Insurance “Fun”

So, I called my insurance agent to see if State Farm would cover the cost of replacing my driveway.

They will not.

And they wouldn’t, even if I had flood insurance.

I asked her if I should get flood insurance and she explained it to me. As she was explaining it to me, I asked her, “So, what you’re saying is that you’ve spent the last three days telling people who thought they were insured how screwed they are?” and she, in a tired voice, said, “yes.”

Basically, flood insurance either pays for just your house or it pays for your house and the depreciated value of what’s in it. So, like, if a tornado hits my house and destroys my couch, my insurance will pay the cost of getting me a new couch comparable to my current couch, in this case, a crappy $600 couch that ended up not being crappy, but delightfully awesome. They would give me $600 for a couch.

If I had flood insurance and I lost my couch in a flood, I’d only get the depreciated value of my couch, which, considering that it’s an ancient $600 couch, would probably be $0.

So, unless you have a house full of stuff that appreciates in value–like, I don’t know, Civil War cannons (and, really, who wants to sit on a cannon and watch TV?)–you can have flood insurance and still end up losing everything in your house and not having a way to replace it.

That’s going to be terrible news for a lot of folks.

Anyway, so, yes, the driveway. It’s fucked. We’re broke. I’m stressed.

But at least it’s just the driveway.