Protect Yourself!: Using Insurance, Personal Security and Common Sense to Keep Your Family, Things and Body Safe

335 Pages·2002·1.16 MB·English

by  Silver Lake Editors

Protect Yourself
USING INSURANCE, SECURITY TECHNIQUES
AND COMMON SENSE
TO KEEP YOURSELF,
YOUR FAMILY AND YOUR THINGS SAFE
SILVER LAKE PUBLISHING
LOS ANGELES, CA ABERDEEN, WA
Protect Yourself
Using Insurance, Security Techniques and Common Sense to
Keep Yourself, Your Family and Your Things Safe
First edition, second printing 2004
Copyright © 2004 Silver Lake Publishing
Silver Lake Publishing
101 West Tenth Street
Aberdeen, WA 98520
For a list of other publications or for more information from Silver Lake
Publishing, please call 1.360.532.5758.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transcribed in any form or by any means (electronic,
mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise) without the prior written
permission of Silver Lake Publishing.
Library of Congress Catalog Number: Pending
Silver Lake Editors
Protect Yourself
Using Insurance, Security Techniques and Common Sense to Keep Yourself,
Your Family and Your Things Safe
Includes index.
Pages: 327
ISBN: 1-56343-765-1
Printed in the United States of America.
Acknowledgments
Silver Lake Publishing had been planning this book before the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City and Wash-
ington, D.C. The goal then was to make a book that would help
people think about how to protect themselves at the stage before they
buy insurance…to think like the risk managers who have become
prominent in corporate circles.
The 9/11 attacks have only made the need for this book even
more evident.
Through most of the post-World War II era, Americans drifted
into an unusual sense of personal security. They believed that, if
they wrote their monthly checks to the insurance company, they
would be protected against just about anything. The insurance in-
dustry encouraged this impression.
Now, most Americans realize that they need to take a more
assertive position in regard to their own security. This book offers
some help in that effort.
The Silver Lake Editors who worked on this book include
Kristin Loberg, Steve Son, Megan Thorpe and James Walsh. Chris-
tina B. Schlank and Valli K. Thornton also helped with reporting
and editing. We’d also like to thank Sander Alvarez, Esq., and Profes-
sor David T. Russell of California State University, Northridge, for
their input and assistance.
Some parts of the chapters dealing with the psychology or risk
and disasters are based on material that appears in two earlier Sil-
ver Lake Publishing books—True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Ev-
Protect Yourself
eryday Life and It’s a Disaster: The Money and Politics that Follow Earth-
quakes, Hurricanes and Other Catastrophic Losses. Some of the check-
lists and other information in this book are based on material that
appears in the Silver Lake Publishing books The Insurance Buying
Guide and How to Insure Your Income.
For more information on those or other Silver Lake Publishing
books and publications, please visit our Internet Web site at
www.silverlakepub.com or call our customer service line at
1.360.532.5758 during regular business hours, Pacific time.
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Table of Contents
Introduction...................................................................... 1
Part One: Protecting Your Body and Health
Chapter 1: Travel and Activities......................................... 5
Chapter 2: Health, Diet and Risk...................................... 23
Chapter 3: Crime Risks..................................................... 39
Chapter 4: Insuring Your Health....................................... 53
Part Two: Protecting Your Family
Chapter 5: Life Insurance Protects Many Things................. 73
Chapter 6: Your Family’s Health........................................ 95
Chapter 7: Disasters........................................................... 109
Chapter 8: Risks Posed by Your Family.............................. 127
Part Three: Protecting Your Things
Chapter 9: Protecting Your House…and Yourself............... 141
Chapter 10: Renters, Condo Owners and Others................ 161
Chapter 11: Special Situations............................................ 173
Part Four: Protecting Your Finances
Chapter 12: Disability Insurance & Social Security.............. 195
Chapter 13: Personal Liability............................................ 219
Chapter 14: Scams and Swindles........................................ 239
Protect Yourself
Chapter 15: Inheritance and Tax........................................ 257
Chapter 16: Small Business Risks....................................... 273
Chapter 17: Lending Money............................................... 295
Chapter 18: Bankruptcy As Protection............................... 307
