Why Insurance for Your S4 is a Good Idea

Why Insurance for Your S4 is a Good Idea

The S4 is one of the latest smartphones that has been well received by consumers. Since its launch in March 2013, the company making this latest smartphone model has boasted shipments of 10 million units of the S4 within the first month. The S4 is a popular and fast selling device that should be protected. At a cost of between USD 200 to USD 700 (depending on whether it is purchased through a carrier's plan or on its own), insurance is advisable to protect your investment in the S4.

Insurance, which provides financial remuneration in the event of loss such as theft, damage, or misplacement, provides you with peace of mind when owning expensive technologies such as the S4. If anything happens to the S4, having insurance provides you with a way to replace the device without having to pay for the replacement out of pocket.

Types of Insurance Coverage Available for the S4

The types of insurance protections that are available to you in the form of coverage on your S4 include:

• Loss and Theft
• Accidental Damage
• Drops, Spills, and Cracked Screens
• Mechanical Breakdown

Coverage provides you with protection from many of the situations that you face when owning an S4. Owning insurance protection for your S4 means that you will always have the ability to receive a new smartphone during the life of your carrier contract in the event that it is lost, stolen, dropped, cracked, or breaks down unexpectedly beyond the carrier's standard or extended warranty.

Reasons for Getting Insurance Coverage for Your S4

The cost of an S4 alone is one consideration for getting insurance. If, for example, your S4 was stolen, you would be looking at several hundreds of dollars out of pocket as your expense to replace it. An insurance policy would ameliorate this expense and put in your hands a replacement device to keep you in communications as soon as possible once the claim has been filed and accepted by the insurer.

Another reason for getting insurance coverage for your S4 is to provide you with money to fix and repair those damages that can be caused on occasion. This includes cracks and breaks to the 5-inch high definition screen, and chips and dents to the S4's casing. These repairs can be expensive so having insurance helps reduce this potential expense.

Obtaining Coverage for Your S4

Your S4 smartphone is a valuable commodity that you need to protect from loss. The process for obtaining coverage for the S4 is easy to accomplish and only requires a few minutes of your time. The process starts with determining what level of protection you need for your S4 smartphone.

If loss and replacement are of concern to you, a loss and theft policy is the one that you want to purchase. If breakage and repair for damages caused to your S4 is something that worries you, drops, spills, and cracked screen coverage is what you need. You may also choose a more comprehensive plan to cover all possibilities. S4 insurance should be strongly considered and obtained in order to limit your risk and loss exposure.

This piece was composed by Zachary Foxworthy, a freelance writer based in Miami, Florida. Zachary writes on cell phones, assorted gadgetry, computer science, the tech business and other closely related subjects. S4 owners may want to better acquaint themselves with the S4 insurance brand Protectyourbubble.com.

Do You Need Disability Insurance?

Do You Need Disability Insurance?

Editor's Note: This is a Guest post from Bailey Harris

During this time of financial uncertainty, with many wondering if their income will continue to surpass their outflow of cash, a lot of people are cutting corners in an attempt to keep their heads above water. Sacrifices are made on a daily basis. Foregoing that trip to the mall in favor of clipping coupons has become a way of life. Eating at home and saving the restaurant experience for special occasions is frugal and makes dining out more exciting when you do splurge.

There are, however, many areas where cutting corners is inadvisable. Maintaining adequate insurance coverage is one aspect of our lives that any reasonable person considers necessary. If the situation ever arises where something dire happens, having financial protection helps you concentrate on dealing with the problem instead of worrying about paying for the help you will certainly need.

If you bang up your car, auto insurance will bail you out. Homeowners insurance will pay for the siding on your house that's damaged during a storm. The need to protect your family in case of the breadwinner's death is a no-brainer. But most people don't think about the one area of their lives where they should certainly not try to save money…disability insurance. No one really wants to think about actually needing disability insurance. After all, that would mean you're injured or sick and unable to meet your responsibilities. The reasons you need disability insurance are practically limitless. What steps can you take to protect yourself?

Think Ahead

Don't wait until it's needed. Lying in a hospital bed recovering from surgery is no time to be worrying about paying bills. Talk to your insurance agent ahead of time and concentrate on getting better. Your family needs you.

Is Your Problem a Preexisting Condition?

Getting medical disability coverage after you need it can be tough, maybe even impossible. At the very least it will be expensive. Taking steps to protect yourself before you actually need the help is not only financially imperative; it's the intelligent thing to do.

