With many aspects of your financial life, there’s a certain amount of “set it and forget it.” In some cases it works out well, such as setting a contribution to a retirement account or establishing a savings plan that auto-transfers money from your checking account to a savings account. In other cases, it’s important to take a look at those plans every year to make sure they still make sense for your situation.

Insurance policies fit into that category and it’s important to take stock and review your insurance policies each year. A lot can change in a year and unless you take some time to review your policies, you may be surprised when it comes time to use them.

Kimberly Palmer is the author of Generation Earn: The Young Professional’s Guide to Spending, Investing, and Giving Back, which was published by Ten Speed Press this week. The following post has been adapted from the book. She’s also the author of the Alpha Consumer blog at USNews.com, where she’ll be hosting book giveaways all week.

Shortly after meeting my husband, he tried to convince me that debt was a good thing. His student loans, after all, were not only funding his tuition but also many of our first dates. Using something called the “income smoothing theory,” he argued that it was better to borrow now, when we had little money, so we could live better than we otherwise would, and then pay it back later, when we (hopefully) had steady incomes. (Of course, to us at the time, living well meant being able to buy cheap Thai food and beer.)

While his theory falls apart if it’s taken to extremes, for the most part it makes sense. Debt can be a very good thing, as long as you use it wisely. Here are five ways you can use debt to improve your life.

Here’s the rule of thumb I use on whether or not an insurance policy is worth getting – if they are willing to sell you insurance without knowing anything about you, don’t buy it.

Think about how much information you have to provide if you’re buying any kind of “traditional insurance.” With life insurance, you have to submit yourself to a physical. For auto insurance you have to offer up your car’s history, your credit history and your driving history, which is being tracked by a third party. For homeowners insurance, you have to provide a history of claims on your home (don’t worry, it’s tracked by a third party), your own credit history, and home details.

When you buy travel or trip cancellation insurance, they don’t need anything except your money. When you buy cell phone insurance, they don’t need anything except your money. Extended warranties? Just send in a check.

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When it comes to saving money in this economy, it appears that many people are dropping or lowering their auto insurance policies. It’s a bit of a gamble but adjusting your insurances, whether it’s homeowners or auto or anything else, can be a way to save a few more dollars if things are looking tight. However, the subject of how to lower your auto insurance costs has been covered a near infinite number of times already and everyone knows the basics – shop for alternatives, increase your deductibles, drop comprehensive and collision on older vehicles, package together policies for a discount, etc.

I would like to that think you all know that you should shop around for insurance, just as you would shop around for anything else. I would also hope that you understand the relationship between your premium payments and your deductible. Hitting those points really just smashes the some tired old ideas back into your brain and, honestly, wastes your time. So, this post will be about the more novel ways to lower your car insurance costs. Chances are you may not use any of these ideas but it may spur you to think of some clever ideas of your own (that you can share!).

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Trying to find a way to save money every month is a lot like playing Whack a Mole. In April you might save some money by brown bagging your lunch to work. In May you might try some hypermiling driving tips, like easing up on the brakes or driving closer to the speed limit. By June, you’ll probably have stopped brown bagging lunch as often but you’ll try going out to bars less after work. It’s hard keeping everything straight, especially if you haven’t made it a habit.

That’s why the key to saving money every month is to reduce your overall “financial load.” That is, cut or reduce your fixed monthly expenses.
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Last week, as I was research the “catch” on a return of premium life insurance policy, I wondered if it was possible for you to self-insure your life. The idea behind self insuring is that you take a lower level of insurance protection and save the difference into an account. With auto insurance, you could take away comprehensive insurance coverage, rental car coverage, or raise your deductible and put the savings into a high interest savings account.

I do this today with my auto insurance. For my Acura Integra, I didn’t carry comprehensive insurance and was able to saving hundreds of dollars a year. When it was totaled, through no fault of my own, I rolled the savings over to do the same thing with my current car, a Toyota Celica. As I’ve gotten older and the premium on excluding comprehensive insurance decreases, I’m tempted to add comprehensive again and pay for it with the fund. I’m able to because of good driving and good fortune, but I think that self-insurance is something everyone should consider.

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When you buy a car, the biggest number you see is the price. The sticker price, the invoice price, and the price you paid to get that car onto your driveway or into your garage. Savvier buyers also look at the total cost of ownership, which includes the price but also adds in the cost of driving, maintaining, and insuring the car.

The easiest way to determine the total cost of ownership on a car is to turn to online calculators, like this True Cost to Own calculator from Edmunds.

If you’re curious just from an insurance perspective, Forbes has published a list of the least and most expensive cars to insure according to data provided by Insure.com. They quoted rates for a 40-year-old male who commutes 12 miles to work with your fairly standard insurance limits. $300k/$100k injury limits, $50k property damage, and $500 deductibles on collision and comprehensive.

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My wife wrote an article last week about how you can save money going local for balloons and flowers, but here’s another reason you might want to go local – superior service.

In working for my how to buy term life insurance post yesterday, I emailed my insurance agent, Deborah from State Farm, to get some updated quotes on term life insurance. I’ve had the need to email her on several occasions and each time her responses were usually back in minutes. She knew me as Jim Wang, a recent new customer, and not as customer #XXXXXXX in a database somewhere.

It really underscored one thing I had missed when I was with Geico and Traveler’s, personalized service with a real person.

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