heck I have been insuring 1.8mm with 1% deduct through Travelers for 10.8k and thought that was a rip off...

Sazerac said:

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Goosehead worked with Homeowners of America to get me a policy at 5% / 2% deductible which is the highest they could go.

My policy had doubled from $2.1k to $4.2k. This increase in deductible max it "only" $3.2k

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So to clarify, you opted to save $1k per year to go with a deductible $32,000 more than a normal 1% deductible?

BoDog said:

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Home is paid for and in June I decided the juice wasnt worth the squeeze. Not going to lie, it would be rough to have to pay to rebuild my house but I could. These premiums have gotten ridiculous and I decided I was not going to swim in that pond anymore.

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RG3, is that you?

The $4k had a 3% deductible.

1% would be $6k+ easily.

We paid off the house but maxed out the deductibles. Big savings but still have catastrophic damage covered.

Same with our cars. So far we are money way ahead on both.

3rd and 2 said:

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I've read some articles, and it's commonly written that you should keep your home insurance, even if you pay off your mortgage. But the 'experts' have been wrong on a lot of things recently. I wanted to run this by you guys.

I'm paying $460/month in home insurance, mandated by my mortgage company. That's $5520/year I could be investing. 10 years of savings, at 5% interest, could be worth $112,000. We have money invested where the family could buy a smaller home if the peanut butter hit the fan.

I've shopped it around, and $460/month is pretty normal for my size of house.

Would it be a good idea to cancel home insurance and keep the savings?

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That's not enough to rebuild your house if something happens to it, so even thinking about chasing a hypothetical dollar figure (interest rate could easily go down from where they are today) in 10 years is silly.

Back in the recession of 2008, I bought a 2 year old townhouse that was a foreclosure for about $80k. It was in pretty good condition, but needed new carpet downstairs and paint, which I did replaced and painted, and I was sitting pretty due to what others in the neighborhood were selling for on the market ($120-150k).

I was in that place about a year when I came home from work and noticed water in my garage. "Hmm, that's odd" I thought as I was walking in. I opened the door from the garage to the house and water was just pouring down from upstairs. There was about an inch of water on the ground on the entire downstairs, ceiling sheetrock on the first floor had fallen in in the kitchen/dining area, kitchen cabinets were bubbling from the water, the wood floors in the living room I had put in were buckled, doors were warped, etc. I ran upstairs to see what was going on, and that little plastic piece on the hose from the wall to the toilet tank had broken off in a bathroom I had never used since I lived there. I don't know when it broke off, but it had been going for hours while I was at work.

Downstairs was completely gutted as was the bathroom upstairs where it happened. Cost almost as much as I paid for the place to rebuild the downstairs and that bathroom (I didn't remove the tile in the kitchen). I'm talking new cabinets, countertops, doors, trim, insulation, wood floors, subfloor in the upstairs bathroom, trim upstairs where the water got, etc. The only changes I made was to add recessed lighting throughout the downstairs, under cabinet lighting, and pre-wire for surround. Then I had to buy new furniture, dining table, TV stand, etc. All-in, it was about $75k to get back to living in it. That was in 2008.

Is $112,000 in 2033 worth 10 years of risk? To me it's not. In the past year, there have been 2 houses on the way to my kid's school that have been struck by lightning and set on fire. And I'm not living in a starter neighborhood any longer. Guarantee the cost to repair that was more than what you could potentially get in 10 years.

My advice? Stop over analyzing every expense to try to chase a few possibile pennies in the future. Put that effort into finding better/cheaper coverage each year.