(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] woodpijn.livejournal.com at 03:23pm on 19/02/2008
The general principle is never to insure against a risk you can bear.

I absolutely agree. And yet some people seem to think it's weird or foolish that I don't sign up to a direct debit to insure a £100 phone, and some people seem to be insured for every possible thing that could conceivably go wrong.

(Although, as Sally says, there's also a case for insuring if for some reason "you think you are more than averagely likely to have things go wrong".)

I love your icon btw :)
[parent entry] [link] [parent] [reply]
gerald_duck: (penelope)

(no subject)

posted by [personal profile] gerald_duck at 03:52pm on 19/02/2008
Unfortunately, most insurers put in a clause along the lines of "if you think there's any reason why you're more than averagely likely to have things go wrong you have to tell us this so we can up the premium".
[link] [parent] [reply]
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] alextfish.livejournal.com at 04:03pm on 19/02/2008
Thankfully they don't seem to count "I'm the kind of person who loses/damages my phone", which is my reason for having had insurance on my expensive PDAphones for the past 8 years; I think I've claimed on it more years than I haven't, but they don't seem to be upping my premium.

Otherwise, I agree entirely with the point, and wouldn't pay a waiver like that.
[link] [parent] [reply]
 

(no subject)

posted by [identity profile] cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com at 11:37pm on 19/02/2008
Me too. Although (in contrast to my post about credit card debt) conventional wisdom may have some points:

* if you *can* pay, but the hassle (financial or emotional) is out of proportion to the cost, you might prefer to make your cash flow predictable
* American health insurance seems to take it to an extreme, but the idea that you ought to be entitled to insurance, and indeed it's part of the system that insurance pays for predictable costs as well if you can get it (which always makes me disinclined, as I feel I'd probably be much worse at gaming the system, so surely it must be uneconomic for me; this applies less to hire cars where only random accidents (your fault or not) apply)
* if you think you are more likely to have an accident (this seems an obvious one, and would apply to me and bikes, but while it's perfectly reasonable to do, I just feel odd doing so; am i taking advantage (even if they are evil)? Does it make a difference if they know they're taking an average and some people are worse risks than others? Am I doing something wrong? I've become very careful how I leave my bike. What if occasionally you're not quite so careful, if you're always careless, does that void the contract, but if just once you tie up to a post that turns out to be crumbling, is that ok? But they can't tell the difference, would they fight it? Again, I feel like I just don't know the system and ought to find out.)
[link] [parent] [reply]

October

SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
      1
 
 2
 
 3
 
 4
 
5
 
 6
 
 7
 
 8
 
 9
 
 10
 
 11
 
12
 
 13
 
 14
 
 15
 
 16
 
 17
 
 18
 
19
 
 20
 
 21
 
 22
 
 23
 
 24
 
 25
1
26
 
 27
 
 28
 
 29
 
 30
 
 31