Rising insurance costs got you worried? Tune in as Paul Sydlansky, CFP® talks with insurance veteran Peter Wallin about why rates are skyrocketing and practical steps to mitigate the impact. From natural disasters to market dynamics, get the full scoop.

Topics Discussed:

• Factors contributing to rising costs
• Actionable tips to manage costs
• Ensuring adequate liability coverage
• Benefits of umbrella policies
• Common mistakes people make with insurance

Transcript:

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Okay. Hi everyone. My name is Paul Sydlansky and I’m the founder of Lake Road Advisors. We are an independent financial planning firm based in upstate New York, but working with clients virtually all over the country. At Lake Road Advisors, we really strive to produce content that not only adds value but provides actionable insights for you. To address some of the questions that you may have today, we’re going to do a little Q and A, and I’m really excited to jump on one of the topics that I’ve been getting a ton of questions about, and that’s personal insurance and no better person to do that with today than Peter Wallin. So Peter, who’s joining us today, is the founder of Wallin Insurance. Wallin is an independent home auto and business agency based here in upstate New York. And Peter is also a six-time author and motivational speaker and my go-to for all things insurance. So Peter, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m really excited and how are you doing?

Peter Wallin: Doing really well. Thank you. Great introduction. I appreciate that very much. I’m doing well and excited to be here.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Awesome, awesome. Yeah, and so Peter has been, like I said, a tremendous resource to myself and the firm, and I’m excited to really talk about some of the things that I’m hearing a lot about. So Peter, if you want to just give a quick background on yourself for everybody listening, and then we’ll jump into some questions.

Peter Wallin: Very cool. Thanks again, Paul. Great to be here, and this is a great service you’re doing for your clients. This is fantastic. Again, Peter Wallin, I’ve been in the business since the 1980s, man. I started 24 years old with insurance property and casualty insurance. I actually started up in the Buffalo area with Nationwide Insurance. I was a sales agent there and even a manager at Nationwide for up to 10 years. Moved down here to Elmira, New York in 1993, worked a few more years in management with Nationwide. And then 1997, 1998, I got that bug to kind of be an independent insurance broker agent, and I’ve been doing it ever since. So the 26 years plus, it is been great. Fantastic.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Awesome. Thank you, Peter. Yeah, I know Peter’s just a great asset to the community on so many levels and insurance is only one of them, so I appreciate your time today all. So let’s jump into it. As a financial planner, insurance is a major part of what we do, having that conversation, and we’re just going to focus on property and casualty insurance. But the thing I’ve been hearing a lot from clients is cost increases, right? My insurance has gone up on my auto, home, insurance has gone up. So Peter, I know there’s probably a lot of reasons for this, but if you could point to just two or three main drivers of why everybody’s seeing these insurance costs increases, I think that would be a helpful place to start.

Peter Wallin: Yeah, thanks Paul. Again, I’ve been doing this for many, many years. I have never seen the insurance industry, the insurance market, in such a challenged time as they are right now. I mean, we’re seeing opportunities of 20, 30, 40% rate increases for your car insurance and even your home insurance. I have never seen this type of rate movement on insurance. Why I call it the perfect storm, in the perfect storm in a bad way. So much has happened as we came out of covid in the United States and in the world with insurance prices, and it’s affected by the effects of inflation, the cost of labor going up to fix a car, the cost of parts, labor, even the time it takes to repair a car has just gone up astronomically. It’s just increased so much. So the perfect storm of inflation and then natural disasters that we’re seeing right now. You turn the TV on every single night, you turn on the six 30 news, you’re seeing a natural disaster, you’re seeing a flood, a storm, a hurricane, tornado in the wintertime, major snow storms that just has escalated to levels beyond anything I’ve ever seen before. So insurance companies are really struggling with this. So how do they fix things? They fix things a few different ways. To be honest with you. Many of the insurance companies I’m dealing with are just raising rates. They’re just raising rates 20, 30, 40%. Like I said, other insurance companies, which are even more alarming, Paul are just pulling out of the state. They’re just backing up and saying, we don’t want to deal with this anymore. We are losing money. We can’t handle this. So we’re just backing out. You’ve seen that in Florida, you’ve seen it in California, now we even see it here in New York. It is real challenging.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Yeah, that’s really interesting. And that’s kind of the scary thing when competition leaves the market, then you have maybe only one player left who’s providing these services. They’re left to do whatever they want because I think for the consumer, and you would know this best, there aren’t really any other alternatives to having insurance. I think everybody needs auto insurance. Everybody needs home insurance because the cost without it would be astronomical. So does the consumer really have any alternatives if there’s only one player in the market?

