John Tooley

Answers on this vary from state to state, but if you are in Oklahoma the answer is yes. There is usually a base rate, then discounts applied on a sliding scale for the increased financial responsibility. I have been asked what the corrolation is. While I am not the spokesperson for the process, it seems to be based on the thought that the more risk you are willing to take with your money, the more risk you are willing take with your other property. Here is the upside to this.. you have an opportunity to really reduce your rates. A few years back my wife would apply for any credit card offers just to save on the counter purchase. What she didn't realize was how it was impacting our credit... which impacts everything from home loans to home insurance rates. Well, after a bad experience with a credit card she stopped this practice. By doing that alone my overall rates were reduced 10-20%. Amazing. Another client, I brought them on with a huge savings over their prior carrier, then when reviewing again this year we dropped another 10%. What a great conversation it was to call them and tell them that their rates went DOWN this year.

So when you have a client that has just cleaned up their credit history.. add value to their relationship with you. Have them check for a positive impact on their rates.

I often get asked the difference between replacement cost for insurance and the market value for a home being resold. Since I know this is a question/concern out there I thought that I would write about it. Replacement cost is the cost it is estimated to take to put that house back with like quality features in today's market. Usually this will be a higher value than resale. I will list a couple of reasons for this. Scenario 1) You are selling a home that is a great deal for someone, but needs a little updating. The updating requirements are going to push the market value of the home down. But from an insurance perspective if you have to rebuild that home, the same quality sinks, carpet, paint, roof, etc... have to go back into the building process. These items will be bought at today's prices and today's like quality, not a discounted price because tastes have changed over the years. Scenario 2) You are selling a new tract home in a new neighborhood. The rebuild cost will often come in higher because you are looking at replacing that home without the benefits gained from mass production.

In summary, the goal of the policy is to be there for the insured with the amount of money needed to put them back in like kind and quality of home.

I have had many people ask me how I ever went from a getting a degree in physics to becoming an insurance agent. The answer is simple. I made my decisions the same way for the past 11 years and they are all focused on one thing.... family.

Right out of college and newly married my wife and I headed for a high tech job in Richardson, Tx in the telecom industry. We loved the area, but later began to realize that it was not where we wanted to raise children. Mergers upon mergers followed opening the doors to move back to Oklahoma and beyond if we desired, but we decided to call Owasso home. As time ticked on we weathered layoffs, callbacks, company changes, job description changes... the works. But one day I started to realize what my kids saw, and I did not like it very much. They saw their dad going to work in the morning, making it home just about bedtime, being paged away from family gatherings and such, but had no idea about what "work" meant. I wasn't teaching them to work, I was teaching them to expect me to be gone all the time. As I pondered this one day I was impressed that it was time to change. Time to change to a business that I could teach the kids life skills with. Time to change to a business that I could offer them an opportunity in later. Time to go.

So long story short, here we are, and I really couldn't ask for a better job. I get to help people daily, and get paid to do it. The kids are free to come to my office when needed and now I can teach them my trade. I love it! I hope that you love your job as much.

In the real estate business I am sure that you will get some of these calls. They go like this "We had a storm last night and I had a spot show up on my ceiling. Should I get an adjuster out from my insurance company?" The thing I want my customers to know going into the process is that their insurance is fully behind them and to understand the process so that they will be completely satisfied with the result. If an adjuster comes out prematurely they may agree that there is a spot, they may be able to give them an idea of what it would cost to fix the spot, but the paths may part there because the adjuster is looking for signs that physical damage that caused the spot. If the spot was caused because of a general maintenance issue the customer is now frustrated and may believe the adjuster is just trying to beat them out a settlement.

I encourage my customers to talk to the repairman of their choice first to get an idea of what is happening to their house (if it is not obvious). This does two things: 1) The customer is educated before they ever enter into a discussion for any settlement, leaving them feeling like they have more control, 2) The customer is hearing from someone that they feel does not have a vested interest in steering them in one direction.

The goal in the end is a thoroughly satisfied customer. Good luck out there today!

You know, for every popular swing in opinion there is a marketing bonanza that just brings in floods of people dying to use it to pry dollars out of your hands. But not all actually fall into lock step with the actual initial intent of the message.

Before you start getting ideas to the contrary, I probably grew up in a greener home than most of the voices of the green movement today, but we didn't call it being green, we called it waste not, want not. I remember the long profitless and thankless days and evenings spent with my father tearing down an old house to salvage the lumber. This wasn't a business for him, but the home was going to be demolished and was full of hardwood building materials. So, we settled with the owner to tear it down for the lumber in it. It was hard work, but for a couple of years after that people would stop in occasionally needing hardwood, or better quality wood than they could buy on the current market, and dad would oblige. I remember learning to use a reel mower because "it was so pointless to run the gasoline powered mower". But you know, when we did that we were the odd ducks that "just must not be able to afford a better lifestyle" in the eyes of onlookers.

Having said all this I will get to the point. When someone wants to sell me a lightbulb that will save the earth, is anyone looking at the consequences of the manufacturing process? What about the mercury gas in that bulb. Sure, sure the label says dispose of properly, but what is properly, and how many people are doing that? My education is in Physics, and I get excited about making the most benefit out of the least amount energy usage, but I am starting to have some questions. For instance, what are the consequences of creating the solar panels? Will more energy ever come out of them than has been used making them? Those high tech materials take a lot of processing to create. Are we taking this into account when looking at the benefits? The problems always faced with electric cars has been portability. Put the electricity into lead batteries and you have a lot of weight (not from the electricity)..... and lead. So now we have new capabilities with batteries, but these are not easy on the enviroment. They take increased mining and more intrusive smelting processes.

In conclusion, I say the following. We have to start somewhere, and we have to change. But WE determine the market place, and consequently have to do our homework. A 30 second advertisement may have a conflict of interest when it comes to fully informing us of what is the best for the world. Going green may not always be glamorous but it can be done, often times with less expense than we are investing now.