Traderelic

Archive for January, 2012

Auto insurance is mandatory for anyone driving a vehicle in the US and there’s no way going around it. No matter whether it’s your first car or you’ve already retired and have decades of experience behind the wheel you will still need auto insurance for your car since the law tells so. Besides the legal framework of auto insurance there’s also simple common sense involved in its mandatory nature. Auto insurance covers your costs in case of an accidents, which can be substantial assuming current repair and medical bills. Having your car insured is cheaper in terms of such costs than driving around without insurance. However, for a particular group of drivers this benefit may seem not to be that obvious.

We are talking about students and teens in general. This group of drivers usually faces the highest auto insurance rates possible simply because of their age. But before you claim that it’s discriminatory, let’s consider the logic behind such a decision taken by all insurance companies at once. As you know, insurance companies are all about managing their risks and the only way they can hedge their risks is putting rates that will cover their costs and earn them income. So if teen drivers are charged with higher rates they somehow seem to pose a higher risk to insurers. And according to statistics that’s exactly how things are. Drivers aged under 25 usually have little driving experience and produce more accidents with higher costs than drivers of other age groups. Of course, this doesn’t mean that all young drivers are bad drivers, but the overall tendency is exactly as described and that’s the situation where one good driver will pay for the rest of worse drivers.

So how can you deal with the situation being a student in high school or in college and having to pay rates that can be twice as higher as your parents pay for the same amount of auto insurance coverage? There are several solutions that can be combined for a better effect and if applied correctly they can reduce your rates considerably.

First of all, talk to your parents about being included to their insurance policy as a written driver if you live with them. This will raise their premiums a bit but it will still be cheaper than having a separate policy. Note that if you don’t file any claims this doesn’t reflect in your premiums as you will have to carry a separate policy in order to accumulate a no-claims discount.

Another tip is buying a cheaper car. Of course, you will always want to drive a Mercedes or BMW because it will impress your peers but such cars will always give a headache in terms of auto insurance. So it’s better to start off with something simple, cheap and even used until you accumulate enough driving experience and make your share of hits and scratches that won’t reflect much in your insurance costs.

And if you’ve ever considered becoming a good student now there’s an additional reasons for doing so. Most insurance companies offer a discount to students whose average is B and higher. This will require you to provide a copy of your grade report on a periodic basis but the discount is definitely worth it.

Using a cell phone while driving can drive up cheap car insurance costs in two different ways. First, any involvement in an accident will inflate premiums. Secondly, a traffic violation will similarly increase premiums. It’s important to understand the different kinds of bans that are out there so you can be a safe driver and a safe cell phone user.

Handheld Bans

A handheld ban means that driving while talking on the phone is allowed, as long as the driver is using a hands-free device such as Bluetooth or speakerphone. States which have total handheld bans for all drivers include:

• California
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Maryland
• Nevada
• New Jersey
• New York
• Oregon
• Washington D.C.

Other states ban handheld cell phone use only for minor or novice drivers, or under specific circumstances. These states include:

• Arkansas (banned for drivers age 18-20 only)
• Hawaii (banned in some counties only)
• Illinois (banned in school zones and construction zones only)
• Louisiana (banned for those with learning licenses)
• New Mexico (banned for use in state vehicles only)
• Oklahoma (banned for those with learning licenses)

All Cell Phone Ban

This ban is in effect for some states which allow no phone use of any kind, including utilizing a hands-free device, although there are not any states which completely ban all cell phone use for all drivers. States which enforce an all cell phone ban for school bus drivers and/or minors under 18 and novice or learning drivers include:

• Alaska
• Arizona
• Arkansas
• California
• Colorado
• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Georgia
• Illinois
• Indiana
• Iowa
• Kentucky
• Louisiana
• Maine
• Maryland
• Massachusetts
• Michigan
• Minnesota
• Mississippi
• Nebraska
• New Jersey
• New Mexico
• North Carolina
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• Oregon
• Rhode Island
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Vermont
• Virginia
• Washington
• West Virginia
• Washington DC

Text Messaging Ban

The majority of states have laws banning any text messaging while driving. Of the 35 states which make texting while driving illegal, 32 of them list texting as a primary offense. This means the driver can be pulled over and cited for texting while driving even if they’re doing nothing else wrong. Only seven states have no provision regarding texting while driving:

• Arizona
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Idaho
• Montana
• Ohio
• South Dakota

It’s easy to see how important it is to stay safe on the roads while using a cell phone, in order to keep yourself and other drivers safe, and also hang onto your cheap car insurance.

The pharmaceutical industry has a mixed view of generics and this shows up in the way drugs are marketed. Every manufacturer wants to promote the sales of its big-selling branded drugs. Once the research and development costs have been recovered, they are very high-profit products either until the end of the patent period or until the other manufacturers independently recreate the chemistry and patent their own versions. To protect the home market during the term of the patent, manufacturers therefore push the message the branded drugs are the trusted, reliable drugs. The generics are cheap copies which may be fake because they come from foreign manufacturers, or may be understrength or contaminated because of poor manufacturing standards. This is scare tactics designed to deter you from logging on to the internet and buying “cheap” drugs from international pharmacies. The manufacturers want you paying top dollar and keeping their profit margins high. But the patents run out and, whether the manufacturers want it or not, the generics appear and drive down the price of the affected drugs. This is finally good news for all those who have been buying at their local drugstores.

At this point, the manufacturers sing a slightly different tune. They must suddenly be reassuring. You will be relieved to know the FDA must approve a generic before it can be sold on to the US market. That ensures you are protected. There is still the risk of the foreign manufacturers – those unscrupulous people who have been trying to take all your money by selling at prices way lower than the US manufacturers. Anything foreign is dangerous and you will risk your own health or the health of your loved ones if you buy through an international pharmacy. This is, of course, all propaganda designed to protect the home markets. The international pharmacies sell to countries all round the world. If they were selling fake or dangerous drugs, the word would spread like wildfire and they would quickly go out of business. Yet the same pharmacies have been in business for years.

