"Don't Read Me!"

Charles

Several years ago, I was stumbling through Thucydides ' History of the Peloponnesian War . It was an edition with courier type, as tiny as possible without being invisible. Not so much as a sketch in it.

My friend put down his Ibanez Iceman, pulled the book from me and flipped through the pages. "Look at this thing!" he snickered, then intoned, "DON'T READ ME!" as the voice of the book. I looked at it again myself—his point was valid. (The most valid points, after all, are the funny ones.) Even though I found Thucydides a great read when I grew up, it makes me laugh when I encounter grownup stuff that has no entertainment value—"Don't Read Me!"—a 3-inch thick stack of escrow documents, for example.

Or insurance materials.

This blog is all about response to disasters, so I thought I'd take a look at how earthquake insurance works, at least in California. In short, it's a major "Don't Read Me!" thing. Problem is, maybe you need the coverage. Or you need to know, at least, whether or not the extra coverage is for you and your situation. Some basic understanding can be found here  and here  for California properties.

There are two fundamental things to know before you do your research and when you shop for appropriate coverage. First, coverage is expensive. The same is pretty true for other types of disaster coverage—flood insurance in areas  with actual threat, Hurricanes  and tornadoes in areas where they occur with any frequency. Second, the coverage you get might be duplicated: the award from your existing policy, less deductible, might be the same you get from earthquake insurance. You'd end up spending thousands to get back, well, thousands.

Talk to your agent. Once you get through all the junk mail and (800) numbers, and decide on a carrier and policy, the agent is often easy to deal with.