Read the episode transcript
Aaron Bollinger (00:00)
Picture this. You come home, somebody's been in the house, and your wedding ring, your watch, and your grandmother's necklace are all gone. Together, they're worth $15,000. You call your insurance company, they tell you they'll pay $1,500. Today, I'm going to explain why that happens and the simplest fix that nobody does until it is too late. This is Speaking of Insurance. I'm Aaron Bollinger. This podcast is brought to you by Bollinger Insurance Services, our family agency that's focused on providing zero-cost consumer information for people about insurance and their risks and their assets. And so hopefully this podcast will be insightful in a sense that it will maybe get you some actionable steps that you can take as an individual to make sure that your grandmother's necklace and your ring are insured under your homeowner's insurance policy or another type of insurance policy. So let's go into it. Today, we're going to be talking starting with special limits. Now, it sounds special, so it's got to be special, right? Personal property isn't just one number. Personal property, if you guys remember from those other podcasts, is just the coverage for your furniture and other things inside of
Aaron Bollinger (01:03)
your house, not the actual property itself, but the things inside of the property. So think of jewelry, watches, furs, those things are very susceptible to theft, right? Of course they are because people come into a house and they see the beautiful things that you have across and they take whatever is easy. They're not going to be able to steal the entire structure. They're going of steal the things inside the structure. So that's your personal property. Watches and furs are some of those things. If you are a higher net worth individual, obviously you've got jewelry, you've got other collections. Maybe it's like some, I don't know, sports cards as well. Things like that, cash, firearms, silverware, they all have in insurance a small cap. So what is a small cap? It's not a hat. A small cap is something that insurance companies do on sublimits, which is just a separate limit on your policy that goes under the personal property coverage. They just say, hey, I know that you've got personal property coverage of $300,000, but that's only for your furniture. That's only for your rugs. That's only for X, Y, and Z. If you want actual specific
Aaron Bollinger (02:04)
coverage for your jewelry, for your watches, for your higher risk items that would be a lot harder for a burglar to come in and take, then they're going to put a supplement on that traditionally, unless you're with a higher net worth insurance company and you've and or you've explicitly talked to your insurance company and they have determined that, hey, we're going to remove X, Y and Z supplement. This is applicable also to not just homeowners, but also renters. If you're renting, odds are you've got some decent jewelry around your house. Those are the easy things to take.
Aaron Bollinger (02:34)
Your insurance company will only cover you to a specific amount. And so you listening to a 15 to 20 minute podcast telling you about all the different things, giving you actionable examples, giving you actionable next steps on this podcast could be the difference between you paying $10 this year and having a few thousand dollars extra on your jewelry, let's say, versus not having that in the first place. So that's why we're here. Jewelry theft, for example, is usually $1,500 supplement. So let's break that down. If you have a wedding ring, odds are it's worth maybe a thousand dollars, maybe more than that. We've had people whose wedding rings are worth, you know, I mean, six figures. It's ridiculous. And they don't think about it until, you know, somebody comes into their house and takes the easiest thing that's on the dresser, which is the jewelry and the wife's wedding ring and maybe even the husband's wedding ring, right? I mean, regardless of what it is, it is more than likely that that will be one of the things that will be taken.
