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Insurance for Dummies
Insurance For Dummies introduces readers to the basics — as well as the more complicated issues — of every kind of insurance. Packed with expert advice and step-by-step guidance, it shows you how to find the right amount of protection at the best possible price, for your life, health, car, home, and anything else you can think of. Thinking about insurance makes many people cringe with fear; this handy guide makes insurance make sense. It demystifies complicated policies and points out all the traps and pitfalls you need to avoid when buying coverage. Whether you’re a homeowner or a small business owner or you just need a basic policy for your car, you’ll find all the advice you need on: Author Jack Hungelmann uses his twenty-five years of experience in the insurance industry to make buying insurance as simple as possible — even for those who’ve never bought a policy in their lives. Armed with the kind of straightforward, commonsense knowledge and advice you’ll find here, you’ll be able to handle any insurance question that comes up. Keep it on your reference shelf for quick-and-easy answers for all your insurance-related questions: Knowing what kind of coverage you need for yourself and your possessions is a complicated process. With more competition than ever in the insurance business, finding a great deal on the coverage you need can be a challenge. Insurance For Dummies is the fun and friendly guide that gives you with all the essential knowledge it takes to get the maximum coverage at the minimum price.
- GenresBusinessPersonal Finance
384 pages, Paperback
First published February 5, 2001
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236 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 16, 2015
This is a very well-organized, detailed book that I can recommend with a couple of caveats.
I'll begin with a bit of background: I read this book because although I work in financial services I am (was?) woefully ignorant about insurance, a field intimately connected with finance. When I initially searched for a guide to insurance for lay-people I was frustrated because there simply wasn't much out there. Most of what I saw on the internet was plainly biased or self-serving ("State Farm wants to educate me on the benefits of long-term disability insurance? You don't say?"). Against that background, I have to give kudos to Jack Hungelmann for writing this book. I can only imagine how difficult it was to put it together. It is a worthy book; probably the only book on the market today that is suitable to the task of educating someone about insurance. However, I do take issue with some parts of it.
Insurance for Dummies does a number of things well. It is organized, well-structured and lucid. While there is a good deal of jargon and highfalutin words, Hungelmann navigates the choppy waters of such topics as whole and universal life insurance policies with aplomb. It is also comprehensive, covering insurance for home, auto, health and life as well as umbrella policies and long-term care insurance. Frankly, I only vaguely understood what most of those words meant before reading this book, but now I feel armed with excellent talking points for when I get in front of an insurance agent.
Reading this book reminded me of a bit of advice my father gave me not long after my first car ran into some trouble: It pays to know the names of the various parts of your car and what they do, not only so that you feel more empowered, but also because when you speak to your mechanic with the right vocabulary you'll instantly get a lot more respect and better service. The same advice applies to any situation in life where there is inherent asymmetry of information, whether you're talking to a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic or a financial planner. With this book, I now know what to ask an insurance agent to quickly discern whether I'm speaking to a shyster salesman in disguise and I feel like I can have an adult conversation with someone without feeling defensive or inadequate.
Mission accomplished, right? I mean, it's a "For Dummies" book so you go in to it with the expectation that it be didactic. I do have a couple of qualms, though.
First, the arguments Hungelmann makes for having certain types of insurance were unconvincing, relying on well-worn insurance salesman tropes about uncertainty. The discussion of life insurance was loaded with coded language about "love" and "provision", for example. Similarly, the discussion of "risk" and "uncertainty" throughout was laced with a healthy dose of sophistry. I recall in the section on long-term disability that Hungelmann quotes (without citation) a statistic that said something like 1 in 7 people would fall victim to long-term disability at some point in their life. I feel like he needs to back that up.
Lastly, given how interrelated investments and insurance are I was disheartened by the utter lack of comparative discussion between insurance products and different kinds of investment strategies that could accomplish the same tasks with less complexity and cost. I give credit to Hungelmann that he does discuss alternative ways to deal with risk aside from insurance, but when we got to the discussion of whole life insurance, he kept throwing around phrases like, "guaranteed return" and talked about getting "guaranteed" 4% returns like it was some kind of gift. The obvious question would be, "Why don't I just buy treasuries?" Whenever I hear someone talk about guaranteed return from an insurance company I always want to ask, "what happens if the insurance company goes bankrupt?"
