Ready Set Sold with Bryan Vogt #43-02: Joe Harnist: Paying too much for insurance?

Welcome back to Ready Set Sold. Happy happy spring and Easter is just around the corner I just I’ve never been able to figure out when actually how that that plan is when Easter falls if it comes early or comes late I think it’s about the only big holiday that seems to move around I’m sure there’s good reasons for our religious and things of that nature no problem with it but I don’t know I’m just never quite sure how that works but whatever your situation is hoping you’re having a fantastic Saturday and having a fantastic weekend and maybe you’re out looking for houses or maybe you’re your you’ve got plans to list your house this weekend good idea
Again we’ve talked about before in the first segment and talked about this for weeks this is a fantastic time to be purchasing a home and also selling your house with us is Joe Harness you can return from the first segment Joe Harness he is the president of harness insurance then the business for 40 years and that’s just him personally Joe how long is your company been around we’ve been here seventy-three years Bryan I actually grew up in the insurance business my mom and dad started the agency back in nineteen forty five so we’ve been on East Main Street in downtown Belleville for 73 years so that’s amazing that’s amazing and that says a lot too about your company and your standards because look businesses come and go but to have that type of a record of basically seventy-five years will just rounds off.
I mean three quarters of a century that’s amazing stuff so good stuff so we’ve been talking with Joe here and we’re going to go into another segment and Joe you had some other interesting
things to talk about also on insurance yeah we are talking about all the different coverages that are available on our home that that you can add to it that her there are all really very important things you don’t want to just you know get what the bank requires you to you need to add those things on but to go into another venue is on your auto insurance which a lot of times you know your auto and home are tied together because you’re getting that multiple policy credit between the two and that can be huge your credit on your home if you write your auto with the same company is usually around the twenty five percent credit off your homeowners premiums so that’s huge to try to keep those together to be able to keep those premiums down by doing that.
The other thing on the auto I wanted to mention and we’re seeing that you know with new drivers you know the people have their kids coming up and I just had one the other day where they had you know twins coming up and that’s going to get real expensive but they’re got twins both going to turn age 16 and one of the things we try to encourage people to do is look at your liability limits what liability limits are you carrying on your auto insurance you got brand-new drivers on experience now coming on which basically is going to increase your exposure does something happening that’s the time you want to look at increasing your liability limits not leaving them the same not lowering them to try to save premium because your liabilities your unknown with young drivers and in with accidents you don’t know what the courts are going to do or how that loss is going to come out.
If somebody else is injured and it’s your fault you’re better off to raise the liability limits up higher and also raise your deductibles on the vehicles up higher use the premium you save by raising your deductibles to offset the cost to increase your liability because again I think your liability especially with young drivers is more important than the money on the vehicle because you know what you’re going to lose if you lose that vehicle you don’t know what your loss is going to be under the liability that’s made and that’s and those are and those are great points I mean and I think that what I loved about that is it’s just what you’re doing is spending your money more wisely and that comes from somebody like yourself and not saying there is another insurance companies.
I’m not sure about the 75 year mark but there is other insurance companies out there but just having that type of working knowledge is really important so you’re using the same money but getting the coverage you actually need versus what may not cover you in the barring disaster exactly yeah and I mean you can even go a step further and this brings the homeowners back into it too you can you can go into what we call an umbrella liability policy which basically is a third policy sometimes companies will add it by endorsement to the homeowners but that that is another layer of liability it’s usually starts at a million dollar limit but that limit of liability goes over the top of your primary limit on your home and your primary limits on your auto.
So say you’ve got three hundred thousand liability on your home and you have an umbrella once if you have a serious enough claim and it exceeds that three hundred thousand on your homeowners then your umbrella kicks in you’ve got another million on top of it and then the same with the auto if you’re carrying a hundred and three hundred or two hundred and fifty five hundred thousand on the auto and you have god forbid a very serious automobile accident and you blow through your liability limits you’ve got another million dollars on top of that if you’ve got that umbrella in place so it just just depends on how much coverage you want to be and how well protected you want to be and what your assets are that you want to protect so well.
I mean the simple thing is when we talk about houses and homes and things like that I always try to tell people I know you use you two um back in the day you know when I hear that I appreciate that but back in the day we didn’t have to do this and back of the day we didn’t have this and it’s the same thing with the housing market there was a time which is hard to imagine now but there was a time when you bought a house and if something went wrong with it too bad so sad fix it that’s on you not on the sour was on the buyer and I think sometimes if we’ve run in that situation with insurance – times have changed they just have you know whether that’s good or bad we live in a different world right now and people tend to want to sue it seems a lot more than quote-unquote.
Back in the day and so having that type of insurance I you know whatever that coverage looks like is well worth it I would imagine Joe versus not having it and now my goodness I know god forbid bankruptcy or whatever facing you is never a good situation yeah there’s a lot more exposure out there these days than there used to be you know like I said I’ve been I’ve been doing this for 40 years and I’ve seen a lot of the years I’ve seen a lot of things change and I’ve seen a lot of claim scenarios over the years so I my big belief is the higher the liability you can carry the better off you are you know I as much liability as you can afford because that’s the unknown and that’s what everybody’s worried about and that’s good stuff if we’re going to be.
I talked with Joe off the break he’s gonna be coming back for our four segments but in the next segment we’re going to be talking about as far as it’s a hot market that still be careful with the updating most hours don’t go too far with it but there’s a few out there that deal and I’ve got some stories to talk in the next segment and then Joe harnessed of harness insurance we’ll be coming back with us on the fourth segment you’re listening to Ready Set Sold I’m your host Bryan Vogt happy spring–
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