Aaron Bollinger (03:29)
Fire pays up to the full contents limit. And so fire means if a fire were to happen inside of the property, then it will pay up to the full property limit up to the supplements in addition as well. So any total complete loss, you think about if your house were to burn down, or if somebody were to come in and destroy the entire house, or if rain were to come in, it were to take down your roof and everything inside of your house is destroyed, and none of it is recoverable, which is improbable, but still possible, then your limits would be 100% what matters the absolute most to you. And so let's talk more on theft because it's something that as somebody who lives in Los Angeles, I feel very susceptible to. And I know that a lot of our insureds feel very susceptible to, and they do live in these nicer, but more jam packed neighborhoods. Even if it's a condo, even if it's a super high net worth area, things do happen, right? They are targeting individuals that do have nicer things that do have their windows open that show all the lavish things and all of the items that are on their insurance policy that we're going to be
Aaron Bollinger (04:31)
going through one by one. So theft versus lost. A regular policy covers theft, not loss of the beach or the stone fell out. So let's talk about how you can get covered for lost items. If you have a scheduled insurance policy, a floater on personal articles, then that means that while those things are not explicitly at your house, while you're moving around with them, while things happen to it, if they do get lost, then they do cover up to a specific amount. But that has to be on a separate insurance policy other than your homeowner's insurance policy. Scheduled items usually cover mysterious disappearance. So again, if you schedule these items one by one, it could be even with your homeowner's insurance company, but it has to be explicitly scheduled. Usually they require that you have valuations of these one by one items that you want to have scheduled.
Aaron Bollinger (05:20)
So an appraisal, something like, oh, this is worth $20,000 from a local jeweler. And that usually has to be recently dated because you can't have somebody in 2005 that says that this super nice gold piece is worth $500,000. Then nowadays, obviously maybe it's appreciated, but let's say that it hasn't, and it's worth $200,000. Now it has to be a recent appraisal. And so they use that to gauge how much you would get and how much coverage you should have on that specific item to schedule it in the first place. And again, some homeowners insurance companies allow for that scheduling, allow for the ability to add mysterious disappearance, but traditionally it is not just, they don't know because they've done an inspection report. They don't know because you're a high net worth individual and you own a nice house. They don't know that your limits are going to be or should be $100,000 on the jewelry side. That has to be explicitly discussed with your insurance broker. And so when people search up jewelry insurance, let's talk about how that jewelry is being used. If it's being transported, if it's going across international waters, if you're moving X, Y, and Z places, if you're bringing it everywhere versus you wanting just
Aaron Bollinger (06:22)
coverage for when it's at the house or for specifically used instances, then you can add it to your homeowner's insurance policy and it's usually quite cheap. It's a lot cheaper than getting a PAF, which is a personal articles floater, where they add it and they cover you for the things like mysterious disappearance. So how does scheduling really work? Again, you have to have a appraisal, but alternatively you can have a receipt. So this lists the item explicitly and its value worldwide. And there's oftentimes no deductible on these items, which is really cool. So we work with a company called Markel. If you have specifically scheduled property, odds are you have possibly worked with Markel as well. And Markel is a great insurance company because they offer a personal articles floater that covers you for a mysterious disappearance. So if you don't know what happened to your product, obviously don't lose it. Don't be careless. But I mean, I lose things all the time. Fun fact, I have to have one of those Apple tracker things in my wallet. Who would have thought that I'd need that? I feel obviously very irresponsible because I do get forgetful when it comes to things that should matter.
Aaron Bollinger (07:24)
And I know that a lot of people do too. I mean, we have a lot of things other on our mind, other than our personal property, right? Other than our susceptibility for loss at our house, other than something slipping off our ear, a super nice earring or something slipping off our finger, right? These things are in essence uncontrollable. And as a result of that, this is what this level of personal article floaters or the specifically scheduled or the increased supplement coverages on your insurance policies can help accommodate for. So something to keep in mind. The thing is, is that another thing is if you do have a insurance policy already for your personal articles, for your higher value items, one thing that you do know is that they do oftentimes require a reappraisal.
Aaron Bollinger (08:07)
So every three to five years, they have to reevaluate what the item is worth. So if there are specific features of that property that are maybe, again, appreciating over time or way less valuable now than they were then. Example being more natural diamonds, right? The ability to have those reappraised saying, oh, you know, these are actually worth a lot less. Now the insurance company will adjust those coverages appropriately because the worst case scenario is that you don't get your item reappraised and you don't have any coverage or you don't get your item reappraised and they say, oh, you had this item. We said it was worth $100,000. It's actually only worth 60 now because you'd not done the reappraisal process. So make sure that you're talking to your insurance company and planning that out. Easiest way to do it, go get an appraisal or send over a prior appraisal. Ask an insurance broker for a consultation. Say, hey, I want to get this covered. You can send it to our email, quotes, Q-U-O-T-E-S at Bollinsure.com. Odds are you know how to spell Bollinsure if you listen to this podcast. If not, links in the description.