Now that we have everything clear, let us get to the news. A US manufacturer has spent the money to get FDA approval for Tramadol Hydrochloride Extended Release tablets. This is a generic version of Ultram ER for those of you who like the better known brad name. The trademark is held by Valeant and this deal allows the intellectual property rights holder to continue the revenue stream, adding a slice of the generic revenue to its revenue from the continuing sales of the branded version. This way the US manufacturers keep more of the money in their hands. If foreign manufacturers were allowed to sell directly into the US, it would dramatically affect the local profits.

Why should you seriously consider using the generic extended version? There are two answers. First, even though you are buying from a local manufacturer, you will save money as against the branded version. Second, Ultram ER is excellent if you have a long-term pain problem. For example, those who suffer arthritis often feel stiff when they wake in the morning. The extended version version leaves more active painkiller in the bloodstream for long and makes it easier to get up in the morning.

The recession may have finished as a matter of technical accounting, but the general economic conditions for business remain very difficult. Whether you are a start-up or continue as a small business owner, there’s a temptation to cut the business overheads to the bone. This can be a false economy. Let’s start with a little law. If you are trading as an individual or a partnership, you are personally liable on all the contracts you make and for any losses arising due to your negligence (or criminal activity). Although there are slight variations in the law from state-to-state, the general rule about an LLC is that you are personally liable in tort and for any crimes you may commit, but there’s a shield to prevent you from incurring liability in contract. The general rule for a full corporation is you avoid personal liability under both contract and tort, although you can still be sued if members of the company believe you have breached your fiduciary duties as a director or senior officer. The other piece of law you need to know is that either you or the company will be held vicariously liable for whatever an employee does during the course of the employment. So if an employee is driving a vehicle owned by the business or driving his or her own vehicle on company business, either you or the company will be liable if the employee drives negligently and causes loss to a third party.

Many people believe it will be enough to rely on a Business Owners Policy (BOP). Indeed, many insurers and their agents sell these policies as a one-stop insurance solution. Sadly, this is a dangerous assumption. In particular, many BOPs limit or exclude losses caused when vehicles are damaged or damage third parties or their property. This is something you should discuss with your insurance advisor. For example, although the business owner may find some third party losses covered when he or she is driving, vicarious liability is almost always excluded. This means you could find yourself personally liable for both the medical expenses of anyone injured and all the consequential losses arising from the accident. Worse, if you or an employee was driving a vehicle owned by the business, BOPs decline cover for repair or replacement if the vehicle if damaged. The same applies if the vehicle is stolen or vandalized. You will only be able to recover these losses if you have a commercial auto insurance policy in place. It gets worse because, even if the employee is driving his or her own vehicle, it’s at your risk. Similarly, BOPs usually exclude cover if you rent a vehicle for your own or an employee’s use.

To protect yourself or the general financial health of your company, you either need to go through the BOP and agree endorsements with the insurer to cover all the obvious areas of risk, or you should buy a full commercial car insurance policy covering third party, comprehensive and hired vehicle losses. It’s a false economy to rely on a BOP when even a small claim may be the difference between continuing in business and bankruptcy. Buying cheap car insurance should not be an option in these difficult economic times.

We all use auto insurance to secure our vehicle no matter whether we want it or no. Auto insurance is mandatory and there’s no way going around this fact unless you’re bold enough to go against the law and risk driving without insurance. There are many things that will affect the cost of your insurance most of the factors dealing with the car and its characteristics, while some of the factors can also use your personal data to determine how good of a driver you are. Yes, by knowing your place of residence, age, sex, marital status and education the insurance company can tell how it is likely for you to have a traffic accident. They all have enormous bodies of statistical data on their hands and they know what they’re saying. However, some factors may seem odd and even bizarre to be used for determining your auto insurance rates and credit rating is definitely one of them.

If it comes as a surprise to you, yes, insurance companies use the customer’s credit rating when calculating their rates. Not all of them, but a large part definitely do. And they don’t have to tell you about it. If you’re furious and think that they are breaching your privacy the law is definitely on their side since state legislation allows the insurance companies to use such data without disclosing it to third parties. So, instead of raging about the fact let’s look into the logic of it. Why would the insurance company want to use your credit rating to determine auto insurance costs, how’s this connected? There is a connection and you wouldn’t see it coming unless you’ve had such an enormous pool of information as a typical insurance company.

It was observed that the number of claims filed by the customer is statistically linked to his or her credit score. The better is the rating the less likely it is for this particular customer to end up in an accident and file an insurance claim. And respectively, the lower is the score the more likely it is for the driver to require coverage. So the insurance companies decided to use this relation when calculating their rates because they will use just any piece of information in order to determine their risks and manage them through auto insurance rates. It seems that if a person is responsible in what concerns their finances they are also responsible and cautious on the road. At least this explanation seems to sound logic just to explain the relation between auto insurance claim risks and credit scores.

Now, what if your credit rating is not as good as it could be? Your auto insurance rates will be higher than the average and that’s definitely not what you want these days. The most logic solution would be finding an insurance company that doesn’t use credit rating when determining their rates. They are less than those that do, but they are still around to make a presence. Another solution, more demanding yet more effective, would be improving your credit rating. Hire a financial consultant to review your credit report and determine the strategy for improving your score. This solution will have more benefits than just auto insurance cost optimization, since it will be much easier and cheaper for you to take loans and credits with a better credit score.