Conclusion.........................................................................319
Index................................................................................. 323
Introduction
INTRODUCTION
Introduction
In a world where hijacked jets crash into skyscrapers, anthrax cir-
culates through the mail, money moves at the speed of light and iden-
tities are as easy to steal as bicycles, traditional notions of safety and
security are as obsolete as dictaphones and three-martini lunches.
Yet people cling to obsolete notions.
This book aims to open your eyes to how risk works…and to
give you tools for minimizing the dangers that threaten your self,
your family and your things. These are tools that people need, regard-
less of how many political fanatics are trying to hijack planes.
• In the post-industrial world, people are free agents—in
their work lives and their personal lives.
• The odds are increasingly large that you don’t have a cor-
porate employer or big family living under your roof to
help you absorb a personal loss.
• You have to fend for yourself, which means you have to be
able to identify, assess and manage risk for yourself.
Americans are used to having large institutions—corporate em-
ployers, immigrant communities, the government—manage risk for
them. In the wake of the September 2001 terrorist attacks on New
York and Washington, D.C., many people talked about wanting to
return to the comfort of traditional values. This traditional comfort re-
ally means going back to having institutions handling risk for us.
But the economic and cultural tides can’t be turned back, how-
ever comforting that idea might be. Our world grows more decentral-
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Protect Yourself
ized every day; and every person is increasingly responsible for
himself. This is an opportunity for great freedom and liberty…but
it’s also a potential threat. The threat doesn’t come from terrorists. It
comes from our own bad judgments about what’s dangerous and what’s
safe.
As we recoil from the risks posed by a dangerous world, we sur-
render our ability to handle…and to manage…circumstances
in ways that work for us. Despite great access to data, a shocking
number of people have a bad sense of risk.
Americans often ignore serious risks (driving recklessly,
smoking, handing their life savings to swindlers) and
obsess about trivial ones (terrorism, pesticides,
breast implants, flesh-eating bacteria).
By underestimating common risks while exaggerating exotic ones,
we end up protecting ourselves against the unlikely perils while fail-
ing to take precautions against those most likely to do us in.
Most media coverage of risk to health and well-being focus on
shock and outrage. The media pays attention to issues and
situations that frighten—and therefore interest—readers and
viewers. The shock-and-outrage approach creates interesting
stories but warps people’s sense of risk. As a result, we’re
scared—and often scared by the wrong things.
Some experts in risk analysis call this response statistical homi-
cide—the triumph of long odds over common sense. In other words,
the risks that kill people and the risks that scare people are differ-
ent. A smart person doesn’t worry about what’s scary; she worries
about what’s deadly.
Businesses, government agencies and people who understand
risk are able to make smart decisions and respond to news effec-
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Introduction
tively. To some extent, they even manipulate risk to their advantage.
For example:
• Insurance companies structure policy premiums to cover
their costs and exclude situations they don’t like to face
because they understand risk.
• Government agencies propose rules and regulations that
assure their own importance because they understand risk.
• Industry groups and consumer groups publicize friendly
research because they understand risk.
And all of this affects you. So you need to understand risk and
how various interest parties use it.
What Is Risk Management?
Throughout this book, we will deal with real-world examples of
risk management. And we’ll drill into the details of how risk manage-
ment can help you in matters as basic as where you live and what
you eat. But what precisely is risk management? It’s a broad term
that refers to a variety of analytical tools, including:
• risk characterization,
• comparative risk assessment,
• risk ranking,
• risk-benefit analysis; and
• cost-benefit analysis.
You don’t have to be Stephen Hawking to understand the basics
of risk management and apply them to your everyday life. Each chap-
ter in this book offers practical examples.
Risk management isn’t exact—and, as we’ll see, it can be ma-
nipulated by people with agendas. Still, it offers the best way to mini-
mize loss of life and limb. And its basic tenets can help you live a
good life.
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