How to calculate how much umbrella I need?

[White.Beard.Doc]

My umbrella was not going to be renewed because of my son's accidents.  Eventually Geico did renew it, but my son had to get his own coverage before they would renew.  Now I have 4 million in coverage for an expensive $1700 per year.

The funny thing is once my son activated his own coverage through Geico, they offered him a "long term customer" discount based on the family history, and that made his insurance quite reasonable.

[PhysicianOnFIRE]

Interesting. Makes my $3 Million in coverage for under $300 look like an absolute steal. I'd better keep my boys in line!

[hypercube]

What do you think of adding Underinsured/Uninsured (U/U)  coverage to the Umbrella? I have already a  1M Umbrella with U/U and pay $704. I  want  to increase to 2 M. I called the insurance company and they offered to increase without the U/U for $284. Not sure yet  how much would be the 2M with the U/U addition, but I wonder if its worth it.

[Zaphod]

hypercube wrote:

What do you think of adding Underinsured/Uninsured (U/U)  coverage to the Umbrella? I have already a  1M Umbrella with U/U and pay $704. I  want  to increase to 2 M. I called the insurance company and they offered to increase without the U/U for $284. Not sure yet  how much would be the 2M with the U/U addition, but I wonder if its worth it.

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That seems expensive. I have 5M for 536/yr. Are there any out of the ordinary circumstances making yours so high?

[jfoxcpacfp]

Zaphod wrote:

hypercube wrote:

What do you think of adding Underinsured/Uninsured (U/U)  coverage to the Umbrella? I have already a  1M Umbrella with U/U and pay $704. I  want  to increase to 2 M. I called the insurance company and they offered to increase without the U/U for $284. Not sure yet  how much would be the 2M with the U/U addition, but I wonder if its worth it.

Click to expand…

That seems expensive. I have 5M for 536/yr. Are there any out of the ordinary circumstances making yours so high?

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Agreed. I believe the highest any client has is $414 for a $1M PUP. Do you happen to have any moving violations on your driving record, @hypercube? If not, you might want to shop around for a different P&C insurer. @Zaphod, your premium is certainly on the low end (at least, in my experience) for $5M.

[Miss Bonnie MD]

Do you need 4M ? I have 2M and was never planning in going beyond that ....

[bean1970]

Zaphod wrote:

hypercube wrote:

What do you think of adding Underinsured/Uninsured (U/U)  coverage to the Umbrella? I have already a  1M Umbrella with U/U and pay $704. I  want  to increase to 2 M. I called the insurance company and they offered to increase without the U/U for $284. Not sure yet  how much would be the 2M with the U/U addition, but I wonder if its worth it.

Click to expand…

That seems expensive. I have 5M for 536/yr. Are there any out of the ordinary circumstances making yours so high?

Click to expand...

ours used to be cheap when we lived in another state. we have 1M for $592/year. it was less than half that before we moved to FL. In FL, most insurance carriers do not do home insurance. So we had to disconnect our bundle. Most home insurance in FL is offered by carriers who only do home or the wealthy just carry none or very little (we barely do anything on our home).  So that made the premium higher because our umbrella is now only bundled with our car. Then my teenage son got his license and a car and it went up from there (adding both a driver and extra car...extra liability). we have clean records and no insurance claims on anything for over 15 years I think. And then the rates in FL are  just higher for everything (home, car, umbrella).  just moving from one state to another our car insurance tripled. no other changes other than address.

[FIREshrink]

The White Coat Investor wrote:

You put skiing after car accidents? You must be a terrible skier! My biggest fear skiing is avalanche or falling off a cliff, not someone else hitting me! I’m certainly not worried about hitting someone else.

As noted above, auto is 80%+ of it. I think I’d put motorized sports second if I had to guess- boats, planes, ATVs etc. Then property stuff. Then alcohol.

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Haven’t you seen the big signboard ads at SLC, by lawyers targeting skiers who have been injured on the slopes?

[FIREshrink]

I felt really good going from $2M to $3M, like that was an important difference. I haven’t contemplated going higher, it doesn’t seem as critical. Of course anything can happen but I suppose you could argue we should have $10M just in case. At some point you have to make a call.

$3M lets me sleep well at night and I’m pretty sure Amica will give me their good attorneys in the event I am sued for that much. That’s all I can ask for.

[beagler]

So there were a few anecdotes about getting dropped from umbrella coverage -- usually teen or adult drivers with too many tickets. Any ideas which insurance companies are better or worse for this? I'll have 16yos in about 10 years. Figure longer relationship might count for something, then again maybe not.

