The Money Mustache Community
Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Lordy on June 18, 2016, 04:43:22 AM
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Hello fellow Mustachians,
yesterday I was going through my insurances and gave each of them some thought. Ordered by fee they are:
- Legal cost insurance (traffic, renting, work): 20 EUR/month
- Dental insurance (add on to public healthcare): 14 EUR/month
- Liability insurance (breaking stuff/hurting people): 6 EUR/month
- Travel health insurance (outside EU): 1 EUR/month
Travel health and liability insurance are no-brainers given the potential costs and the low fees. I believe that Dental insurance is money well spent given that public healthcare covers only the cheapest treatments and materials. As for legal cost insurance, I am unsure wether I should keep it. I initially signed up for it over 10 years ago when rumors where going around that my then employer would lay off a bunch of people. The lay-offs came but I was not affected. Since then I used it only once to contest a Pay-TV contract.
What are your thoughts on Legal Cost Insurance? Is it worth it? Would you keep it?
Cheers, Lordy
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Drop it.
We carried a legal insurance plan about 15-18 years ago (only because a friend sold the plan). We dropped it after maybe 2-3 years, because the first time we tried to use it, we couldn't get the referred attorney to do anything. The amount in dispute was less than $300, so he wouldn't write a letter or give us advice re: small claims or do ANYTHING. He told us to "forget about" the $300.
We never did get our $300, and the $500-$700 in premiums we'd paid for the plan were lost also. (a few years later we won and were paid for a judgment in small claims court for >$1000, now the internet can tell you how to do this)
If your liability insurance is sufficient, they will pay for legal costs if you are sued. Other than that, I don't worry about legal costs because I think I'm very unlikely to incur them.