Don't Become a Statistic

To paraphrase an old saying, there are lies, very bad lies, and then there are statistics. Some stats claim that more than 1/3 of all Americans aged 35 to 65 will need financial help due to a disability sometime during their working career. Some people are skeptical, claiming the statistics are false or misleading. Why take the chance? If even a portion of the claim is true, do you want to be one of the 33 percent that need financial help when you're disabled, and due to skepticism are unable to meet your financial needs? Better safe than sorry, right?

Peace of Mind

If for no other reason than to save yourself the hassle of worry and stress over wondering if your financial responsibilities will be met, make sure you're properly insured. Talk to your insurance carrier about your potential needs. Save the stress for the next putt you're lining up while your friends are looking on or the missed field goal that sends the game into overtime instead of chalking up another win for your favorite football team.

Long-Term or Short-Term?

The variety of disability options are numerous and confusing. Some policies kick in immediately; others don't take effect until a period of time passes. Certain policies pay a large percentage of your actual income while others cover much less. Researching the options is the intelligent thing to do, and you'll be glad you did should the occasion arise when you actually have to make use of the policy. Of course, avoiding the need is recommended!

Body Parts Insurance – Why Not?

Body Parts Insurance – Why Not?

From the Editor: This is a guest article by Lorne S. Marr

We’re talking body parts of the human body here, just to be clear. Body parts can be insured and are being insured — mostly by celebrities. The famous lot revel in placing excessive value on their legs, buttocks, chest hair, or voice. While this makes sense to some extent (loss of voice means an immediate loss of a lifetime job for an opera singer), body parts insurance is not for everybody. (Mortgage life insurance, on the other hand, is for nobody and even Wikipedia knows that.)

So, would you want to insure a body part yourself? Unless you’re seriously famous for it, I don’t think it would be a great idea. The reason is that most disability insurance policies cover harm to your body as a whole, which (naturally) includes your body parts as well.

As a matter of fact, virtually every disability insurance plan in essence consists of pieces of separate coverage for body parts, plus some additional terms. Your disability plan will likely list the specific payouts per body part in a nicely laid-out table. Each of your fingers may have a different “worth” according to your policy, depending on how useful it usually is for a person’s life. Your poor pinkies will carry a much smaller value than your thumb or your index finger.

This means that the benefit of a disability insurance plan is the fact that it actually covers your entire body with all of its body parts. The downside to these comprehensive plans is the fact that insurers will be very reluctant to discuss with you the pricing on your body parts and it is unlikely that you would negotiate different a weight for any of your body parts. For an increased payout, you’ll just have to take on a more expensive policy. The payouts are simply not separately negotiable in the standardized policies that most of us are in the market for.

Another option for us non-celebrities is trauma insurance. This type of insurance is supposed to compensate one you for the loss of a certain ability. With trauma insurance, you would not insure your eyes, but you would insure against the loss of your sight. You would not insure your voice, but your ability to speak.

Trauma insurance plans are somewhat more akin to body-parts insurance in that they can be tailored to your individual abilities. Trauma insurance can compensate you if your trauma prevents you from doing what you had been doing for a living.

The highest payouts are associated with accidental death and life insurance policies. Accidental death can be a policy on its own, or it could be part of a comprehensive disability insurance plan. Life insurance covers accidental death as well by design. Insurance payable upon one’s death, however, hardly qualifies as a substitute for body-parts insurance. Plus, even the highest-payout policies for regular clients seldom surpass the amounts for which celebrities insure their noses, legs, breasts, or teeth.

So why would anyone purchase a body-part insurance policy when most needs are abundantly covered by other types of plans? Well, special insurance arrangements easily attract media attention and turn the spotlight onto the insured. It’s interesting — some may even call it outrageous — when a famous singer insures her legs for a few million dollars, even though nobody knows what must happen to them for the diva to cash in. In either case, it’s strange, to say the least, that singers ever insure their legs — a body part that has nothing to do with their highly admired skill…

Read more fun facts about common life insurance myths and misconceptions here.

About the Author: This article brought to you by Lorne S. Marr, an independent insurance broker from Toronto and an expert on ‘no medical’ life insurance.


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Top 4 Questions you need to Ask Yourself Before Signing Up in any Insurance Policy

Top 4 Questions you need to Ask Yourself Before Signing Up in any Insurance Policy

There are several instances in life when you wonder if you have made the right decision. A few of them may be related with finances. Investing your hard earned cash in any financial products of a company without understanding how it functions, is a common problem these days. Your mind is stuffed with doubts and uncertainty on whether you have made a good investment, particularly if it is in a long-lasting deal like insurance.

