Watch out for that TREE!

First, I hope everyone is OK from Hurricane Irene!

During the hurricane, my kids got an insurance lesson. This time it was homeowner’s insurance. (Last fall my kids learned about auto insurance after my husband was hit from behind on the way to my son’s lacrosse practice.)

We were very lucky during the storm – we did not lose our power nor did we have any water in our basement. However, we did have a very large oak tree fall on our house!

It was frightening. First, the sound – WHAM! Then the house shook – earthquake, again?!  We were lucky that no one was hurt and no water damage in the attic. We do have six badly cracked beams and one large hole in the roof due to a tree branch.

Once we were all safely outside standing in the driveway (with the dog barking like crazy at the wind), my kids watched me go into action from my cell phone. I did call my Dad first, as he is an engineer by training; I wanted to know if my house was going to collapse. Next, I called my insurance agent to find out the claim procedure and to report the incident. Our claim was recorded so then I turned to getting the tree off the house. My one piece of advice is to have a “tree guy”! I called my friendly tree guy who was amazing…they were here on Monday to remove the tree from the house.

Back to the insurance lesson, my kids were asking all the right questions:

• What is homeowner’s insurance and why do we have it?
• Who pays to get the tree off the house?
• Who pays to fix the roof? And the gutter? And the chimney?
• What is a deductible? What is a premium?

I’ve talked to my kids about insurance before, but it always seemed to go in one ear and out the other. Until the tree hit our house. There’s nothing like “real life” when it comes to a learning experience.

We will openly discuss the costs of the repairs as they are done. They are also learning that it is important to ask for referrals and to get more than one estimate before you commit to the repairs. So far, the tree removal was equal to a family vacation. The kids have started to see the trade-offs. They can see for themselves how important insurance is to our family’s financial life.