We always enjoy chatting with Ann Anderson. A wealth of wisdom, Ann generously shares with us all of the Insurance matters that we never knew we needed to know — and thank goodness for it!
In this episode, Ann tells us how to be prepared for things like 2021’s outrageous ICEMAGEDDON! She also offers perspective on purchasing Life Insurance policies for our children, as well as how to adequately insure your family fun vehicles (i.e. RV’s, boats) — and the valuables inside them.
Ann’s a friend to all in Frisco and genuinely cares for her clients. Enjoy this episode of The Frisco Podcast.
SHOW NOTES:
[00:14] Meet Ann.
[01:15] The impact of that crazy winter storm in February 2021
[06:12] What kind of coverage should we have to be prepared for a winter storm?
[07:45] Why we should consider Life Insurance policies for our children
[12:12] Summer fun: how to adequately insure boats, RVs, swimming pools, and more.
[17:23] How often you should touch base with your Insurance agent, and why
[20:46] How to reach Ann
LINKS & RESOURCES:
- Anderson Insurance Agency on Lifestyle Frisco | Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn |Yelp
Connect with Lifestyle Frisco on:
Transcript
Machine-generated.
Welcome to the Frisco Podcast. I’m your host, Nicole Barron. Today, I get to chat with the lovely Ann Anderson, who is one of our longest standing clients and friends. We always enjoy catching up with Ann because not only is she a good friend, but she educates us about a lot of things we never thought of and really need to know. So, Ann, welcome. Thank you. Good to be here. Glad to have you back. Ann is always on alert for us. She’s an advocate to many members of our community. She’s studies listens, learns what’s happening in the insurance arena so that we can be prepared for anything. And she’s walked alongside a lot of clients who had unforeseen circumstances, crazy things go on, and I’m sure she’s learned a lot so that she can then carry that knowledge onto the next client. So, Ann’s just a wealth of information. She’s also, um, a parent and a wife and living the small-business-owner life. So she’s just got all kinds of angles from which to fill us with knowledge. So, Ann, thank you. Thank you again. You know what I think we should start with? The big freeze. Yes, exactly. There were a lot of fun names that went around for the, uh, craziness that was February, 2021. And, um, you know, everything from of course, floods to repairs to, um, just having to hire contractors. There’s so much there to unpack probably in terms of, um, what do we need to know to be prepared for something like that, that we just think, “nah, that’ll never happen.” So I know that’s a whole lot there, but just what are your top tips about that kind of thing? What do we need to know?
You’re so right. There’s so much. And we never thought, right? I don’t think, you know, we have friends in the North and they’re like, “how do you not have electricity?” Or “why are the pipes breaking?” You know? And I’m like, “because we don’t dig below the freeze line” and things like that, that are conversations we don’t have in Texas. However, they never water their foundations either. So it goes both ways. But yeah, that freeze who- I mean, it was a hard freeze, right? We talk about it, but it was multiple days under freezing temperatures, very low temperatures. So that puts stress on your home, your plans. How many people are replacing bushes around their homes now because the, um, their Indian Hawthorn is all dead or whatever? But the biggest thing, of course, in the end, the worst thing you want is when you have a pipe break. So we, um, we’ve seen, um, a lot of those tankless water heaters, their holding tank have failed many, many of those that happened. So that’s, you know, I will say we’re, um, that’s one of the biggest things. And of course, the first thing you want to do is try and stop the, stop, the water from flowing and remediate as much as you can so that you can, um, stop the loss from being greater than it has to be. However, you know, I will be honest. We have multiple clients with more than $150,000 claims going right now because they have so much damage. And, um, so that’s the big thing where people say “that’ll never happen to me.” Water is so invasive. And we’ve learned that the hard way through the freeze and it gets everywhere. There’s places where they’re like, “but the water was on the other side of the house. Why is my kitchen wet?” That’s the way it is. Water just goes everywhere. So that’s, that’s a big thing is we think it won’t happen. How do we prevent that from happening? Well, one way is, you know, whole-house leak detections, which we’ve never thought of in the past. And a lot of people don’t consider it, but there are devices out there that