No umbrella insurance policy, Jym
Dosch, for sure I need to check out if USAA would even insure my house. My male friend thinks I’m being OCD, but I think it is a major decision.
We’ve been with USAA for 30 years and are “all in” (home w/ large umbrella, cars and banking). Launched kiddos are grandfathered in since they both established accounts when they were minors. (Actually we’re grandfathered in too because of DH’s father.)
Had a homeowners claim for a burst pipe a few years ago that couldn’t have gone more smoothly. As someone mentioned upthread, we live in a very expensive area but the actual house is nothing special so we usually have to have an annual discussion on why our replacement value isn’t in lock-step with the property value.
All-in-all, we’re very happy with USAA.
If you considered an umbrella, which isn’t too expensive, you can lower your insurance to whatever the minimum is they require (maybe 250/500 I think??) and green you get the additional comfort should someone sue you or what have you.
My opinion is 100/300 is way too low. I specialize in high net worth insurance so my typical client has millions to protect but I tell everyone that I talk to 500,000 is the minimum anyone should have and 1,000,000+ is highly advisable for people in any income bracket.
Think of it this way, with medical costs today how much is $100,000? My son had a small work comp incident last year, one visit to the ER, one MRI, and home within about 3 hours. It was $13,000. Any accident that involves any kind of injury is going to hit $100,000 very quickly, and on liability claims there are no “negotiated rates” that health insurers get. You become personally responsible to any individual once their expenses (including lost income) exceed $100,000. Liability is generally cheap, especially umbrella liability.
As I just told a prospective client yesterday; I have never had a client after an accident say they wished they had less insurance but often times you hear the opposite.
I had been a USAA member for over 25 years. I live on the coast and we got dropped for homeowners due to claims. I still have them for car.
@garland a lot of carriers aren’t in NJ because our Auto insurance and DOI are both a nightmare! MA is another auto nightmare.
I also worked in the high net worth arena. Insured’s hate being told their house costs more to rebuild than they could get selling it, but sometimes it’s true, especially old homes with unique features.
I also think 100/300 is too low, unless you get an umbrella. Especially if you have young drivers. Nobody likes to think worst case scenario, but 100/300 doesn’t go far in a serious accident.
Many insurance companies will not underwrite an umbrella unless you up your auto. 100/300k is too low.
Much help. So I should leave at 500/500000. Thanks all
Lovers of USAA here - been with them for 3 decades now, but only for auto. We live on a farm and need farm insurance as opposed to regular house or renters insurance.
We’ve had a couple of car accident claims during that time period - absolutely no problems whatsoever, even when one of them was due to my “learner’s permit” lad.
We get dividends every year and our Savings Account is in the 3K (maybe more?) range.
My oldest son is in the group who can join with them. He and his wife were going to with another company when we let him know he could try USAA. They quickly joined for both auto and renters telling us they were saving a lot over their other quotes. Our other two lads are still on our car insurance.
Never heard of Amica TBH. We considered Geico at one point in our lives. Never considered anyone else since we love USAA.
Amica has a very good reputation. I’ve heard of them, but never lived in one of the places where they insure.
I’ve had USAA for auto forever, and started off with renter’s insurance which was $25/year, lol. We don’t have homeowner’s insurance with them anymore but we still have auto and umbrella.
How do you find out the balance of your Subscriber Savings Account? We have a credit card from them that we rarely use, and don’t use their other banking or investment services at all.
@greenwitch from what I could uncover using the Googler, not every member has a Subscriber Savings Account. I scoured my account via their online services, and it doesn’t appear that I have one. Maybe it’s because my membership originated as the child of a military member, rather than a military member myself. I also read that they provide annual notifications to those members who do have one, in February I believe. If you expect that you do or should have one, I suggest you call customer service and ask about it.
My dissatisfaction with USAA started many years ago when we moved from Memphis to Seattle. Everything was just fine when we weren’t making any changes or claims, and just paying for our policy. But when we moved, our auto insurance went way up. I called to ask why, mentioning that it was confusing, because Memphis drivers are pretty bad. Lots of accidents, people constantly speed, don’t use their blinker, distracted drivers, wandering aimlessly into your lane. Too many carjackings and car thefts. Contrast that with Seattle (many years ago), polite and alert drivers for the most part, much safer conditions. Of course, now we have people breaking into cars, but it wasn’t a thing back then.
I was told that when you move to another state, they reevaluate your claims record, and we had seven claims (I think that was the number she said). What? We had one, all the time we lived in Memphis, a tornado took out a shed and USAA paid a little bit out to us. Turns out that every time we just called with a question about something, they deemed it a claim, even though we didn’t declare it so. Contrast that with Armed Forces Insurance…they have paid out $35-$40K on three water loss claims on rental condos, and haven’t raised our puny $250 annual policies for them. I called to make a claim on another one, said I wasn’t 100% sure the issue was black mold, it could have been dirt, and the agent said, “Are you sure you want to make this a claim? How about before you do that, I send out an adjuster to take a look, and then you determine if you want to make one?” I ended up cancelling the claim, because it was a minor problem.
USAA required a minimum level on our auto policy and then the umbrella kicked in. We don’t have a crazy level of auto. Do keep in mind that if you have an incident with an underinsured driver, the difference between the driver’s coverage and the liability may roll over to your insurance. At that point, your insurance company may not be your friend! The guy who hit me last year has $30k in coverage. My medical bills came to close to that. Now have to decide whether to file or seek a settlement, because after his coverage gets subrogated to my medical plan, there’s not much for pain/suffering/permanent damages. Or, more accurately, my insurance will decide what to pay me.
@busdriver11 - we had a similar experience with questions being considered claims by USAA for our homeowner’s insurance. It is standard procedure for homeowner’s insurance to consider questions as claims, but you want better than that.
In all, I think they are better with auto insurance.
Yikes,standard procedure? That’s awful! If you call and ask questions, we’re going to increase the cost of your policy. Yes, we do want better than that! I love AFI. A claim is only when you declare one, and you can cancel it if you like.