Buying Auto Insurance that is Best for NJ Drivers

Driving in New Jersey is definitely not like hitting the open roads of Montana. For that reason, New Jersey drivers have unique needs for automobile insurance that takes into account the high traffic and population density of the area, while providing adequate protection for your investment in your vehicle.

New Jersey’s mandatory vehicle insurance requires all registered vehicles to have three different types of insurance:

  • Liability insurance to pay for damages if you are responsible due to an accident. (This does not include medical expense coverage.)
  • Personal injury protection (PIP) covers medical expenses for your injuries in an accident. This is sometimes called No Fault coverage because it pays you regardless of who caused the crash.
  • Uninsured motorist insurance covers you if you have an accident with someone who does not follow the law, and doesn’t have the insurance coverage mandated.

While New Jersey does require these liability insurance coverage limits, we feel that the mandatory limits are extremely low for today’s reality. The state requires coverage only in the amount of 15/30/5, which is one of the lowest of all the states in U.S. When you get into an accident in Chester, NJ is not the time you want to realize that you don’t have enough coverage to fix your car or pay your medical bills. With liability limits of only $15,000, it could leave you a large bill over and above what your insurance company will pay if you total someone’s brand new Mustang.

For these reasons, we suggest that you call The Insurance Outfit and discuss your vehicle, your driving habits, and your insurance needs. They’ll be glad to consult with you and offer their suggestions for coverage. Reach them today at 908-955-7561.

Why You Need To Explore Coverage Options On Your Home

It’s important to explore coverage options on your home in Chester NJ. This way, you know you have a better home insurance policy in place. Anything can happen, and you want to be prepared for it all.

What are You Covered Against?

Snow, rain, fire and more can happen when you live in Chester, NJ. While you hope nothing would ever actually take place, you just never know. If you take the time to explore your coverage options on insurance with the help of The Insurance Outfit, you can be sure you have the necessary coverage.

Fire, theft, and storms are covered. However, floods and hurricanes are not often included. This is when you need to look for the “added” coverage options that you have to cover at an additional cost. It’s often worth it to add these so you have the coverage for the “what if” scenarios.

Will a Claim Take Care of Everything?

You also need to look to see if a claim would take care of everything based on what you own and what your home has. Your policy might not have anything above and beyond standard valued items. If you have expensive artwork, collectibles, or anything else inside, be sure that you have the increased coverage on your policy. Otherwise, a claim might only pay for a fraction of what was damaged.

Claims don’t always take care of everything. If you have a pool, a shed, a detached garage, or any other pieces of property that are damaged, they need to be part of your policy. Otherwise, the insurance company won’t include them within the claim.

Contact one of our agents at The Insurance Outfit today to begin exploring coverage options. We will work to make sure your policy is inclusive of everything you need.

 

Do you need a car in Chester NJ?

If you live in NYC, chances are you don’t own a car. The same goes in some other cities, like San Francisco and the more urban, densely-populated parts of New Jersey. So what about Chester, NJ? Chester is a little more out of the way and a bit spread-out. Not totally rural, but hardly as dense as the heart of Brooklyn. So is it a driver’s town, or can you get by without a set of wheels of your own?

Here are two basic facts to consider:

  • Chester, NJ does have a transit system, but…
  • Chester isn’t the most walkable town

This means that it’s easy to take a bus for longer trips across town, but the walk once you get there might not always be easy. If your bus stop is a mile or farther away from your home, then you’re going to wind up spending a lot of time on foot.

If you do settle on buying a car of your own, The Insurance Outfit can help you to get a great deal on your coverage based on the simple fact that Chester is a relatively safe town for drivers. When an area is a little more rural, accidents are less likely to happen, so insurance costs are a little lower. That will be reflected when you shop for insurance through The Insurance Outfit.

Choosing whether or not to buy a car in Chester depends on your needs. If you work from home and only go grocery shopping once a week, maybe you can get by on the bus. Otherwise, having a car can be tremendously helpful.

What Kind of Home Insurance Can You Get?

Just like auto insurance, there are tons of different types of home insurance that you can purchase to protect your home. The agents with The Insurance Outfit in the Chester, NJ area can help you find the policy that is going to work best for you and your home.