will actually shut off when they, when they noticed that the hot water tanks are failing, it’ll shut off your water. So those are devices to prevent losses, right? Because we really want to protect yourselves and not have the big claim. The other part that you mentioned- or before we move to that is the other thing is everything’s wet. How do we get it dry? It’s freezing outside. We’re blowing fans, we’re doing everything we can, we want to prevent the growth of mold. Things are damaged, everything you can do. Um, we, you know, in this event, we, even our water mitigation companies that are local, we’re just overwhelmed, right? Our adjusters at Farmers were completely overwhelmed. We had to bring in third-party adjusters. Every county in the state of Texas was in a disaster. It’s never happened before. So that’s huge. So then unfortunately, what happens on the backside of that is unethical, unscrupulous contractors come out of woodwork and people that want to prey on the misfortunes of others, which is just horrible. Um, I think it’s a- I have a lot of things to say about that, but we’re not going to deal with it. We just don’t, they’re just not good people. It’s so important to find contractors that you know, or that you can be referred to you from a trusted source. And, um, it doesn’t have to be your insurance agent, but I always say, if you don’t think to call your insurance agent, when something like that happens, you might want to look for a new insurance agent because they should be, they should be your partner. And we try to be a partner with our clients. And so we do, we’ve had a lot of conversations with people who have claims that are still, we’re still in the dry, um, in the rebuild phase. So working through that, but, um, things you can do on your own with contractors is check and see if they’re listed the city because they should register with the city. Even if they don’t have to be licensed, they should be registered with the city. That’s a good place to start. If they should be licensed, there’s a state repository of licenses online. You can look up their licenses. So, um, those are two ways to look. And then of course, if somebody says to you, “I want X dollars upfront” Red flag. I would say, “no, thank you.” Because they, um, I’ve had seen it on next door. It hasn’t happened to any of my clients, but I’ve seen our next door, the contractor left with $10,000 and they never come back. They want us to, you know, nightmares. So we don’t ever want to see that happen. Um, wow. So yeah, that was, that was a crazy, crazy, crazy month.
Here’s the, yeah. Yes, it was. And you’re still still in it really, uh, with the aftermath, but what is the, this is such a naive question on my part, but what is the coverage we need to make sure we have to be prepared for this?
So I think the biggest thing is to make sure that your water coverage, um, and check the limits. So limits of insurance are a really big deal. And in every claim situation, we always say we only to, to the limits of the policies, usually what you read. And, um, some companies cover 25% of your dwelling value. Some 15%, some say 15% or 25,000, whichever is less. Um, but those words matter. Farmers insures a 100% to the, to the value of your dwelling, to your reconstruction value. That’s a big deal when I have $150,000 claim if you think about it. Um, but that’s something to really pay attention to. If you have a separate structures that include your pool and, um, you have exposed pool pipes and pool equipment, you want to make sure that that’s covered, or how is that covered? Uh, you know, everyone, “I was breaking up the ice.” Everyone. The pool’s a big story, right? We’ve been covering those too. So that’s been a good, a good thing for our company. Those are the biggest ones you want to make sure that the causes of loss, make sure you look at those because whether it’s water and what forms of water, um, and, uh, you know, fire, theft, whatever, but you want to look at those causes of loss. Those are the important things.
Okay. So definitely just have a conversation with your agent, talk through it. Yes. And truly, and I know you’d be glad to take their call as well. Yeah. Okay. Good. Well, that’s really good wisdom. Thank you for that. I’m going to totally jump to something still insurance-related, but away from Ice-mageddon. And that is, um, you actually educated me about this recently. Something I never thought about – life insurance for children and beginning having those conversations starting at pregnancy. And I’ve got three kids. Um, this did not come up when I was pregnant. No, we did not consider that at that time. So will you please, you know, there’s so many young families and Frisco, I think this is a really valuable topic. What do we need to know?
