An extremely cost effective, powerful tool to better protect you - are you covered?

• How are you protected if someone were to sue you? (01:55)
• Umbrella policy: what is it? (02:54)

Quote for the episode: "So we always want to be having a mindset to protect against the catastrophic."

Securities offered through TFS Securities, Inc., Advisory Services through TFS Advisory Services, a SEC Registered Investment Advisor Member FINRA / SIPC.  TFS Securities, Inc. located at 437 Newman Springs Road, Lincroft, NJ 07738 (732) 758-9300.

Welcome to the Enjoy More 30s: Family Finance

podcast, the only podcast dedicated to making life more

enjoyable for young families by hitting on the financial topics

that tend to weigh on us, stress us out and distract our focus

from simply enjoying life.

Hello, and welcome to the third episode in this

"Your Money Multipliers" series, which is entitled "Just Get An

Umbrella Policy Already". So today we're going to cover what

you need to know when it comes to what an umbrella policy even

is and the protection that it offers, and what you can do to

actually be taking advantage of it. When I was in high school, I

got into an accident on the Garden State Parkway. Now, if

you don't know, this is one of the main highways through New

Jersey, and quite the nightmare traffic wise when it's in the

summer. Everybody from North Jersey tries to go down the

shore on Friday, Saturday. And then they all try to come back

up Sunday night and are somehow surprised that there are people

everywhere on the highways, and accidents definitely happen. So

a driver for me in this instance, was in the next lane

to me, fell asleep at the wheel, veered into my lane hitting the

car in front of me. They slammed on their brakes, and I hit into

the back of them. Everyone was thankfully fine at the scene.

The police shut down all five lanes or whatever of traffic,

kind of damning this giant group of speeding cars, which was kind

of an interesting thing to see. Just under two years later,

coincidentally right before the statute of limitations expired

for the driver or for the situation, the driver in front

of me apparently developed severe neck trauma. Despite

plenty of what some might call questionable evidence, the jury

awarded her several hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah,

maybe she was really injured in a way that took, you know, a

while to actually kick in, you know, who knows?

Either way what you need to know is that, wrong or right, we live

in an extremely litigious society, meaning people sue

everybody. When you purchase your auto and homeowners

insurance, you may be focused on how that protects your car, and

how that protects your home. But a hugely important part of that

is how it protects you from a liability point of view. Or in

simpler terms, how are you protected if someone were to sue

you? Standard limits kind of vary by location and by state,

but we see most policies in the 300 to 500,000 range for

liability or lawsuit protection for home and auto related

incidents. Now, upon an initial glance, it seems like, "Hey,

that's a lot. You know, that's a lot of coverage." People can

also sue for a lot, remember. If I was the sole participant in

that accident, the standard auto policy coverage amount may not

have covered it, and that was 15 plus years ago.

So what can you do? A coverage option that you can add on top

of your standard policy limits is something called an umbrella

policy. If you think of an umbrella, how it kind of covers

over multiple things, that's the same kind of a concept and why

it's called the umbrella- it covers your auto and your

homeowners insurance, it goes over both of those. So this

provides additional coverage, most commonly for what we see

it's $1 million or more. And that's added on top of your

liability protection. And at a cost of maybe $300 a year or

roughly $25 a month, you can vastly increase your liability

protection by two to three times, in the event if this were

ever to happen to you. And you know, I'm not alone in my

example. We've had several clients over the years who have

needed to utilize this coverage in order to protect them. Now

normally for them to offer this to you, them being your your

auto insurance or your homeowners insurance company,

you'll have to have both policies, your auto and your

home insurance under the same company. I'd say most people

tend to do this anyway, as it usually figures out to be

cheaper, but that is often a requirement. Overall, though,

protecting against catastrophe is what generally comes out to

be the smartest play. You can survive without the water heater

protection plan- if it goes south on you kind of you know,

kind of sucks, not the best, but you can manage. You can't manage

nearly as well, if you're found liable for a few hundreds, you

know 1,000s of dollars. So we always want to be having a

mindset to protect against the catastrophic.

So for today, a recap is pretty simple. First, recognize that

your standard coverage may not cover you enough in a liability

situation resulting from an auto or home related lawsuit. Second,

thankfully, it is very easy and very cost effective to double or

even triple this coverage to better protect you. Lastly,

remember the general protection mindset- insure against the

catastrophic, what could derail everything you've worked for.

So thanks very much for tuning in today, remember the new tool

that we have for this season going forward. The 'ask Joe'

section on the website enjoy more 30s .com, that's enjoying

more three zero s .com- ask any questions that you may have. A

lot of this stuff is confusing and how it may pertain directly

to you could need some more clarification. So reach out and

if we can help you, we definitely will. Again, remember

to please review us and subscribe on Apple podcasts or

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like you. Clicking a star, writing a review, hitting

subscribe, all these things help us show up higher in the

rankings for more people like you to find us and hopefully be

helped by us. The next episode is titled "36%: The Golden Cash

Flow Ratio", where we will cover how you can stop wasting

countless hours budgeting, and find out how much additional you

may be able to save in 15 minutes or less. As always,

thanks so much for tuning in today, and I look forward to

connecting with you again soon.

The conversations on this show are

Joe's opinions and provided for general information purposes

only. They do not constitute accounting, legal tax or other

professional advice for your specific situation. You should

always seek appropriate advice from a financial advisor,

accountant, lawyer or other professional before acting upon

any content or information found here first. Joe is affiliated

with New Horizons Wealth Management LLC, a branch office

of TFS securities Inc and TFS advisory services and sec

registered investment advisor member FINRA/SIPC.