The Deadline to Change or Purchase Healthcare.gov Plans Ends August 15th.

The Healthcare.gov Special Enrollment Period for the COVID-19 public health emergency ends August 15th. More people than ever qualify for help paying or their health insurance coverage. Four out of five people can purchase a plan for $0/month after tax credits. If you do not currently have a plan, you can use our easy enrollment system at thehollandagency.com or give us a call to enroll over the phone.

If you already have a healthcare.gov plan, you still may need to act. When the Covid-19 Relief Package was passed, additional tax credits were made available for current enrollees. Even if you purchased a plan during open enrollment of last year, you need to update your information to receive the additional tax credits. Even if your income did not change, “update” your application and put in the same amount of income to see if you qualify for additional credits. You do not have to wait until next year to receive them. If you update your income this week and qualify for additional credits, you will begin seeing your lower monthly premium on your plan September 1st. You can login to your account at healthcare.gov or you can update your application with us over the phone or on our website thehollandagency.com.

You may also switch health plans at this time if you are not happy with your current plan. Just remember that if you select a new plan, any out-of-pocket costs you already paid for with your current 2021 Marketplace plan probably will not count towards the deductible on your new plan. Give us a call for more details.

Your home alarm/fire system may not be working. 2 ways to check.

You pay for an alarm system each month to protect your family and assets from various things like fire, theft, burglary, and smoke. You may be surprised to find out that even though you are paying for twenty-four hour monitoring, you are not getting what you paid for.

Every year or two, we update our cell phones to whatever is the latest Android or iPhone on the market. We have been using 4G signal phones for quite some time. Now we are even starting to upgrade to 5G phones. Since most phones on the market use either 4G or 5G cell phone towers, mobile service providers like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile are shutting down the old 3G towers that we used in the past. Years ago, most homes had a landline telephone. When you installed an alarm system, installers tied the landline phone into the alarm system. When the alarm was tripped, a landline phone call was made to a central station operator to determine whether the police, fire department, or an ambulance needed to be sent to the home. In recent years, many homes no longer have a landline phone. In order to keep the monitoring service active, alarm systems began using an internal cell phone signal to make the call to the operator. Your alarm system basically had a cell phone inside it to make the call for emergencies. If you have an alarm system that is older than three years, it is very possible that the internal cell phone inside your alarm system used a 3G signal to make the call to the operator. Since the 3G cell phone towers are being shut down, your alarm system may not make the call to the operator in the event of an emergency. You will not get any kind of error message. The system call to the operator simply will not go through. So you may be paying for an alarm/fire monitoring system each month that may not be reporting to the operator in the event of an emergency. So how do you know if your system is reporting? Here are two suggestions:

1. Set off the alarm. Set your burglar alarm and open a door to set it off. Just because you hear the alarm, doesn’t mean that it is reporting to the operator. Wait for the call from the alarm company to see if you are okay. If you never get a call, your system may not be reporting.

2. Call your alarm company to find out if your system is 3G or 4G. Even if you try step one, give the company a call to find out. The 3G towers in your area may still be working for a few more months. If the alarm company tells you that you have a 3G system, go ahead and schedule an appointment for the upgrade. Many companies will do this upgrade at no charge in order to keep you as a client. If they will not, tell them you are going to upgrade with another service provider. This should be a free upgrade for you since it is not your fault that the system isn’t reporting. They need to upgrade their equipment.

Give your system a check ASAP. Who wants to pay for a service that isn’t even working? If you have an alarm system, give us a call to make sure we know. Our homeowners insurance companies give a 5-15% discount on your homeowners or renters insurance policy premium for having the service. If you are interested in installing one, give us a call. We have some referral discounts with local providers. The discount you get on your homeowners insurance may be enough to pay for half of the monthly monitoring fees.

I am buying a new car. Will the color affect my auto insurance?

Easy question. The answer is “no”. While statistics show that certain car colors are more likely to be stopped for speeding, be involved in an accident, etc., car insurance companies do not use this information to rate your policy. When you call the office to make a vehicle change for a new purchase, we do not even ask the color of the new car. Most modern cars do not even have a digit in the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) for the color of the car since you could easily paint your car a different color making the VIN inaccurate. Even though insurance companies do not use color statistics to formulate rates, they do use other statistics that you can use to your advantage to keep your auto insurance rates affordable.

Work on Improving Your Credit Score

Believe it or not, statistics show that people with higher credit scores have fewer insurance claims. Your credit score has a huge impact on your home and auto insurance prices. We have even seen higher auto and home insurance prices for some senior citizens who although they have no debt and have had no tickets or accidents, they have low credit scores. Some seniors have a low credit scores since they have no credit cards or mortgage records to report to the credit bureaus each month. Even if you are debt free, having a small credit card that you use for things like gas and groceries that you pay the card off each month will help you keep your credit score up. Free websites like creditkarma.com will allow you to check your credit score without hurting your credit.

Keep Your Record Claim Free

Do not turn in small claims. You lose your claims free discount even if you turn in a small claim or if you turn in a claim and the insurance company ends up paying little or nothing after your deductible is applied. It is true that you buy insurance to protect you from having to pay for damage. But if you want to keep your rates stable over your lifetime, you should think of insurance as something that will protect you for major things and you “self-insure” for smaller claims. Even small comprehensive, glass, and towing claims can hurt you over time. Statistics show that people who turn in numerous small claims are more likely to be involved in an accident. Raise your deductibles to a higher amount such as $1000 with a lower glass claim deductible such as $50. Over your lifetime, you will come out better even if you have to pay for some small $500-$999 claims yourself.

If you would like additional suggestions on how to improve your insurance rates, just give us a call at the office. We can not only offer quotes from our companies, but you may be able to transfer your current policy to our agency without having to change insurance companies. You can transfer your current policy to The Holland Agency from many companies such as Allstate, Nationwide, Kemper, Travelers, Progressive, Safeco, Foremost, Grange, and many more.

It's time to change the batteries in your smoke detector.

Hard wired detectors save lives and money. You might be surprised how cheap it can be to install hard wired smoke detectors. Not only are they safer because they do not require batteries, but they can help you in 2 additional areas. On the insurance side, you may receive a discount on your homeowner's insurance by having hard wired electric smoke detectors. This is especially the case if you are a landlord or own rental properties of any kind. On the real estate side, you may fail the home inspection if you forget to change the batteries and the detectors are not working at the time of inspection. Re-inspections are not cheap.