So, you know, we hear about the Gerber Grow-Up Plan. But what I like to say is when you’re pregnant and you’re planning for that child, you’re budgeting, right? We’re budgeting for daycare, for diapers, for formula, little league, whatever. We should budget for life insurance. As young as 14-days old, as long as your child is healthy, they are eligible for life insurance and you can set up a plan that will really take them to the end of their life. I’m not going to say anything bad about any other company ’cause anything’s better than nothing. But you know, like we have products that can grow with them, that accumulate cash inside of the money, inside of the policy. There’s just a lot of options that we can do. And as young as 14, 14-days old, if you think about it, you know, there’s no hopefully childhood illness yet. I mean, hopefully they’re still healthy and that just grows and grows with them. But as you can imagine, a 14-day old person has a lot less to insure that a 40-year old person, you know. The cost of insurance is so much less. So there’s I tell, I tell families, you know, for less than you would spend, probably at McDonald’s during the month, you could have life insurance for your child. It’s, I mean, the minimum is $25 cause that’s to draft, you know, it’s just so little and all the tiny importance is that we never know when there’s going to be that line in the sand that says you can’t get insurance anymore. And that’s, it’s sad. It’s a sad thing to talk about. That’s why we don’t talk about it. Nobody wants to talk about this. We could not get insurance for our son until he was 18 and older enough to be rated as an adult because of childhood illness that prevented the automatic approval process. Um, as opposed to his sister who got it when she was much younger. And, um, we just didn’t, if I would’ve known that was going to happen when he was 8, I would’ve made a different choice in his life for him as a parent, but nobody had that conversation with me. Um, I could have, you know, yeah. So, and so we had to hear the sad things too. I have a client who’s a great client, but he had thyroid cancer when he was 18 or no, he was 16. So when he goes 26, we got him on a great insurance policy, but he said, I’ll never not have life insurance. I had to wait so long because I had cancer when I was 16-years old. And you know, you just never know what it’s going to happen. Certain types of diabetes that happen when you’re young can prevent life insurance.
So that’s why I say, I know it’s something we don’t like to talk about. It’s not fun. People are like “why would you insure a child?” It’s not because I want to profit if something happens, something horrific happens. I just want to protect them for their life. And I tell all parents, you know, you can always later on your children can take over those policies and pay for them themselves and everything else. They can, they can be the owners, whatever. But quite honestly, I will probably pay for my kid’s policies their entire life. That’s just what we do. We’re mom and dad’s right? And they’ll probably pay for their kids’ policies at some point for a little bit. But you know, um, it’s not to be depressing or morbid. It’s just, we don’t think about it. I wish more people talk to parents when they were, when the kids were younger. ‘Cause when I see something later, I just, it makes me sad. It makes me truly sad ’cause like [inaudible] never asking somebody when a bad thing has happened to them. I’m like, “Oh, did you have life insurance on your kids?” How, how horrible would that be? And I don’t do that, but I keep it to myself and I just kind of go, “I hope they have life insurance.”
Well, and then that’s why you’ve always got that in your pocket when you’re having an initial conversation with a new client or are you someone that you just found out is expecting or, you know, then you’re, you can, you’ve got so much to pull from those experiences to share with someone ahead of that situation. So I think that’s really, that’s really great and good, good wisdom. Um, my husband, I know his parents, like you were saying, you know, did this for him when he was very young and when he was 18, they asked him to start paying into it and he’s had it ever since, you know, and I think, um, in this case, you know, teaching him responsibility and taking ownership of that and, um, that’s awesome too, so. Okay, good. Good. Thank you for all that. That was very good. So let’s jump to something fun now. Yes. So summer is coming and uh, you know, for those of us that have students we’re counting down, it’s like thirty-something days. I can’t even believe we made it. Like I, that would be shut down. We didn’t, we weren’t shut down. Anyway. So we’re going to be hitting the lake, hopefully some of us. Can we talk about boats, trailers, all those like fun watercrafts and things that might people might be getting into this summer. And maybe you might even hit on pool insurance again, because that was a good one. People, a lot of people built pools this year. Did you notice? There was like everybody- Oh my gosh. So let’s talk summer, summer fun. What do we need to know, Ann?