Peter Wallin: No, and it really stinks. So you’re right, auto insurance is the law in every state. You have to carry auto insurance, liability insurance, and then even for your property, for your home, if you have a mortgage, the mortgage company’s going to require you to carry insurance and even some cases insurance in certain areas. So it is a challenge. What I’m seeing to your question, I tell people this as I go to insurance meetings and talk to the CEOs of these companies. They’re telling me that for every dollar they’re taking in many of these insurance companies, for every dollar they’re taking in, they’re losing a dollar 20. Wow. So that’s what they call a loss ratio or a combined ratio of all their expenses and their claims. They’re losing a dollar 20 for every dollar. So how do you fix that? Unfortunately, it’s that perfect storm. Again, all these challenges have come together. How do you fix that? Either by taking a rate increase or pulling out of the market and just saying, we don’t want to do it anymore.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Right? And when I think about those costs, fundamentally, maybe they’re just here to stay. I think for, and I know I talk to my clients about this, we’ve been kind of spoiled for the last, let’s call it forty, forty-five years in terms of inflation because after the eighties, oil embargo in seventies rates came down and have been consistently three to 4%. Now we have the spike in 2022 when it shot up to 9%, but I think we all got pretty used to low inflation that kept, I feel like things like insurance costs that quite frankly, nobody thinks about it, in my opinion, until it goes up. It’s one of those things you take for granted. So that to me has caused maybe a shift where prices have to readjust. And if this is the new world, I unfortunately don’t see our climate issues getting any better in the near term. And so this is the new world. These costs sound like they’re going to be here to stay.

Peter Wallin: And we saw this happen really fast as Covid was ending. And in those time periods, what I look at was two or three years ago, four years ago, you saw real estate going up quite a bit. You saw people’s home prices and the values going up and people fighting to pay cash amounts for houses at extreme amounts. So now the level of real estate is up high. And then to your point in 2022, it was the banking and credit union industry that just massively raised their rates in a short period of time, historic rate increases. And now here we’re seeing insurance. So insurance is kind of the third level here between real estate banking and now insurance major increases. And to your point, 20%, 30% rate increase. It’s here to stay. It’s going to stay at this level, it’s not going to go back down.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Got it, got it. And the other thing, you mentioned real estate, and I’m waiting, right? So we’ve had higher rates. It’s more expensive to get a mortgage now and now coupled with higher insurance costs and you called out California, Florida, we have clients in both those areas. And that’s coming to the point where those insurance costs are going to be prohibited from people buying homes when your insurance costs could be equal to or more than your mortgage in some of these situations. So I wonder at what point that pendulum’s going to swing and ultimately people will be in a position where they don’t have the ability to get into these markets anymore. It’s cost prohibitive. Okay. So I’ve got a few more questions here by the way you hit on the Florida and California. It sounds like when we think about climate impact, those are some of the areas that are getting hit the worst. And so it’s safe to say probably some of these costs are here to stay, but what happens in an area if it’s uninsurable, what happens if all providers get out? Does the government have any responsibility to go in there and say, Hey, we’re going to step in, or I’m just curious.

