My Personal Finance Blog

Even when the economy is doing well, there are a wide range of activities undertaken by nonprofit or not-for-profit organizations. There are a number of reasons for this. Culturally, the idea of volunteering your time for a good cause has always been strong. People are always prepared to give their time in providing a range of services to those in need. When the economy weakens and a recession tips more people into poverty, the need for volunteerism becomes greater. Indeed, the more people who need help, the more opportunities there are for nonprofit organizations to give that help. Add to this social incentive the economic fact that there are tax advantages to running nonprofit businesses, and you come to the reality that there are thousands of organisations providing business services of differing types in every major city across the country. They are filling the gap left when the for-profit organizations withdraw from the markets because they cannot make enough profit. In all businesses, the common denominator is the desire to make an operating profit. The difference lies in what you do with the profit. Yet every business has broadly similar insurance needs.

All businesses are regulated by federal and state laws covering employment, working conditions, and so on. Some are to the advantage of nonprofits, e.g. the Federal Volunteer Protection Act of 1997 protects volunteers from liability to third parties so long as they act within the scope of their duties. So if a volunteer negligently injures a member of the public while working for a nonprofit, he or she will not be personally liable. This significantly reduces the insurance premiums. All businesses should carry general third party liability coverage. The recommended amount of cover is $1 million for indemnity and defense costs which is usually sufficient to pay for the damage caused to a third party. But this amount should be increased if the people served by the nonprofit are particularly vulnerable or more likely to sue if something goes wrong. Put simply, a nonprofit can be financially destroyed by the need to defend frivolous claims. Business insurance pays for an attorney to provide that necessary line of defense.

If your business has a commercial lease for premises or rents places for different activities and events, liability insurance is absolutely necessary. If the organization provides transport, whether using the vehicles of volunteers or owned vehicles, there is a positive need for commercial auto insurance. Everyone who drives a vehicle as a part of their duties should be covered by this policy. Put the other way round, most private auto policies exclude coverage when the vehicle is used “for hire”, which excludes the vehicle while being driven for nonprofit purposes. The organization should also insure all the equipment, fixtures and fittings used in the offices and other places where the services are delivered. Employees may claim because their property is damaged or stolen, because they are the victims of harassment or discrimination, etc. The officers and directors of the nonprofits should carefully consider whether they need insurance in their roles. This is particularly important in the small business insurance market. There is less capital available to meet claims and insurance is a necessary part of the survival strategy.

Health insurance has become one of the largest monthly expenses for the vast majority of Americans. Not only has it become quite expensive, but for many, health insurance isn’t even available because they simply don’t make enough money to fit health insurance into the budget. This has left hundreds of thousands of Americans without adequate health coverage, including many children. For these reasons, health insurance has also become one of the biggest concerns for most people in the coming elections. So, why has health insurance become so expensive?

The first thing you need to understand about health insurance companies is that they are businesses whose sole interest is to make money by providing a service. In order to make money, these companies must turn a profit by bringing in more money than they spend. In today’s regulatory environment, along with the increased number of lawsuits related to health care, the cost of doing business in the health insurance industry has skyrocketed. These companies, in turn, have had to raise rates to accommodate those additional costs in order to keep making a profit.

That’s not to say that health insurance companies are completely honest with you about just how much health insurance is going to cost you. Most health insurance companies quote premiums based on age. You’ve seen the television ads that offer health insurance for a mere $129 per month for a 29 year old non-smoker. While that sounds like a very reasonable rate, there is more to this than meets the eye.

In order to get the rest of the story, so to speak, you’d need to look at the actual policy and the so-called “fine print.” In order to qualify for that low $129 rate, you’d have to be a perfectly healthy person whose never gotten sick in the past and have absolutely no reason to need health insurance in the first place. In short, they can offer this rate because there is little to no risk that the company will have to pay out any kind of benefit to this person.

Another thing you might not notice from just watching the advertisement is the size of the deductible. For the rate mentioned above, the deductible is likely to be somewhere around $1000. For other policies, the deductible can be as high as $5000.

So, what is a deductible, you might ask? The deductible in an insurance policy is the amount of money you must pay out of pocket before the insurance company will start paying out benefits. Usually, the deductible does not apply to all health care expenses, so you have to pay careful attention as to whether the policy is worthwhile in your particular situation. In some cases, you would spend less money just paying for health care services out-of-pocket than actually purchasing health insurance because of the deductible.

Another thing that might raise the price of insurance coverage is a pre-existing condition. This is any condition that existed before you purchase coverage with any specific health insurance company. In many cases, you may not be able to get coverage for that condition at all, unless you can prove that you have had continuous care for that condition during the time in which you had no insurance. Even if it is covered, you can be assured that it will cost you more money for it.

Because of all of these variables, most people wind up with far higher premiums than those low rates advertised on TV. In some cases, people may not even be able to get insurance at any price, due to the perceived risk to the insurance company. In many cases, the resultant premium is just simply too high to fit into an individual’s budget, and so they continue on without health coverage.

High insurance premiums are a fact of life in these times, and are likely to remain so for a long time to come. The only way to change this is to fundamentally change the approach to providing health care in this country, by socializing the health care system. This, however, comes with its own set of problems that can be worse than the current system in many respect. The bottom line is that there are no easy answers to solving the health care problems in this country. The only thing you can do is to be aware of all the issues surrounding the problem and make your decision based on facts, and not what the talking heads on television are trying to tell you.

If you are tired of paying the high cost of car insurance, then you need to know that it is possible to look for and find cheap car insurance.  In fact, many people could save hundreds of dollars off their current yearly insurance premiums if they simply take the time to shop around and do the research necessary.

In times past, you would go down to the only insurance agent in town and sit down with him and arrange for all your insurance needs.  Your parents did this and you may have done this too.  Your agent handled everything for you, and you simply wrote out the check.  However, the world of insurance companies has drastically changed from what it used to be.  Instead of only three or four companies that handled the insurance needs of 90 percent of the country, there are literally hundreds of insurance companies that are taking care of people throughout the United States.

The internet has actually greatly increased the availability of cheap car insurance because it has allowed for increased competition between the different insurance companies.  Older, more established companies are being forced to keep their premium rates in line with the newer companies that have very little overhead and that have found more ways to keep costs low.  In fact, studies show that insurance rates for new customers have gone down repeatedly over the past few years.

Because of the move away from a local office or branch, many insurance companies have a lower overhead cost.  They are not paying a lease for a building or paying salaries to employees.  Their office is essentially the computer, so they pass those savings on to the customer in the form of the different packages that are available.  Some of these agents work for the older, more established companies, but in the newer, internet world.

Using the internet to search for cheap car insurance quotes is quite easy, but it is important to spend enough time at it to really be sure that you are getting the best deal. If you only spend fifteen minutes, you might be able to find some great quotes, but it is important that you understand what you are getting.  You must provide certain information, such as your age, state of residence, make, model, and year of car you want to insure, and so forth.  Many companies are moving away from requiring any sensitive personal information until you are ready to purchase the policy from them.

However, the more detailed you get on the information you provide, the more accurate the quote will be.  You may want to use the coverage numbers from your current policy as a basis and then you can compare everyone equally.  You will also find that there are some websites that allow you to input your information one time and they send out and do a search for your, coming back with multiple quotes from different companies.  You can then make comparisons and find the cheap car insurance quotes that you were looking for.  experts say that  if people would examine their insurance premiums every three to five years as a minimum, they could literally save hundreds of dollars.