Well, summer’s great. I will also tell you that last year was probably a banner year for trailers and RVs being sold because everyone discovered how the joy of glamping or camping and
I don’t even think of RVs. Totally. Yeah.
Last year we were adding a lot of trailers to policies. So yeah, when you’re buying trailers, boats or vehicles, just remember that they don’t have wheels, but they’re still a vehicle. So you want to have the right insurance again, you, you know, you’re out on the lake, you have stuff in your boat, you want to protect the property that’s in it. And the people that are in it. You know, at the end of the day, you don’t want to, um, you know, we always, we all carry these little, these little rectangular phones around with us. They cost lots of money and sometimes they have insurance sometimes not, but if you’re in the boat and you have these first- please put it into something that floats. [Inaudible]
I always hold it in my hand.
It will sink so fast. You’ll never be able to catch it. I promise you. So you definitely no amount of rice can take care of that. Put it in something that floats, but also just be aware, you know, “Oh my gosh, I have $10,000 worth of personal property in my boat. I want to make sure that it’s insured.” Um, or in my camper when, uh, when we get trailers and campers, we gradually put stuff in it that we just leave it at all the time. So make sure that property is insured on your policy because the policy for your trailer probably has a much lower deductible than your home policy. So if you have a loss or a theft and you need to file a claim, you’re not paying 1% deductible on a home, that’s going to be, you know, $3,000 or more that you’re going to pay, you know, maybe five-hundred or a thousand dollars deductible. So those are like details that are real important, right? And to think about. But we also want to just have fun and we want it to be confident when we’re having that fun that we’re protected and our friends are protected. We want to take care of everybody. Um, and when you talk about pools- a lot of people added pools and I always have a conversation with my clients. When they add a pool, I say, “please consider getting an umbrella policy for your home and auto that will also cover your pool.” It raises all of your liability limits up by $1 million or 2 million, whichever limit you select. But I know that no amount of money will replace a person or replace their lifestyle if there’s a serious injury. Right. But we also have heard the nightmare stories of serious injuries happening around pools. And I’m not saying “don’t get a pool.” ’cause I love pools. I hope to have one one day, but apparently all the pool contractors are very busy, [laughter] ’cause all of you were probably getting pools. But um, have that umbrella policy because you know, it makes a huge difference, um, to be able to, to compensate, you know, that person, if they have medical injuries or whatever, if that, if that accident happens. And the cost of an umbrella policy is so minimal in the grand scheme of all the other, you know, the other costs of having that pool. I have an umbrella policy. I’ve had it since I was 28-years old. It’s not even a conversation. Even before I was an insurance agent. It wasn’t even on the table to get rid of when we couldn’t afford something else. I was like “gotta get rid of that.” It helps me sleep at night if I cause a major accident on the highway, I know that I have good coverage. I hope this isn’t putting a bullseye on me. Right? “Oh that’s lot of insurance” No, but you want to be able to take care of your friends. And if you ’cause injury to a person, you, you want to know that there’s enough to, to help put them back together again. So that’s what the umbrella does. And when you have a pool, I tell everybody “I love pools. But remember it’s a great big hole in your backyard with water.” And so it’s, uh, you know, in the insurance world, that’s a really big risk. We do everything we can to, to mitigate the amount of risk to, to, um, make people save and everything else. “Don’t run. Don’t jump head-first,” all those things. But, um, I just say, add that umbrella policy. I’d say the same thing with boats and trailers, the same, you know. Our family has had boats in the past and my brother has one that has a couple now actually, but he has a good insurance too. He doesn’t live in Texas though. I have to travel quite a ways to get into his boat. But you know, it’s just important. We, at the end of the day, I always say, we want it. If somebody is injured and it’s my fault, we want to make sure that we put them back together.
