Your home insurance rates may or may not go up after a claim.

Will filing a homeowners insurance claim make my rates go up?

You may be familiar with the rumor that filing a home insurance claim will raise your insurance rates. This is an unsettling idea – isn’t home insurance supposed to protect you against losses? Well, yes, it is. And it will. But that doesn’t mean it’s a great idea to file claims for every little bump and scrape that your home endures. The answer to the question of will making a homeowners insurance claim raise rates is complicated – and, in essence, the answer is “it depends.” Let’s take a look at what you need to know about how a home insurance claim can impact your home insurance rates.

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Thanksgiving dinner presents a lot of risks to your pet.

12 tips to keep your pet safe this Thanksgiving holiday

It’s that time of year again! Time to fire up the oven and get to eating some Thanksgiving turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, maybe a winter soup, and, of course, pumpkin pie! Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends, but it’s important not to forget your four-legged family members in all the excitement. Thanksgiving presents numerous safety hazards to cats and dogs – all it takes is turning your back for a second and catastrophe can strike. Check out our tips below to make sure that your furry friends have a happy Thanksgiving.

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Change your smoke detector batteries this Daylight Savings.

Don’t forget to change your smoke detector batteries this Daylight Savings!

It’s that time of year again – time to set the clocks back one hour and get some extra time to sleep! Daylight Savings Time ends at 2 am on November 05 (Sunday morning), so don’t forget to “fall back” and put your clocks back an hour before going to bed Saturday night. But Daylight Savings Time means there’s something else you shouldn’t forget to do – it’s time to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. You should do this every six months, which is why it’s convenient to do at Daylights Savings when you set your clocks forward or back. It makes it easy to remember.  Yes, it might seem tedious to buy new batteries and dig out the toolbox to change all the batteries in all the smoke alarms in your home, but we have a number of good reasons to do so. Home insurance might replace your home and your belongings, but obviously, it can’t replace lives.

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Stay safe while trick-or-treating this Halloween.

How to keep your kids safe while trick-or-treating this Halloween

There’s a certain magic to trick-or-treating. Kids love dressing up in costume and getting yummy candies from neighbors. Halloween is up there on their list of favorite things, for sure. But trick-or-treating, while super fun, isn’t without its risks. If your kids are going trick-or-treating this year, you need to lay down some ground rules for the Halloween fun. We’ve got some tips to help you keep your kids safe this Halloween.

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Help your child choose a safe costume this Halloween.

How to choose a safe costume for your child this Halloween

When you’re a kid, there’s nothing quite as exciting as making the decision of what to be for Halloween. As a parent, you love to see your kids’ faces light up when they get their costume and talk about what they’re going to be. But it’s also important to make sure that your child’s costume is safe for them to go parading around the neighborhood trick-or-treating. You know how to child-proof a home, but what about a costume? A Halloween costume is a big decision, and it’s exciting to see everything come together. And we’ve got some tips to make sure that your kid’s costume is super safe.

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Do you have a fire escape plan for your family?

Do you have a family fire escape plan at home?

According to the Red Cross, it can take as little as two minutes for a home to be engulfed in flames. It’s terrifying to think of how swift and devastating a house fire can be – one reason why you need to make sure you have enough home insurance. When a fire hits, the most important thing is the safety of you and your family. That’s why you and your loved ones need to be prepared – when a fire starts, time is precious. Everyone needs to know what to do when the smoke detector goes off or they smell smoke. For everyone to get out of the house and to safety as quickly as possible, you need to have a family fire escape plan. We’ve got a few tips to help you put together your fire escape plan and keep your family safe.

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Do you have enough home insurance?

Why it’s important to make sure that you have enough home insurance

Nobody wants to consider the possibility that their home could be destroyed by a disaster or fire. But it’s important to be prepared nonetheless, and having the proper insurance will help you protect your home and provide for your family. So, the question is: do you have enough home insurance? There are a few things you have to ask yourself to answer that and make sure that you can get back on your feet after a loss.

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Home renovations can affect your home insurance.

Keep your insurance happy when you do home renovations

You can see it in your mind’s eye – a beautiful, sparkling new kitchen. It’s glorious. New marble countertops, sleek cabinets, and a shiny new oven and dishwasher. Gleaming hardwood floors that you can see your reflection in, a refrigerator that will hold all of the Thanksgiving leftovers with ease. Oooh, it’s gorgeous.

Record scratch and back to the present – sure, your imagination is great. But why not actually get the kitchen you want? You’ve finally decided that you’re going to take the plunge and remodel the kitchen. You’ve got a great deal of affection for your current set-up, of course, but you can’t resist the call of the marble countertops. They’re just too pretty.

So, what is there to do other than hit the hardware store to make your dream a reality? Well, we need to pause for a second on your kitchen daydreams and think about something that’s pretty important – your home insurance. Renovating your home can have an effect on your home insurance, so we’ve come up with four steps to help you renovate your home and keep your insurance happy at the same time.

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4 tips to protect your home from a power surge

In today’s technological age, we’re coming to depend more and more on our electronic devices. Our phones, laptops, and TVs have a special place in our hearts. We’ve convinced ourselves that we can’t live without them. Aside from our crucial and beloved devices, there are our household appliances/necessities—washers, dryers, microwaves, and other machines that we’ve come to rely on. And what about our lights? We need our overhead lights to see what we’re doing. The common factor of these necessities is electricity. We can’t get around it—electricity powers our lives. Electricity is good, right?

Well, too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. If there’s an upswing in the amount of electricity flooding into our homes, it can lead to a power surge. Basically, a power surge happens when the amount of voltage pouring into our devices or appliances surpasses the safe level for our home and overloads it with electricity. While not all power surges spell death for our devices, there’s a definite possibility that they will leave our electronics fried.

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A claim can be denied for a variety of reasons.

5 tips to keep your home insurance claim from being denied

Filing a home insurance claim can be daunting. The reason that you have home insurance in the first place is to help you replace things that have been destroyed by factors outside of your control. It protects you from losses. Getting the insurance and paying the premiums is easy. Filing a home insurance claim and getting it approved can sometimes feel like another story.

When you’re filing a home insurance claim, it’s important that you keep a few things in mind to make sure that you get the payments that you need to rebuild what you’ve lost. Just because you fill out the paperwork doesn’t mean that the money will magically appear in your bank account. The claim could get denied, which is something that you don’t want to happen. If your claim is denied, you’re kind of back where you started.

To make sure that your claim isn’t denied, make sure that you keep the following tips in mind when you’re working through the filing process.

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