Insurance policies are a must in any financial portfolio as it includes the risk linked with the loss of life or asset. Since it involves a long term deal, mostly a decade, it is quite hard to make modifications or amend these agreements during the policy term. Thus, you have to spend more time researching about the offers to make sure you don’t end up regretting later on. What are the questions or factors you need to consider when getting an insurance policy?

Is it a need-based investment?

The typical thumb rule is that your insurance should be a 10x your annual income so that your family is not impacted financially in case something unexpected happened. You have to consider any pre-existing medical difficulty or property loans while picking the best life insurance. Your financial portfolio must be well balanced and need-based. For an instance, you have to create a corpus for your kids’ education, you can pick from a variety of items from insurance companies that guarantee the funds that you had planned for you kids’ education are obtainable whether you are around or not.

You have to remember that insurance is a protection-cum-long-term investment and savings tool. You have to know your needs, and accordingly purchase a policy that will help you meet your needs in the future.

Is it a reputable company?

As soon as you have decided to purchase a policy, you could do the necessary background check on the company involved. All life insurance companies have complete disclosures on their sites that provide all the necessary data. Policy structure, client service capabilities, scope of system, and online platform are just some of the important things you must look for.

Have you compared several companies?

There are several sites that can help you compare many policies as well as premiums from different insurance companies. But, the only thing you need not to worry is the financial health of an insurance firm. The insurance sector is well regulated and all companies have to keep a solvency ratio to make sure that clients will not suffer.

Several companies are offering different deals. It is advisable to check on them and pick one that best suits your needs and budget.

Are you familiar with the policy?

Understanding the features of the policy, particularly those linked to term, payments, maturity dates, and costs is extremely important. You should also understand the benefit structure of the cover. Every Ulip comes with an advantage illustration at 10% and 6% that unveils the costa and what the status of your investment would be every year.

About The Author: Sarah Grace is part of the team behind PremierStudentLoan.com. PremierStudentLoan.comis a company that offers online quotes to possible student loan debtors and endorses lenders based around modified data. The company proposes several financial aid resources and guidance from industry experts. Student loans, consolidations, and financial aids can also be availed. To know more about their services like college loan consolidation programs, visit their home page.

 

Insurance Issues to Consider for Hoteliers: The Need for Specialized Insurance and More

Editor's note: This is a guest post from Sachin

If you own and operate your own small hotel or other accommodation, there are a number of insurance issues you need to be thinking about. If you become ill and you cannot operate your own business, you will need the support of income protection insurance. You also have other issues to think about, such as if something happens to one of your guests or your staff, and you also need to protect yourself against the case of fire, water damage and other natural disasters.

In this article, we look at some of the main insurance policies a small hotel or hostel owner should be thinking about. If you are not fully covered, you are risking a lot. There are those insurance agencies that specialize in coverage for hotels, hostels and other small owner operated accommodation. They can normally package a comprehensive policy to cover you for most situations. This is generally called ‘hotel insurance’.

- Buildings and Contents. Just like any home-owner, you need to think about your property and the contents of it. Fire and water damage happens more often than most people think. This is especially the case with a hotel.

- Liability. Any commercial operation like hotels and other accommodation will always have to worry a lot about liability. This includes both your clients and your staff.

- Business Interruption. Business interruption insurance is a business specific insurance. This is very important for hotels and other accommodation because if there is an incident, such as fire or water damage, the insurance that covers your buildings and contents, will not help you with the income you are losing. Business interruption insurance is your last line of defense after you have suffered some other setback. This insurance can even cover the death of an owner or some other serious issue. You should consult with your insurance professional carefully on this insurance. It is actually one of the more important insurances you can have.

- Income Protection. As a self-employed person, you still need to think about your own income, and not just that of your hotel. Even though you are self-employed, you are probably on a wage. You might hurt yourself, or have some other illness that will stop you from working. In this type of situation, you do really need to treat yourself like an employee and be covered with your own income protection insurance. You will probably need someone to replace your workload for the period of time you cannot work, and that money will probably come from the income you were earning from your own business.

- Differences with Business Insurance and Hotel Coverage. All of the biggest and best hotels and accommodation chains have specialized hotel insurance. Because there are specific needs in the industry compared with other businesses, we have seen a proliferation in this specialized coverage. For example, fixtures and fittings that are damaged for one reason or another, might not be covered in the same manner with business insurance as they are with hotel insurance. The look of your hotel is very important. If your appearance is not the best, it can severely damage your business.

If you do not have specialized hotel insurance, and you are using a business insurance package, you should consider speaking to hotel insurance specialists. Their coverage is tailored to meet the needs of hotels, which is quite a lot different than with other business operations. There are just so many issues to think about. The loss of a guest’s items could be very costly, for example.