Peter Wallin: It’s a great question. I’ll use flood insurance as an example because flood insurance is a FEMA driven product, and most of the prices are the same. No matter where you go, you can call off the phone and call five different insurance companies. And because it’s a federal program, the rate’s going to be the same, right? Based on fema. But FEMA since Hurricane Katrina, I think in the early two thousands had just lost billions of dollars, billions of dollars. So they can’t raise rates fast enough with flood insurance. And then you see another one on the news last night, more flood. So they’re going to continue to either back off to market a little bit or continue to raise rates. And so I don’t think it’s ever going to be to the point where you can’t get insurance somewhere, but it’s just going to cost you more. It’s going to cost you got it. You

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Might got it. No, that’s helpful. And I think that this may be an industry that just needs to be subsidized. I think of airlines, I think of trains, some of these more infrastructure type things are just going to be really difficult to turn a profit in. And so yeah, maybe the government has to continue to step in. All right, so this is one of my personal favorite questions and it really revolves around keeping costs low, and I have my own biases about that, but there’s a lot of the Geicos of world out there, the $15 a month, this and that. In your opinion, is it worth sacrificing levels of coverage for cost?

Peter Wallin: No.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: No.

Peter Wallin: We spend all day long talking to our clients and answering questions like yours. We want to make sure, and especially your clients, Paul, we want to make sure you’re protecting your assets, your most important assets. You protect your home, protect your family, protect yourself against a lawsuit. So it’s not so much about shopping around to try to save a couple hundred bucks on your insurance. Most important, you still want to carry sufficient limits of liability insurance, $300, 500,000 of liability, and perhaps obviously that million dollar umbrella on top of that to protect yourself against a lawsuit. If someone trips and falls on your property at your home, or if you’re driving a car and you get in an accident, God forbid something were to happen and you cause an accident, someone gets hurt and they sue you. Most important, you’ve got to make sure you’ve got the right protections there to cover you. You’re paying ’em good money for insurance. You want to make sure you got the right limits there to have.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Yeah, no, I agree. I think insurance is definitely one of the areas that we advise our clients not to skim on. The worst thing I could imagine is getting in an accident or having an issue with your home and realizing that you can only pay for half that repair of your car or half the repair of your home. And so I know your firm has been helpful in really the last couple years as premiums have skyrocketed, you’ve realized that past coverage levels, especially when you’re talking to the Geicos of the world, there’s a reason why these policies are so cheap because the coverage is so low, and when you tell somebody, Hey, you only have 50,000 or a hundred thousand dollars of protection, that’s really nothing in today’s day and age in the society we live on, if somebody wants to sue you, right? So yeah, I’m all for, I’d rather pay there, protect yourself, because to me that would be the worst case scenario, having the situation where you’re underinsured. So kind of keeping on that topic of low cost, low premium, things like that, is there anything that consumers can be doing maybe to try to be mindful of their costs? Is it as simple as just shopping and comparing? I know you’re an independent firm. One of the main reasons, or the many reasons we love dealing with you is because your model is similar to ours in that you’re out there working with all different providers, but is that the best defense for the consumer to keep maybe those appropriate levels of coverage at a lower premium?

Peter Wallin: Yeah, certainly you want to keep those levels of coverage. I think even about something like a dog bite, just to follow up on that prior question, your little dog just bites the next door neighbor or a little kid next door. You want to make sure you’ve got that right insurance protection, because that’s not going to just settle a claim real fast If there’s a little child that gets bit by a dog in their face or something like that, that could take two to three to five years to settle that. You want to make sure you’ve got the peace of mind to know you’ve got obviously a million dollars or more in insurance coverage that the insurance company will back you up with down the road. So to that point, so important to have the right coverages. I tell people, hold us honest. Hold us to the fire here too. Hold us as insurance agents. Shop around for your insurance every two to three years, maybe not every year, but every two to three years, have a conversation with either your existing insurance broker like me or another broker out there and say, let’s shop around and see what other companies are out there right now that might be more competitive than who I have right now. And what we’re finding right now is most people are doing that, but they’re coming back and they’re finding that their existing policy is probably where they should stay.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Got it. Got it. And so you mentioned checking your coverage. We usually tell folks about every two years is a good, and I imagine in these last the way things have been moving so fast probably every year. You’ve had a lot recently.