Aaron Bollinger (09:00)
You can reach us. You can call us, whatever you want. We can look at the appraisal. We can figure out what insurance company, because obviously it's not just Markel. You can add these things to your homeowner's insurance policy, to your renter's insurance policy. You can up your supplements and it is a lot more cost effective that way. But if you want the holistic coverage for these items, go get them on a separate scheduled policy. That's all we're saying. Let's go through an example. When could this be applicable? When could I ever lose something?
Aaron Bollinger (09:28)
So again, I told you, I already admitted that I lose a lot of items and I am very careless and I'm not advocating for people to be careless at all. Of course, be careful. A part of being careful is the proactivity that you show before you have to be careful. What I mean by that is the level of risk mitigation that comes during the you're being out and jewelry is separate from what you do beforehand with the actual what would happen in the event that in that moment you do have a lapse of judgment. So the pre-planning, just like how before the wedding you have to have the pre-planning, right? That's the whole buildup. And so the pre-planning is the insurance here.
Aaron Bollinger (10:04)
If you have a nice item, go spend 1% to 5% to whatever it is of its value on yearly premium to make sure that that item that is so dear to your heart, that is so valuable to you emotionally can be replaced. And of course you can never really replace these things, some of these things, but you should definitely be entitled to the amount that it is worth in its tangible value. So you can go get something of equal value in the marketplace for yourself. So if a $12,000 a ring is stolen, if that is unscheduled on your homeowner's renter's insurance policy, that Julie's sublimit, of course, I can't guarantee it. It's usually around $1,500.
Aaron Bollinger (10:39)
So what does that mean? That means that you get $1,500 and you have to go spend, what is that? $10,500. That's not ideal, right? Of course, it's just basic math, right? I mean, obviously like, oh, you should get more coverage on this. You should get more coverage on that. But when you feel that ring on your finger, when you feel the value of these items to you, to your livelihood, to your emotional wellbeing, there's some of those items for me as well. Like my grandma's jewelry, right? I mean, like I mentioned at the beginning, like there are some things that you just, you can't put a price tag on that. It would be nice if it were to get lost, if it were to have a mysterious disappearance, or if it were to get burned down or something in the house, then you're able to get something, something other than pennies on the dollar of what it was worth.
Aaron Bollinger (11:26)
that's the whole point obviously your house burns down there's no way to ever rebuild that and there's no way to make that stress-free but there is a way to put it on somebody else and put the onus on them put the emphasis on them put the job on them so then you don't have to worry about that yourself right and so let's go beyond jewelry because obviously jewelry is the easiest one to look at a lot of people have nice watch collections maybe you have a really nice sneaker collection i mean you're a sneaker head right that was probably more of a trend in the 2010s but if you are a sneaker head, no hate, but you do have to go get applicable insurance because your insurance company is not going to want to insure your $10,000 sneaker collection. They're just not going to. They're not going to want to insure your card collection that you're going to say was worth $100,000 that had no appraisal. They're not going to want to do that. And so like, if you have these nice items, like it's worth literally the 30 minutes of getting a console, driving out to some place, getting an appraise, getting the official document, and then sending me an email or sending our team an email saying, hey, I want to get this insured. Again, pros and cons, right?
Aaron Bollinger (12:23)
Make the decision. Art. Now, if art is in transit, what do we have to do? Personal articles floater in the marine policy, right? Different items require different policies. Of course. Can you add them all together? Yes, you can. That's another cool thing that you can do with these personal article floater policies. Insurance companies do give you credit if you do add a bunch of different things to it. Because I mean, obviously it's like insuring one car versus insuring a family, right? And so it's like, if you insure one car, you're not going to get many discounts.