Lik

Diabetes & The Impact On Life Insurance

Diabetes & The Impact On Life Insurance

Editor's note: A guest article by LifeBroker, Australia’s largest specialist insurance broker

If you are suffering from the symptoms of diabetes, you may be concerned about whether or not you will qualify for life insurance. Thankfully, in almost all circumstances the answer is yes. This is true regardless of whether or not you have Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes is an issue that has been growing more prevalent. More people are diagnosed with this disease now than ever before. The life insurance companies are already well aware of this fact, and they are always revising their guidelines in order to account for the increasing occurrence of the disease.

By 2031, statistics indicate that as much as 11 percent of the Australian population could be suffering from type 2 diabetes. This will amount to about 3.3 million Australians!

When you apply for life insurance, you will need to undergo medical screening. In other words, you will be asked a series of questions about your health. Your answers to these questions will then be assessed by an underwriter. It is their job to make a prediction about how likely it is that you will need to make a claim within a certain period of time. In cases where you have a disease like diabetes, the risks that you will need to file a claim sooner become higher.

When applying for life insurance, it is best to get the underwriting up front. What this means is that you will be fully informed of the terms of the policy before you agree to anything. It is important to be completely sure of everything that you will and will not be covered for, before any agreements have been made.

When a policy is underwritten at the time of the claim, rather than up front, this means that you might not be covered even after paying your premiums for many years.

Before allowing you to sign up for a policy, most life insurance companies will require further testing, even in cases where you have no pre-existing condition such as diabetes. In the case of somebody who has diabetes, they may ask for several pieces of information. This could include your blood pressure, age, age of diagnosis, the type of diabetes, medications, weight and height, your ECG levels, and a recent HBA1C test result. They may also want to test to make sure there is no protein in your urine.

Is It Necessary to Have Insurance For Home Makers?

Is It Necessary to Have Insurance For Home Makers?

Editor's Note: This is a guest post from Ramalingam of Holistic Investment Planners

It has always been a question of common belief that the male member or the bread winner of the family only needs to be insured. This belief has emerged due to the fact that the financial interests of the other dependent family members had to be protected in case of death of the bread winner. However changes of lifestyles and with more women being employed in lucrative professions both in big cities and towns the perception of insurance has changed.

In addition the entry of many MNC-Indian insurance joint ventures, and their bringing out unique solutions and products, it is time that we all looked into taking insurance policies for home makers too. Home makers have been neglected all these years with regard to insurance.

It would be interesting to study why home makers too need insurance:

- It is significant to note that in a country like India, homemakers contribute to households in the form of cooking, education of children and other menial work. But their importance and value of services evaluated in monetary terms is greatly neglected. It is true that the absence of these services on the death of the homemaker a big financial impact on lower and middle income families.

- Another noteworthy factor that places a value on insurance of homemakers is that they provide great counsel to their spouse and children. So losing them would mean that lots of money would have to be spent on counseling services proving that loss of love and companionship is priceless.

- It is also true that no one could replace a home maker mother and her loss could make it difficult to get competent and loving people to look after the family and children. It is also significant to note that the cost of competent daycare centers could be high and the cost of not insuring a home maker in lower and middle income families could be pretty high.

- There is a money value behind each and every household work performed by the home maker. In case of any eventuality to the home maker, one need to shell out more money to upkeep the house in order.

Considering various aspects like paying expenses out of the pocket, remarriage and insurance, insurance proves to be the most reliable and safest solution. The insurance cover should be proportional to the amount of financial loss that would be suffered or through a need based cost replacement analysis.

In addition to insurance to guard against financial liabilities in case of death of a home maker it is vital to also plan for a dream retirement home and college education funds through various insurance linked plans.

Health insurance:

It is also true that insurance needs to be taken for critical illness, prolonged illness, accident or a major hospitalization for all family members. It would also be beneficial to take health insurance policies early in life to gain benefits like full cover of all ailments and lower premium.

However each family could have their own unique insurance needs, so taking the advice of a trusted financial planner in the form of an insurance adviser or trusted bank would help. They would render you correct information, best skills and advice based on your family’s financial circumstances, priorities and risk profile.

Insurance for the whole family also requires that all the adult family members be fully aware of all the insurance policies taken, their benefits and exclusions and where they are kept. Having an open discussion about long term savings and insurance plans both for the bread earner and home maker and for children build a better family understanding and bond. They also convey the message that proper life insurance coverage should form an integral part of financial planning in families.