Peter Wallin: Yeah. Yeah. We look at everything. Anytime we see rate increases above 10%, we run reports every single day. Rate. If a rate increase goes up more than 10%, we’re reaching out to you, Paul, and say, Hey, Paul, your rate’s going up this year with X insurance company. Here’s some things we can do to bring that rate down a little bit or to tweak some coverages, things like that. So we spent a lot more time doing that than we probably have in the past because we’re seeing these extreme rate increases.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Got it. And is it fair to say for the consumer rate increases should only come once a year? That’s when the insurance folks pass it through?

Peter Wallin: Yeah, once a year, but obviously as your life changes, your child turns 16 years old, they get their permit, they get their license, the rate’s going to change dramatically at that point in time. You go out and you buy a brand new car, you replace your 2015 Nissan with a 2024 Nissan, that rate’s going to change. It’s going to go up. So you pay attention to that kind of thing. But that’s where we as your agent comes in and at least helps counsel you on the right types of product coverages and the pricing side of that.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Got it. Okay. Actionable insights, like I mentioned before, obviously one of my actual insights is working with a firm like yours and leveraging your expertise to see what’s going on in the market and am I at the right level? Do I have the right levels of coverage? Is my price point correct. What else, if anything, can a consumer do when it comes to or auto, just so they know they’re staying competitive and maybe doing certain things to help reduce their liability?

Peter Wallin: Yeah, very good. So we’ve got six points that we use. So we have conversations with our clients. We use six tips, six points, and I’ll buzz through these pretty quick on you, Paul. 

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Oh, I Love it.

Peter Wallin: Alright, so number one is bundle. You hear it on tv, on the commercials all the time. Bundle your home and your car combined, your home and your car with the same insurance company and you’re going to save 20, 25, 30% of you do that. So right away you want to do that when you do bundle, I’ll back it up with this. You’re telling the insurance company that you mean it, that you really want to develop a relationship with the insurance company. You’re not going to bounce around from company to company every year. You stay with the insurance company, bundling, getting all the right discounts from that aspect. Number two is choose higher deductibles. We’re telling people at least a thousand dollars deductible, a thousand on Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Home and auto,

Peter Wallin: On home and auto on every one of your cars, a thousand dollars deductible and on your home a thousand deductible for small property claims, things like that. You don’t want to submit small claims, you don’t. Now is not the time to submit small claims to your insurance company. If a tree falls down and breaks a window of your house and it might be a $1,200 issue, eat it, man. Take care of that on your phone. You take care of that on your own. If you report that to the insurance company and you might have two or three of those over the course of a few years, your rate’s going to go up and you’re not going to be happy with that. And perhaps you could even be canceled by the insurance company. So you don’t want to submit small claims. We had a parking lot accident the other day where a customer backed in and just backed out of his car and hit a shopping cart, shopping cart, small little damage, three, 400 bucks of a scratch. Don’t submit that to your insurance company, right? Go take care of that on your own. So a thousand applicable. The third one is reviewing your mileage. Your price of insurance is based on your usage of your car, right? So how many miles are you driving in a year on every single car? And that may have changed quite a bit since Covid and people are now working remote, they’re working from home. They might not be commuting 20 miles a day to work like they might have in the past, or you might be retired now or considering retirement. So annual mileage is a big deal to determine the price of insurance. So make sure we’re looking at that properly. The fourth one is defensive driving class. In New York State, you can take a defensive driving class online and it’ll save you up to 10%, up to 10% on your car insurance for three years. So do it yourself and make your spouse do it. Make your kids do it. Take that class. That is an actionable item that you can do right away. It’s a six hour class, I think it might run 30 bucks. You do it online and you get the certificate and it’s good for three years. Three years

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: And 10 percent’s a big number as we know with costs these days.

