Personal Finance Advice and Commentary

Call me geek but I’m fascinated by car insurance. Insert here your pitying eye-roll, followed in close succession by “Why?” and “Don’t get out much, huh?” But two X factors separate car insurance from life insurance, health insurance and homeowners insurance: motion and emotion. Consider the car insurance underwriters at Progressive, Geico and State Farm.

Hail is the Rodney Dangerfield of home insurance hazards: It gets no respect. On the scream-o-meter, it barely moves the needle compared to earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes and floods. It’s rarely deadly, and its hit-and-run nature usually eludes TV crews, leaving only home video or snapshots of hailstones sent in by viewers to the evening news

Flood flash: State Farm is opting out of the National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP. In a June 9 news release, one of the nation’s largest home insurance underwriters said it will cease writing new flood insurance policies as a participant in NFIP’s “Write Your Own” program beginning Oct. 1. State Farm said its agents will continue

Here in Florida, if you’re nautical by nature, you can get a rush just walking the docks and checking out the clever names on the sterns of the pleasure fleet. Naturally, Jimmy Buffett references rule down here, with 5 O’Clock Somewhere, A Pirate (or Parrot) Looks at 40, Changes in Latitude, Shaker of Salt and

If you’ve paid out-of-pocket for auto expenses or insurance deductibles as a result of the recent Toyota safety recall, your auto insurance company may have your back — and a check. That is, if it can prove that your Toyota’s runaway accelerator caused the damage to your wallet. According to the Associated Press, at least