Ideally we need "term" umbrella guaranteed for 10 or 20 years. Any idea if this exists? Would you buy it? Maybe we could pitch a group term umbrella policy? "WCI" overcautious physician group term umbrella.. Anyone know any underwriters?

[bean1970]

beagler wrote:

So there were a few anecdotes about getting dropped from umbrella coverage — usually teen or adult drivers with too many tickets. Any ideas which insurance companies are better or worse for this? I’ll have 16yos in about 10 years. Figure longer relationship might count for something, then again maybe not.

Ideally we need “term” umbrella guaranteed for 10 or 20 years. Any idea if this exists? Would you buy it? Maybe we could pitch a group term umbrella policy? “WCI” overcautious physician group term umbrella.. Anyone know any underwriters?

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i don't know about getting dropped, but I can tell you they totally jack the rates for teen drivers. I thought the car insurance spike was bad enough..the umbrella percentage wise was worse. and we have only one boy. I can only imagine a family of 2-3 teen drivers.

[White.Beard.Doc]

Our umbrella with Geico was cheap for so many years.  Then we added teenage drivers, extra vehicles, and the coup de grace was my son having two accidents with significant damage.  Geico said they would be dropping our umbrella coverage because our son was high risk.

We needed to find a solution since I wouldn't be comfortable without umbrella coverage.  Our son bought his own used vehicle and arranged his own insurance at his apartment address while in college.  Once we took him off our policy and he established his own insurance at an address different from our home address, they renewed our policy.  The umbrella premium has more than doubled, but it is worth it to have the coverage.

[hypercube]

Zaphod wrote:

hypercube wrote:

What do you think of adding Underinsured/Uninsured (U/U)  coverage to the Umbrella? I have already a  1M Umbrella with U/U and pay $704. I  want  to increase to 2 M. I called the insurance company and they offered to increase without the U/U for $284. Not sure yet  how much would be the 2M with the U/U addition, but I wonder if its worth it.

Click to expand…

That seems expensive. I have 5M for 536/yr. Are there any out of the ordinary circumstances making yours so high?

Click to expand...

Nothing on my side  to make it  expensive (no tickets, no previous claims)  and  I am getting a discount as I have my  home, 2 rental properties (maybe this makes it higher?)  and a car bundled. I believe that  the extra price comes because of the added U/U to it? I say this because they are offering me 2M PUP without U/U  for much less ($284) and closer to the numbers that I see in this post.  My question was what do you guys know of adding U/U coverage to a Personal Umbrella Policy (PUP).  My understanding is that U/U would cover me if I get hit by someone without insurance or underinsured. But I wonder if my High Deductible Health Insurance would cover for something that catastrophic. I found this post of somebody recommending to add U/U to the PUP

https://www.sacramentoinjuryattorneysblog.com/2015/05/the-umbrella-insurance-ripoff.html

Any thoughts are appreciated.

[hypercube]

jfoxcpacfp wrote:

Zaphod wrote:

hypercube wrote:

What do you think of adding Underinsured/Uninsured (U/U)  coverage to the Umbrella? I have already a  1M Umbrella with U/U and pay $704. I  want  to increase to 2 M. I called the insurance company and they offered to increase without the U/U for $284. Not sure yet  how much would be the 2M with the U/U addition, but I wonder if its worth it.

Click to expand…

That seems expensive. I have 5M for 536/yr. Are there any out of the ordinary circumstances making yours so high?

Click to expand…

Agreed. I believe the highest any client has is $414 for a $1M PUP. Do you happen to have any moving violations on your driving record, @hypercube? If not, you might want to shop around for a different P&C insurer. @zaphod, your premium is certainly on the low end (at least, in my experience) for $5M.

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No moving violations. As I commented  to @zaphod, I think it's because of the added U/U (Underinsured/Uninsured) to it, but I wonder if this addition  is necessary.

[The White Coat Investor]

FIREshrink wrote:

The White Coat Investor wrote:

You put skiing after car accidents? You must be a terrible skier! My biggest fear skiing is avalanche or falling off a cliff, not someone else hitting me! I’m certainly not worried about hitting someone else.

As noted above, auto is 80%+ of it. I think I’d put motorized sports second if I had to guess- boats, planes, ATVs etc. Then property stuff. Then alcohol.

Click to expand…

Haven’t you seen the big signboard ads at SLC, by lawyers targeting skiers who have been injured on the slopes?

Click to expand...

Yea, I take it back after skiing at Park City during the conference. That place was nuts compared to the places I usually ski.