d been able to get this taken care of before there was a claim. She responded; yes that is was good it was taken care of, but informed me then that there had been a a calim.

A few months earlier there had been a roof claim on the property. Over $40,000 in damage to all the roofs, of all the structures on the property, including the roof of the modular for which the policy had lapsed! She then told me that Farm Bureau went ahead and covered the roof anyway. Hard to believe in this day and age!

That’s why I represent them and that’s why Farm Bureau is a Horse of a Differeent Color!

Insurance, farming, ranching and life in general. Hello World! This is my first Post. Please bear with me as I figure all this out!

Home Insurance

Is your replacement cost right, do you have all the discounts, what about your toys? Are there category limits; guns, collections, we have to be concerned with?

Auto Insurance

Life Insurance