Aaron Bollinger (12:49)
But if you insure your entire, you know, fleet of cars with an insurance company, then they're going to be like, okay, you know, we're on this entire risk, we are all in on this, and we've already approved to write it, then let's just make it more of an incentive for them to insure with us. That makes any sense. Collectibles, right? I mean, Hummels, right? I think that's what they call them. I mean, I don't know. I don't know the target audience that I'm talking to right now. I I mean, it's probably a vast array of people, right?
Aaron Bollinger (13:17)
And so we probably have people in the 20s trying to learn about insurance, trying to get into insurance. We probably have people in their 40s, 50s, maybe people who are retired as well who want to learn about risk management. Maybe we have people in other countries as well wanting to learn about how crazy Americans are about insurance, more explicitly me and how crazy I am about insurance. But nonetheless, if you have a Hummel collection, please go get that insured because God knows that's appreciated. Or maybe it's depreciated.
Aaron Bollinger (13:42)
I don't know. I'm not up on the Hummel market, but that's why you have to get these things repraised is because the market always fluctuates. Instruments. If you guys are, I don't know, banjo players, banjo is nice. Oh, pianos, pianos. You don't think about these things, right? These instruments coverages, right? If you've got a very talented musical household, maybe somebody plays the violin. If you have an instrument collection and you've got a really nice violin, please go get that insured. If it's moving around on places, please go get that insured. If any item is worth more than the sublimate you have to go add to the sublimate or increase it. Cameras as well. We use cameras for our podcast. A lot of people use cameras for their podcast. Go get that insurance on a separate insurance policy, please, because that is in transit, that is moving, and that is absolutely crucial to have on your insurance policy. This is where a standalone collection policy beats an endorsement on an insurance policy. An endorsement on an insurance policy just says, hey, this sublimate here, we're going to up it by $10,000 and you'll have coverage for your camera collection, but mysterious disappearance, but when it's moving between places, but when it goes across the state line, it's not covered.
Aaron Bollinger (14:42)
Those are the exclusions that under a personal articles float or under a different type of insurance policy would be more accommodating, more plentiful in terms of their coverages for you, for that item, for the value of that item and for the emotional value of that item as well. Now we can't insure for emotional value, but we can insure for one of one, one of a kind pieces. that's what these insurance companies are for with that in mind here's your homework make a list of anything worth more than a couple thousand dollars find the receipts or get an appraisal and send it to your broker or send it to us at Bollinsure it takes an hour and it's the difference between fifteen hundred dollars and the real value of that item we have high net worth sections we have blog posts we have guides for those higher net worth individuals we have guides for people who maybe aren't of that higher net worth but can go to the website and they can see okay these are the items that I should be thinking of. These are the coverages that I should be thinking of. These are the types of insurance policies that are offered. It's a very good resource. If you do have any questions, you can also ask ChatGPT, what does Bollinger say about personal articles?
Aaron Bollinger (15:43)
And ChatGPT will tell you. So with that, I'm Aaron Bollinger. This has been the Speaking of Insurance podcast brought to you by Bollinger Insurance Services. Again, this is a part of our family agency's way of trying to help people understand and bridge the gaps in the insurance knowledge because for so long, and I think almost all of insurance's history, it's been very unclear of what is covered, what sublimits are, what you should be insuring on a separate insurance policy versus a traditional homeowner's insurance policy and the sublimits included, right?
Aaron Bollinger (16:11)
Hopefully, we were able to bridge some of those gaps and help explain it. If you have any additional questions, you can reach us via cell, you can reach us via email, you can go to Bollinsure.com slash quote to get any quotes for these items. With that in mind, thank you so much for listening. Hope you guys have an awesome rest of your week.