Peter Wallin: You’ve got kid drivers coming up, Paul, we’ve got people paying five and $6,000 for their insurance. It’s insane. As the kids are driving cars now, it’s insane. You take $5,000 and take 10% off of that, that’s 500 bucks. Just take the class, require your kids to take the class. So that’s four. Number five, how do you pay your bill? How do you pay your bill is also a feature that we look at. Many people just pay the bill monthly. They might write a check and drop it in the mailbox every single month. But if you look at some of the fine prints on that, the insurance companies are charging fees on that. They might be charging you $5 or $10, even $20 every time you just send in that payment with a fee. So the old days of writing a check or calling the insurance company and paying over the phone, try not to do that. Electronic funds transfer, EFT usually avoids any sort of service fees. Got it. You going to encourage people to pay annually If you can do that, right, you get a discount. It’s a discount there. 7%, maybe a 10% discount if you have the ability to pay annually. And I know it’s not cheap, insurance is not cheap, but if you get a seven to 10% discount by paying in full every single year you’re done. It’s a nice discount. Maybe you got a plan for that, maybe your tax return time, that becomes the time to, I get my tax return, let me pay off the insurance bill. Things like that.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Right, right. No, that makes sense, right? The insurance companies want the capital upfront. They’d rather have it in their pocket all year, and they can manage their book of business much better from that.

Peter Wallin: That’s kind of a secret too, by the way. They don’t tell you that. They don’t tell you in the little bill, you get in the mail, Hey, if you pay this on an annual basis, you’ll get a 10% discount. They don’t tell you that. They’d rather take your money over time,

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Of course, and all that.

Peter Wallin: So if we can encourage you and your customers, your clients there to pay annually, maybe you can’t do it this year, but in the future you can do that. And then lastly, number six, contact your agent. Sit down and review your policies. Make sure you’ve got the right driver listed on the right vehicle. If you’re contemplating a 16-year-old going to have their permit and get their license soon, you want to make sure that we’re having those conversations before they get their license. If you’ve got someone that’s 65 getting ready to retire, let’s have those conversations about your usage and your mileage. Are you spending three months a year in Florida and your car is back home? Those types of things. That’s just about having a conversation and a relationship with your insurance agent and your broker. So we know what you’re doing, we know what you’re doing so we can rate things properly.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: No, that makes sense and that’s fantastic. Thank you, Peter, for those six points. A couple more questions that I have here and one that I just kind of thought of when you were talking different types of insurance. What we’re seeing, unfortunately, now you’ve probably seen this in your world, is identity theft, credit cards being stolen, things like that. Do you see a point of when we talk about insurances, really cyber insurance or identity insurance? Now I know there’s the LifeLocks of the world and I feel like every other day I get in the mail something saying, oh, my data was compromised and I get a free year of something. But is that something that you could see a firm like yours starting to offer clients? Because I feel unfortunately, it’s not a matter of if it’s when for all of us, we’re all going to be hacked at a certain point. So

Peter Wallin: This could be a whole conversation, Paul, we could spend an hour on this topic. You said the words identity theft, right? You said identity theft. Most insurance companies now are offering identity theft coverage. It might cost you 20 bucks, 25 bucks a year to put on your insurance policy, and I do recommend you do that, but the word identity theft is not scam. Identity theft means someone really took your Social Security number and took your identity and now becomes you. Right? So yes, that can happen. And yes, that does happen, but it doesn’t happen as often as someone scamming you and getting grandma to send them $30,000 out of their checking account because there’s some scam type of thing. And so the scam thing is real, where people are losing money left and right, and the insurance companies really aren’t protecting that just yet. They haven’t quite figured out how to do that for the homeowner or the resident that’s got those types of issues going on. Commercial insurance, business insurance, you can do that, yes, but the identity theft is an issue. Make sure you add that to your policy. That does help. And the whole LifeLock thing is important, but cyber insurance scares me, man. This is the fastest growing crime in America right now. Cyber extortion, ransomware, they hack your computer, they’re on the phone calling you. We all get this stuff. And to your point now you’re getting free services from Equifax and LifeLock because some company that you’ve been dealing with has been challenged. Yeah, really

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Pay attention to. I found in my experience, having the LifeLocks of the worlds are more about the cleanup and the afterwards because once you are hacked, once a credit card is stolen, once your address, your name, whatever it may be, those services can help you navigate the multiple things you need to do. Whether that’s filing the police report, whether that’s reaching out to Social, Security administration, there’s so many moving parts and things that need to be done. But that’s a great point on the difference

Peter Wallin: Between it doesn’t

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: The scam and the theft, and there’s probably not much you can do against the scam. 

