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Comment by mtmail | Hacker News Reader

"An employee from an insurance company describes in detail how to get the most out of your claim." https://np.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/comments/43iyip/our_...

Basically take photos of everything, if just to remember what will be lost so you can list it for the insurance later.

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I hope the OP notices this, it's excellent advice. The time you spend on your claim to your insurance company may be the best hourly rate you ever make in your life. Don't rush it, get it right. My takeaway from the reddit comment is "be as specific as possible, especially about expensive things."

Like this, for example: 'If you said "High-end Toaster, Stainless Steel, Blue glowing power button" ... you might get $35-50 instead [of much less]. We had to match all features that were listed.' I can imagine that someone who has been through an ordeal and just wants to get the claim processed might just say 'toaster', and end up with $7 instead of $50. Multiply that by everything in your house, and you're really coming up short.

I have no idea how this works but aren't most policies exempt from force majeure like forest fires?

I thought that's exactly what insurance was for though. I thought force majeure was something that applies to cancellation of contracts - e.g. I work for a performer and if he can't make it to a show because there are no fights due to weather, both he and the venue reschedule with no penalties paid by either side. Likewise if the venue is snowed in our something. But if they just choose to cancel the concert at short notice, they still have to pay his fee.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_majeure#Common_law

Hmm, looks like it has to be explicitly written into the concept one way or another. For instance, flood insurance or earthquake insurance deliberately include floods or earthquakes (respectively) in the coverage language.

Most policies exempt "acts of God", but I think forest fires are firmly in the covered realm. A meteor hitting your house might be in the uncovered area. (They also exempt acts of war, so a north korean missile hitting your house would also likely not be covered.)

I just purchased some life insurance with exactly the North Korean scenario in mind and I specifically asked the agent about the acts of war exclusion. He told me the company doesn’t have this exclusion, and most insurance companies don’t have it nowadays, and if they have it, it only applies to military personnel. Of course, everyone who buys insurance should check with their agent, not take my word for it.

You bought life insurance to hedge against a nuclear attack? I suspect we will have other things than accounting to worry about after an exchange like that.

Food is going to be expensive.

The prevailing assumption about nuclear attack is every weapon every manufactured will be simultaneously fired at op who is at ground zero. For all values of op across the entire country. And no other scenario can exist. Which of course is silly. The only wartime nuclear activity we've had on this planet wasn't a nuclear exchange, for example.

Most likely outcome is something like a single "dirty bomb" attack on a city 1500 miles downwind of where I work, unfortunately where a datacenter is located, resulting in me putting in a 36 hour work day trying to bring everything up at a disaster recovery datacenter 1000 miles away from both me and the attack, then on the commute home after 36 hours without sleep, I fall asleep driving and die in the resulting car accident, and my family won't get a penny because "clearly his death was a result of a N.K. act of war". Even worse not only might my family not get a penny WRT death but if anyone can sue anyone for anything, and my liability insurance is cancelled because of "act of war" then my family could end up quite destitute after a multi-car accident.

I wonder how many people had heart attacks watching the 9/11 news coverage a couple decades ago.

Or for any value of american response, a large fraction of the population would be very unhappy with the american response to a nuclear terrorism attack, regardless of the specific response, so my car parked downtown gets set on fire in the riots. That would suck if my car was temporarily uninsured because it was an act of war.

There's a lot of people paid a lot of money to deny insurance claims. See also, medical insurance.

Shouldn't everyone read their policy? The written policy is what matters, not what an agent tells you.

I would say it's faster to just take slowly video than trying to take hundreds of photos.

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