There are of course basic policies that cover things like storm damage, theft and break in, and fire and these are going to be the best policies to start with. This type of policy is going to be the policy that every homeowner has before they start to add supplemental policies to cover other eventualities.

There are also specialty policies that can help protect against things like hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and more. These specialty policies are not included in basic insurance policies for one reason, they are not something that everyone has to worry about. Someone that does not live near water is likely not going to have to deal with flood, someone that does not live in an area near the coast is not going to have to worry about hurricanes, and so on.

You can add specialty policies to any basic policy for an added amount of money and your agent can help you determine what policies you need. You can also add more or less coverage dependent on how much the contents of your home are worth. If you have something like a very valuable collection of jewelry or guns you might want to take out a separate policy to cover them. These are all things that you should speak with your agent about when you start to take out your home policy.

In the Chester, NJ area, the agents with The Insurance Outfit can help you find the policy that is going to work for you every single time.

How to Use Auto Insurance to Your Advantage

Auto insurance isn’t like buying a new pair of shoes or spending the night in a luxury hotel room. People get excited about parting with their money for these reasons, while auto insurance may just seem like a nuisance. But if you look at the situation in the right light, you can see just as much of an advantage to having the right policy as you do when you find the perfect dress. The Insurance Outfit can help you fill in the gaps.

Adding Value to Your Life 

Like it or not, accidents happen in Chester, NJ no matter how careful you are. Auto insurance has nothing to do with how responsible you are as a driver. It’s about ensuring you’re not going to be buried under bills for the rest of your life just because you sneezed at an intersection and had your eyes closed for a split second. No one is immune to having something like this happen to them, so you need to think what it means that insurance is there for you when bad luck strikes.

 More Safeguards, Fewer Problems 

There is a temptation there for everyone who buys auto insurance to buy the absolute cheapest plan available. After all, who doesn’t want a low monthly payment so they can do what they like with the extra cash? The problem with this is that you may end up kicking yourself later on if you’re effected by an event that isn’t covered under your policy. The Insurance Outfit serves Chester, NJ, and we make it easy for you to see where the holes are in your coverage, so you can start closing the gaps and feeling much more confident on the road. Call for more information on what we can do for you.

Keeping Home Insurance Affordable: What to Consider

It’s not easy to buy property regardless of when you live, but the economy today has made it harder and harder for younger people to afford their land. If you are lucky enough to have a home, the insurance can feel like an unwanted expense that threatens your monthly cash flow. Here are some tips from the Insurance Outfit to keeping it affordable.

Discovering Your Priorities 

For some people, they care about the cars in the garage of their home in Chester, NJ. For others, it’s their expensive couch and flat-screen television. Some people only care about the cup of coffee in the breakfast nook or the vanity in their walk-in closet. Once you know what is most important to you, you can get to work regarding ensuring it’s protected against a variety of events. It can help keep home insurance affordable because you’re becoming more aware of what you can and can’t live without. Whether you choose to buy additional coverage on the belongings in your home or not is at least done with full knowledge of what the consequences will look like in the event of an emergency.

Choosing an Agency to Help

The right agency can remind you of scenarios you may not have thought of before, allowing you to see why home insurance is not only necessary but also downright reasonable. The monthly rates you pay now pale in comparison to the total cost you might face a liability lawsuit or debilitating storm that wipes out your entire property. If you live in Chester, NJ and need more information about quotes or policies, call The Insurance Outfit today for more information.

How To Prepare Your Chester Home For The Fall

Your home in Chester, New Jersey is where you spend a lot of your time. As the fall months approach and the weather gets colder, you want to be sure you are doing everything to prepare. Creating a checklist of what you can do will make it easier for you to get some things done.

Have the HVAC Inspected

You may not be using HVAC right now because the weather is cool, and you can keep your windows open. However, you are getting close to the time where you are going to be relying on the heat. To avoid any kind of problems, it’s best to have a technician come out and make sure that all systems are working.

Check the Roof

Your roof should be inspected on an annual basis, and the fall is a great time to do so. You want to make sure that there is no damage so that leaves and ultimately snow do not pose any major problems for your home.

Call a Chimney Sweep

It’s only a matter of time before you want to turn on your fireplace for the first time this year. Call a chimney sweep to make sure that all cleaned out so that you can avoid a fire in your home.

