How to keep your pets safe during a disaster

Your four-legged friends are members of your family. Your cat or dog is your buddy, your companion. They’ve snuggled their way into your heart, and the thought of something happening to them during a disaster is devastating. Your pet relies on you to take care of them and to provide for them, and this is even truer during a disaster or if you have to evacuate your home.

To help you keep your pets safe, we’ve put together some tips to follow if you ever have to weather a natural disaster or another emergency with your pet.

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Tips for preparing your family’s disaster kit

No one wants to think about what would happen if a disaster or hurricane were to hit their home, but being prepared is everything. To help your family get through a disaster, there are a few things you need to do, including preparing an evacuation plan and packing up a disaster kit. If you’re wondering where to start when preparing your disaster kit, we’ve got some things for you to keep in mind as you assemble it.

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How you can take a home inventory using GoogleDrive

Recently we talked about why home inventories are vital when it comes to home insurance. Creating a home inventory helps you ensure that you have enough coverage for your home, and it makes filing a claim for fire or burglary much easier. Making a list of all of the belongings in each room of your house might sound tedious, but we’ve got a suggestion for a more tech-friendly way of conducting your home inventory.

If you’re familiar with GoogleDrive, you know that it’s an online file storage system that you can access from any internet-connected device. Anything you create or type into a Google document (simply called a GoogleDoc) within Drive is saved, and it’s a way to avoid keeping your all-important and all-inclusive inventory in your home where it could be destroyed.

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The ultimate guide to getting the best (and cheapest) home insurance

Have you ever been completely baffled when it comes to home insurance? Does it make your brain hurt a little? Do you kind of cringe inside when you think about it? Don’t worry. You’re not alone. It gets complicated, and that makes a lot of us want to shove it out of our minds so we don’t have to deal withf it.

But we’re here to help decode the strange language that is homeowners insurance. By the end of reading this article you’ll be fluent. We’ve sectioned this guide into four basic categories to help you with getting not only the best, but also the cheapest homeowners insurance in your state.

We’ve broken this article into four sections that each tackle a home insurance mystery.

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Why is a home inventory important for your home insurance?

Okay, we get it. Taking a home inventory is hardly an exciting way to spend a weekend. Walking around, writing things down on a clipboard…yeah, maybe not the most fun thing to do on a Saturday. But it is very important when it comes to your insurance. A home inventory is basically a list of all the items in your house. No one wants or asks for their home to be destroyed, but if the unthinkable happens and a fire or burglary strikes your house, you’ll be better off if you have a detailed list of everything you own.

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Preventing Freezing Pipes

Preventing Frozen Pipes

The need to prevent the pipes in your home from freezing has more to do with the aftermath than the actual freezing of the water in the pipes. We’ve compiled some great tips below to help you to avoid not only the mess and damage of pipe-related issues, but also the expensive issues that follow.

Why are frozen pipes a problem?

Let’s start with the science of water. What happens when you combine water and freezing temperatures? Water freezes. But, water also expands as it freezes. In the case of the pipes in your home, freezing temperatures force the existing water to expand, even if it means breaking the pipe. Regardless of the strength of the pipe or container, you can’t beat science.

When you’re looking around your own home to diagnose which areas are susceptible to frozen pipes, notice the locations exposed to the cold, like outdoor lines, sprinkler lines, unheated areas inside the home, like garages, basements, crawl spaces, kitchen cabinets & attics.

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Is you home covered from termite damage with a homeowners insurance policy?

Are termites covered in my homeowners policy?

If you found this article, then chances are you’re looking to know whether or not termite damage is covered by your homeowner’s policy.

Did you know that a silent destructive force could be slowly taking your home apart bit by bit? It sounds like the making of a bad science fiction movie, right? In reality, we are talking about termites.

Here’s a not-so-fun fact: Did you know that every year, termites are responsible for $1-2 billion in property damage in the United States?

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Learn from the tragedy that hit in Louisiana and protect your home with flood insurance

Learn these lessons from Louisiana homeowners without flood insurance

Sample Scenario: The home you bought because of the location and because it wasn’t in a high-risk flood zone, is suddenly deluged with 5+ feet of water. What would you do?

That is exactly what happened to homeowners and renters in Baton Rouge, Louisiana earlier this year. Homeowners were left scratching their heads on how this could happen. Apparently, Mother Nature doesn’t recognize “low and moderate flood risk” zones that realtors & insurance companies use.

For those of our readers in hurricane-prone areas like South Carolina, North Carolina or Texas, read closely.

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Texas Storms Increase Home Insurance

2016 North Texas Storms Raise Homeowners Rates

Hold onto your hats – Your home insurance rates will likely be going up after a year of destructive North Texas storms.

Before you think you are safe because you haven’t made a claim in the last year… STOP! You can still expect a phone call any day or a letter in your mailbox.

That is right. Even though your home wasn’t impacted by a tornado or hail storm this year, your rates will be increasing.

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Credit Score Insurance

What does my credit score have to do with my home insurance?

You might be wondering what your credit score has to do with your home insurance premiums.

You call for a home insurance quote and your agent tells you they need your social security number to pull a credit check on you. Why? Believe it or not, all insurance companies perform credit checks now.

You may be asking, why should I have to give up my social security number? What is the connection?

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