Peter Wallin: I’ve had customers in the lobby in my office here that just say, I just got scammed. I just went to Home Depot and bought $7,000 worth of credit cards and mailed ’em to this company. Insurance is not going to pay for that. Man. That’s something that you willfully did. You willfully did this. Someone convinced you and encouraged you to go to Home Depot and buy credit cards from them or discounts and give them away. You willfully did that or you gave people access to your account. So that’s stuff that’s education. We need to educate people to be so aware of that kind of stuff to not let that happen.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Absolutely. Absolutely. And so as a business owner, I have cyber insurance and run into a few issues and know that really the best defense is being aware, not clicking on anything that I need to know who it’s from, why they’re sending it from a safe address. Really that kind of upfront being mindful is going to probably knock out 90 to 95% of the threats that you’re going to receive, the phishing, the ransomware, stuff like that. But yeah, that’s good to know that. Unfortunately, that’s on you, right? It really

Peter Wallin: Is. Like I said, insurance companies will help you out with the identity side of it if someone steals your identity, but the chances that is not as strong as someone just convincing you to send money.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Money. Got it. One more question, actually two more questions. One on something that you mentioned before that I wanted to hit on. You made a comment about an umbrella policy. That’s a question that I receive a lot when clients come to us and say, Hey, we’ve got our home or auto. Do I need an umbrella policy? So if you could just quickly tell us what that is and then would love your, and I know every case is different, but what are your general thoughts on umbrella policies?

Peter Wallin: Yeah. First of all, it is a great value. Number one is it’s not expensive. You can get an umbrella policy of a $1 million umbrella policy for 300 bucks a year, maybe even a little bit less. It is not expensive. It’s very inexpensive, and those prices haven’t changed much. Like I said, 20% auto rate increase, that’s severe umbrellas. The prices are so low, they’re great. It’s the best value for your dollar. It gives you that peace of mind, that peace of mind. If God forbid, your dog bites somebody, God forbid you get in a car accident and it’s your fault and someone gets injured, any types of things. I say bad things happen to good people. I say that a lot. Bad things happen to good people. It’s out of your control sometimes if your dog bites a neighbor. So you want to have that peace of mind knowing you’ve got $1 million, maybe 2 million, maybe 3 million of an umbrella that the insurance company is forced now to defend you and back you up and support you. And ultimately, if there is a settlement on this, they’ll pay it. They’ll pay

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: It. Got it. So that million can cover everything from damage to lawsuit, it doesn’t really matter. It extends on all the different types of liabilities and protections.

Peter Wallin: You get sued if you get sued last night, my wife could have gotten in a car accident and someone got hurt. It doesn’t matter whose fault, but if she gets sued, we want to make sure we’ve got proper protection. Right. We’ve got a lot to lose. We’ve all got a lot to lose here, so we want to make sure we’re taking care of things.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Got it. Got it. Alright. Last question that I’d love to tap into. Your 30 plus years experience and knowledge in the industry, what are some of the common pitfalls? If you had to say one or two things that you see people do, or on the flip side, what are some of the one or two things people do that can help them out from your experience? What are themes that you’re seeing from your experience? 

Peter Wallin: Great Question. Great question. I love this. And let’s start with homeowners. All right? You own a home. My discussion with people is do what you can to prevent a claim, right? You do not want to submit a claim to the insurance company. You really don’t. So don’t be plugging space heaters in the wintertime. Don’t do things that are going to cause a problem, right? Don’t use space heaters. Be careful with candles. Those types of things. Be careful keeping your heat too low in your house where you’re going to have frozen pipes if you go away for a weekend, right? You don’t want to submit a claim to an insurance company right now, okay? You just don’t want that. If you’ve got trees outside and they’re close to your home and every day you look up at that tree and says, it’s getting bigger and bigger and it’s close to my house, chances are someday that tree might fall. Which way is it going to fall? If he falls and hits your house, we’ve got an insurance claim, all right? It might cost you a thousand dollars or $2,000 to remove that tree. Remove the tree,

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Right? Get ahead of it. 