Go Through Your Home

You also want to take the time to go through your home to check for various things. This includes:

– Potential fire hazards
– Fire extinguishers
– Batteries in your smoke detectors

Fall is also the time when you should check your home insurance policy. Does it still have all the coverage you need? Have you added anything to your home that needs to be included in your policy?

Contact The Insurance Outfit today to find out more about homeowner’s insurance and how to protect your home.

 

 

What Factors Increase Your Home Insurance Premiums?

Home insurance is important to protect what may be your biggest investment.  When it comes to your home insurance premiums, you are probably aware that the location and size of your home will play a large part in how your home insurance premiums are determined. Here are some less known factors that can increase your home insurance premiums in the Chester, NJ area.

Premium Increasing Factors 

A couple of obvious items are having a swimming pool or a trampoline, both are great for family enjoyment in the backyard, but they will cause your home insurance premiums to be higher. If someone is injured, you may be held liable, even if you didn’t give permission for the use of the pool or trampoline.  If you keep your pool secured by fencing it off, have safety equipment within easy access, and put a net around the trampoline to reduce injuries, it may help decrease your insurance premiums.

A few less obvious items that can increase premiums are a wood burning stove, a lack of home security or fire safety, and the age of your roof materials.  If any of these factors are issues for you, there are things you can do to help reduce premium rates. For example, show evidence that a licensed contractor installed the stove and it meets safety codes. Install smoke detectors and easy access fire extinguishers. You can also install new locks, dead bolts, and a security system to help reduce rates.

The Insurance Outfit

If you own a home or plan to purchase a home in the Chester, NJ area and have concerns about your home insurance rates, contact a friendly agent from The Insurance Outfit. We can help you address any factors that may be increasing your home insurance premiums.

Practicing Better Home Safety in Chester

Home safety is hard for everyone, because it’s so easy to make a mistake in a place you’re comfortable in. You get complacent and assume that life will just swing along from day to day. It just takes one partially lit match or one open window to create a disaster though. Before you decide you don’t need a few tips, remember just how forgetful you get when you’re about to head to bed and are so tired you can’t see straight. The Insurance Outfit serves Chester, NJ and wants you to keep your house whole. 

Think Ahead 

This is the best tip for home safety, but also an obvious and an easy-to-miss one. This can be as simple as storing valuables in different places, such as the freezer or behind children’s books. Or you could set alarms for yourself when you’re cooking to ensure you turn off the oven and the burners. You can also think even further ahead and plant thorny bushes under your window to deter thieves. Use window stickers and bath mats to avoid accidents and injuries, and ensure young kids know not to touch dangerous appliances. You may want to consider getting a better alarm system too, or setting up a better incentive system for your children to practice home safety. 

Choose a Better Home Insurance Policy  

The Insurance Outfit in Chester, NJ has agents who can help you decide on a policy that will actively keep your home safe from the many elements that could threaten it on any given day. Call us today to learn more about how you can get the coverage that will save you the hassle of footing the bill. Skip the cut-throat insurance companies and instead pick a business you can trust with agents who understand. 

 

What Types of Auto Insurance Are There?

Auto insurance is as varied as the different makes and models of cars that it covers. For those that want to insure their car or are just curious about what different types of auto insurance there are, the helpful and skilled agents with The Insurance Outfit in the Chester, NJ can help.

Liability Coverage

The first type is liability coverage. This is going to be the minimum required by law. The monetary amount of coverage that is required may vary from locality to locality so you should talk to your agent about what is required. Liability is going to cover the cost of deductibles and some medical bills for both the driver and the person that is involved in the wreck.

Full Coverage

Full coverage is going to be required if you have a car that has a loan or lien out against the value to help protect the interest of the bank or lender. It is going to cover most medical bills and most of the fees and other bills that are associated with the wreck. It is also going to cover the cost of replacing or repairing the car.

Collectors or Antique Insurance

This is for collectors cars or those cars that are not necessarily daily drivers. It covers things like damage that occurs to the car, the cost of replacing or repairing with like parts, and so on. This is going to be necessary for those that have collector cars and is not necessary for those that just have normal cars.

No matter what type of car you own, insurance is something that everyone has to have if they intend to drive on the road. You should take the time to talk with the agents at The Insurance Outfit if you live in the Chester, NJ area to find out what coverage you need.