There is zero discussion about the need for a fiduciary standard. If an insurance agent sells you a bum policy and you end up with a massive out-of-pocket loss, you likely have no recourse. If I were to do the same in my industry, I'd lose my ability to sell financial products and probably be banned from working in finance. No mention of that either.
In the end, I'm probably asking too much from this book. It was meant as a how-to, not a treatise on the philosophy of insurance. This is a great book for what it is. It hits all the high notes and arms you for a discussion with an insurance agent. I just wish it was, intellectually, a little more honest.
I'll begin with a bit of background: I read this book because although I work in financial services I am (was?) woefully ignorant about insurance, a field intimately connected with finance. When I initially searched for a guide to insurance for lay-people I was frustrated because there simply wasn't much out there. Most of what I saw on the internet was plainly biased or self-serving ("State Farm wants to educate me on the benefits of long-term disability insurance? You don't say?"). Against that background, I have to give kudos to Jack Hungelmann for writing this book. I can only imagine how difficult it was to put it together. It is a worthy book; probably the only book on the market today that is suitable to the task of educating someone about insurance. However, I do take issue with some parts of it.
Insurance for Dummies does a number of things well. It is organized, well-structured and lucid. While there is a good deal of jargon and highfalutin words, Hungelmann navigates the choppy waters of such topics as whole and universal life insurance policies with aplomb. It is also comprehensive, covering insurance for home, auto, health and life as well as umbrella policies and long-term care insurance. Frankly, I only vaguely understood what most of those words meant before reading this book, but now I feel armed with excellent talking points for when I get in front of an insurance agent.
Reading this book reminded me of a bit of advice my father gave me not long after my first car ran into some trouble: It pays to know the names of the various parts of your car and what they do, not only so that you feel more empowered, but also because when you speak to your mechanic with the right vocabulary you'll instantly get a lot more respect and better service. The same advice applies to any situation in life where there is inherent asymmetry of information, whether you're talking to a doctor, a lawyer, a mechanic or a financial planner. With this book, I now know what to ask an insurance agent to quickly discern whether I'm speaking to a shyster salesman in disguise and I feel like I can have an adult conversation with someone without feeling defensive or inadequate.
Mission accomplished, right? I mean, it's a "For Dummies" book so you go in to it with the expectation that it be didactic. I do have a couple of qualms, though.
First, the arguments Hungelmann makes for having certain types of insurance were unconvincing, relying on well-worn insurance salesman tropes about uncertainty. The discussion of life insurance was loaded with coded language about "love" and "provision", for example. Similarly, the discussion of "risk" and "uncertainty" throughout was laced with a healthy dose of sophistry. I recall in the section on long-term disability that Hungelmann quotes (without citation) a statistic that said something like 1 in 7 people would fall victim to long-term disability at some point in their life. I feel like he needs to back that up.
Lastly, given how interrelated investments and insurance are I was disheartened by the utter lack of comparative discussion between insurance products and different kinds of investment strategies that could accomplish the same tasks with less complexity and cost. I give credit to Hungelmann that he does discuss alternative ways to deal with risk aside from insurance, but when we got to the discussion of whole life insurance, he kept throwing around phrases like, "guaranteed return" and talked about getting "guaranteed" 4% returns like it was some kind of gift. The obvious question would be, "Why don't I just buy treasuries?" Whenever I hear someone talk about guaranteed return from an insurance company I always want to ask, "what happens if the insurance company goes bankrupt?"
There is zero discussion about the need for a fiduciary standard. If an insurance agent sells you a bum policy and you end up with a massive out-of-pocket loss, you likely have no recourse. If I were to do the same in my industry, I'd lose my ability to sell financial products and probably be banned from working in finance. No mention of that either.
In the end, I'm probably asking too much from this book. It was meant as a how-to, not a treatise on the philosophy of insurance. This is a great book for what it is. It hits all the high notes and arms you for a discussion with an insurance agent. I just wish it was, intellectually, a little more honest.
September 19, 2018
Thorough and well-written
Information is organized nicely and covers all topics most people need to ubderstand. Easy to read and very highly recommended!