Peter Wallin: Get ahead of it, because either way, you’re going to have a deductible or an insurance issue, or your rates are going to go up. So to answer your question, do things to prevent a claim. Do things ahead of it, right? Be proactive to help prevent a claim. And the same thing with car insurance. Car. Know where you’re driving. Don’t drive aimlessly. Pay attention to the limits. Don’t use your cell phone when you’re driving all the right things. You can prevent a claim. When I see cars backing out of a parking lot and smash into another car, that should never happen anymore with cars that have beepers and cameras. So it’s this. It’s pay attention. Slow down, look at your surroundings. Don’t have a claim. You do not want to have a claim, right? Did you hear me? You don’t want to submit a claim right now. Now is not the time to submit claims.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Awesome. That’s super helpful.

Peter Wallin: If you do, we’ll take care of it and we’ll pay it. I am not being silly with that. We will pay claims. We play claims all day long, but insurance companies are watching you as a homeowner, as a car driver. They’re watching you very carefully right now.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Yeah, yeah. No, it makes sense, right? With the cost skyrocketing, they need to keep an eye on you.

Peter Wallin: Oh my gosh. And I’ll say this one step further. Insurance companies are using drones right now. They’re using cameras on the wings of an airplane to drive over your house right now to see if you’ve got a built-in swimming pool in your backyard. If you do, do you have a fence around it? They’re looking at your roof right now, and if you roof looks like it’s more than 10 years old, they’re looking at it. They want to know how good your roof is. They’re going to start raising prices as your roof is older, more and more stuff. The sophistication now that insurance companies are now going to use, because they’ve got to get their rates in line. They’ve got to stop this 20% rate increase. So they’re looking at your house, man. They’re looking at your yard. They’re looking at the trees on your property with a drone or on the wing of an airplane.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: That’s illegal. You said that. I saw a drone come by my neighborhood the other day, and I thought it was one of our neighbors, but it wasn’t. And so who knows? Yeah, that’s a little bit scary to think about that. Big brothers watching

Peter Wallin: Mostly

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: Big time. So Peter, this has been fantastic. Again, I really appreciate your time. Where can people find you? Again, I know how to get in contact with you. You’re a tremendous resource, but if people want to read what you are talking about your firm, where can they find you?

Peter Wallin: Sure thing. Our website is wallininsurance.com. It’s W-A-L-L-I-N wallininsurance.com. Email is peter@Wallininsurance.com. If you want a copy of my book or you want to ask questions or shoot me an email or follow up with this conversation, I’m more than happy to do that. Love it. Awesome.

Paul Sydlansky, CFP®: All right, Peter. Thank you so much for your time.

Peter Wallin: I appreciate it, Paul. You have a great day. You’re doing a great job with your clients, man. This is fantastic. Glad to help. Thank you. 

Lake Road Advisors, a Fee-Only, independent financial planning firm with offices in Corning, NY, Ithaca, NY and Portland, OR works with clients virtually all across the country. Paul Sydlansky, the founder of Lake Road Advisors LLC, has worked in the financial services industry for 20+ years. Prior to founding Lake Road Advisors, Paul worked at Morgan Stanley in Manhattan for 13 years. While at Morgan Stanley, Paul was a senior-level manager within the Institutional Equities Department. In 2018 he was named to Investopedia’s Top 100 Financial Advisors list. Paul received a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Marist College and holds an MBA from New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Paul is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ and a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the XY Planning Network. They can be reached by phone at the Corning, NY office at (607) 438-2914, Ithaca, NY office at (607) 463-8400, or Portland, OR office at (607) 292-2172 or at the firm’s website at https://lakeroadadvisors.com/

The information provided is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice and it should not be relied on as such. It should not be considered a solicitation to buy or an offer to sell a security. It does not take into account any investor’s particular investment objectives, strategies, tax status or investment horizon. You should consult your attorney or tax advisor.