I love that. Okay. That’s good advice. So it sounds to me like, and I I’ll say right now, my husband and I have not been good about this, that every, at a minimum, maybe every six months, pick up the phone and check in with your agent and just kind of, you know, is it, maybe you’d come up with a different timeframe for that. But, um, you know, we just sort of like signed annually and don’t give it a whole lot of other a thought. You’re probably thinking, “Oh my gosh!” No, no, I’d say that was probably 90% of the families. Every time I talked to you, I’ve had the privilege of interviewing you before and also, you know, reading your content on our site. And I, every time I’m like, “Oh my gosh, people need to talk to their agent.” Talk to your agent, talk to your agent because there’s so many things we don’t know to think about. I don’t know what I don’t know. And you’re the expert. You’ve been doing this for so long and you care very much about other families. I know you do. So, um, yeah. People need to call you if they don’t have a trusted agent, for sure.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Please call me. But no, you know, I would say, um, at the minimum annually, uh, you know, most people, their, um, their policies, a lot of times their auto policies are at a 6-month in their homes and everything else is annual. Sure. I would say at least once a year, sit down with your agent. You know, I I’ve had these conversations with clients. Like I had one really great lady and I, we spoke and I said, “Hey, how, how are things going? Has anything changed? Is there something, anything new in the house that I should, we talked about.” She was like, “you know what? I bought myself a Rolex for Christmas and I maybe should insure that. I was like, “you probably should. It could fall off your wrist. All the things.” So we just took care of that really quick for her, but it’s, it’s funny. Or someone will say, “Oh, I bought a boat. I meant to tell you about it earlier.” Things like that happened. And we laugh, but you know, there’s light changes too that happen. And this, I don’t want to like harp on life insurance, but you know, a lot of times we have all our life insurance with our employer and I had people call me and they’re like, “Oh, that’s right. Um, I’m on a severance right now, but my life insurance is ending and I need to get with you and, you know, talk about that because I need to make sure I still have life insurance. I don’t have with my employer anymore.” So we have that conversation, but it’s, it’s just important things like things change, right. We don’t know from year to year, from month to month, what’s going to happen. So having conversations’ worth it, you, um, you and your agent or if you call me we’ll you’ll, we will probably uncover things that you didn’t consider. We don’t think about because I don’t know all the questions to ask in different situations. You know, when I go to talk to the mechanic who fixes my car, I don’t know all the things to ask, but he, he prompts those conversations.
Exactly. Okay. Thank you so much, Ann. I always love chatting with you because you’re so friendly, first of all, but it’s very informative. It’s useful. So, thank you.
Thank you. I will tell you that I am sort of a nerd about insurance. Um, but I, I just think it’s so important to help people and do it the right way. And we have a great opportunity to help others. And, you know, we love to, to give back in the community and, and be involved when there’s so much we’re always doing, but, but helping individuals is really, you know, I think we get the most satisfaction from it and joy from just knowing that we’ve done a good job.
Absolutely. And thank you. So, everyone can find you at anninsurestx.com. Am I right? Yes. A N N insures tx.com. Um, you’re on social media. You do a great job there. So we’ll find you there as well. And then also on Lifestylefrisco.com. We’ve got beaucoups of interviews with Ann and articles that she has contributed to, uh, sponsored by her that, um, offer fantastic advice. The good example, you said about the Rolex, we’ve got a whole article about that, you know, ensuring your valuables. We’ve got an article about ensuring your students who are headed off to college. Um, so much good stuff out there. So definitely go to lifestylefrisco.com type Ann Anderson Insurance, and you’ll find all of it. Um, thank you again. I hope you have a great rest of the day. I’m sure we’ll be chatting with you again soon to uncover some more things we didn’t know that we need to know.
Absolutely. Well, thank you. And thanks for your time. You’re always easy to talk to and you make it an easy discussion. So thanks so much. Thank you. Have a good evening. You, too. Bye, Ann. Bye.
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