Information is organized nicely and covers all topics most people need to ubderstand. Easy to read and very highly recommended!
April 6, 2020
Not an entertaining read, but super helpful and detailed and easy to follow.
March 5, 2017
If you want to understand Car Insurance and the like you need to read this book. I went from crappy insurance to great insurance with confidence with this book. Very essential if you want to dissect your policies without getting too complicated. Very Good.
January 8, 2018
This book is a MUST-READ. Jack Hungelmann goes through all the various forms of insurance that adults are likely to need at any point in their lives and details - really details - what is necessary, what isn't, how to choose the right plan and amount of coverage, and what methods you can use to reduce your need for insurance or self-insure.
Each section - cars and other things you drive, home (be it owned or rented), home business, umbrella policies, life, health, long-term care and disability - defines all the terms you'll need to know and makes recommendations as to what might be appropriate for a general situation. There are also tips for getting the best results when you need to file a claim.
After reading this book cover to cover, I took it out into the real world. I found several insurance agents (using the guidance given in the book for doing so) and contacted them asking for a review of my personal insurance situation and recommendations on where it could be improved. I went into the conversations with a list of questions that had been raised by the text, and every single agent I spoke was surprised by what I wanted to know. All of them said no one had ever asked these questions before. No one had ever asked to read the policy contract before signing it! No one had ever asked about the exclusions in their homeowner's policy! No one had asked whether sump pump failure was covered in the event of a power outage!
Of course, I wouldn't have thought to ask these questions before reading this book, either - but I'm really glad I did. The answers I got allowed me to make an educated decision on what's the right policy for my family - and I am paying less than I would have paid otherwise, not more. When I started reading Insurance for Dummies, I found myself getting nervous about all the things that could go wrong (especially when I realized how underinsured we were before) but now I'm confident that I can make the right decisions without being overwhelmed, feeling dumb, or not asking the right questions.
This is all starting to sound like a commercial, I know. But really - no one teaches this stuff. We buy car insurance or homeowners insurance because we have to have it, and we don't like the process so we pick out whatever's cheapest and don't think too much about it. But a few hours of reading this book (which is also packed with really interesting anecdotes, by the way) has totally changed the way I think about insurance and my ability to deal with it. This should be required reading for every adult.
Each section - cars and other things you drive, home (be it owned or rented), home business, umbrella policies, life, health, long-term care and disability - defines all the terms you'll need to know and makes recommendations as to what might be appropriate for a general situation. There are also tips for getting the best results when you need to file a claim.
After reading this book cover to cover, I took it out into the real world. I found several insurance agents (using the guidance given in the book for doing so) and contacted them asking for a review of my personal insurance situation and recommendations on where it could be improved. I went into the conversations with a list of questions that had been raised by the text, and every single agent I spoke was surprised by what I wanted to know. All of them said no one had ever asked these questions before. No one had ever asked to read the policy contract before signing it! No one had ever asked about the exclusions in their homeowner's policy! No one had asked whether sump pump failure was covered in the event of a power outage!
Of course, I wouldn't have thought to ask these questions before reading this book, either - but I'm really glad I did. The answers I got allowed me to make an educated decision on what's the right policy for my family - and I am paying less than I would have paid otherwise, not more. When I started reading Insurance for Dummies, I found myself getting nervous about all the things that could go wrong (especially when I realized how underinsured we were before) but now I'm confident that I can make the right decisions without being overwhelmed, feeling dumb, or not asking the right questions.
This is all starting to sound like a commercial, I know. But really - no one teaches this stuff. We buy car insurance or homeowners insurance because we have to have it, and we don't like the process so we pick out whatever's cheapest and don't think too much about it. But a few hours of reading this book (which is also packed with really interesting anecdotes, by the way) has totally changed the way I think about insurance and my ability to deal with it. This should be required reading for every adult.
May 12, 2012
a great reference and a useful guide everyone should take a look at. lots of solid advise given throughout and explained in a way anyone can understand.
January 2, 2012
Priceless advice, clear and accessible as the subject can be. I only read the health insurance sections so far, but will read the rest as needed. Recommended.
January 21, 2017
I love this book
Want to read
July 16, 2017.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews