Podcast Episode - Are You Protected?

Listen to Podcast Episode:

How protected are you from natural disasters?

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Podcast Transcript:

00:00:33

Suze: October 2, 2022. Welcome everybody to the Women & Money podcast, as well as everybody smart enough to listen.

00:00:43

Suze: Okay before I begin Suze School today, I just want to remind everybody, you have only five days left till October seventh. Doesn’t time pass fast? Only five days left for you to be able to open up

00:01:02

Suze: what I call the do-good account with Alliant Credit Union. All of you should go to myalliant, A-L-L-I-A-N-T, .com/good.

00:01:17

Suze: And if you open up a checking account with Alliant, all you have to do is deposit $100 right then and right there,

00:01:27

Suze: and then every single month till the end of February which is right around the corner, just do an electronic transfer. It can be for $5 into that account, then if you do that by the end of February 2023, you will get $100 in your account from Alliant.

00:01:54

Suze: Alliant will also give one of three charities that you can choose from

00:02:00

Suze: to donate $100 as well. So that's why I call it the do-good account. There's absolutely no reason you wouldn't want to do that. At the end, hey you want to take out all your money, whatever you want to do. It's free for you. So check that out.

00:02:17

Suze: All right. Suze School today. Topic is, are you protected? You know, I think it was on September 25^th, I did a podcast, and I named it When it Happens, How Will You React? And I was talking about money at that time. Today, I'm talking about your life.

00:02:44

Suze: It is no secret. It has been all over the news, that Hurricane Ian did more destruction in the United States, obviously in Florida, South Carolina, maybe you were affected, maybe you were not.

00:03:00

Suze: But it did more destruction than maybe any hurricane out there.

00:03:06

Suze: But what was so sad for me about it, was that as the hurricane was coming,

00:03:15

Suze: all the forecasters were convinced that it was absolutely going to hit Tampa.

00:03:22

Suze: And everybody, all my friends that live in Tampa and I contacted them, they were absolutely evacuating, they were scared to death, they were preparing themselves.

00:03:36

Suze: And then, all of a sudden,

00:03:39

Suze: hurricane Ian took a turn.

00:03:42

Suze: It really didn't hit Tampa that bad to tell you the truth. It took a turn to the right sooner than later,

00:03:51

Suze: and it affected Orlando, and Fort Myers, and Sanibel Island, and on and on.

00:03:59

Suze: Why that was so sad is that I have many friends that have parents in Sarasota,

00:04:10

Suze: and they were elderly.

00:04:12

Suze: And they really hadn't planned to evacuate, because all the news was about how it was going to hit Tampa. And you know when you're older, and I remember this happening with my mother, when she was still alive and she was 90, and then 95, and 96, and hurricanes would come.

00:04:33

Suze: She would have to leave her place where she lived. Obviously, it was an independent living facility, and also had an assistant care facility in it. But they had to leave. And it was like, where did my mom go? Where could she go? And they would put everybody on a bus, and they would take them to some hotel further in.

00:04:56

Suze: But that didn't necessarily keep them safe and sound. One year I remember she and my aunt and uncle drove all the way to Orlando where my nephew lived, and they all went there to be safe and sound. But it was eight or nine hours in the car. That really took its toll on them. So after that, when a hurricane was starting to come,

00:05:24

Suze: they didn't want to leave. Because it was almost too much for them.

00:05:29

Suze: And so there they are, you're older, you're not really planning to leave, and then all of a sudden the hurricane changes direction.

00:05:41

Suze: And now they are given 24 hours to leave.

00:05:47

Suze: Where do you go?

00:05:49

Suze: You're in your 90s, in late 80's. Where do you go, when all of the highways are already blocked with people who are evacuating from Tampa and places that were was absolutely going to hit.

00:06:06

Suze: So they stayed.

00:06:09

Suze: And then I would talk to my friends and they would say Suze, my parents refused to leave. What can I tell them? They won't listen to me, they won't listen to my siblings. They refuse to go.

00:06:24

Suze: The good news is after it hit,

00:06:28

Suze: they're okay. At least one family still isn't being heard from,

00:06:33

Suze: the one in Cape Coral, because there's no connection. There's no way they can know. But hopefully they are okay.

00:06:42

Suze: Now even though these families weren't given instructions, they had to leave. The question is, should they have left anyway? What do you do today to protect yourself against the unknowns? When do you put things before your own life?

00:07:05

Suze: I mean I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said, I kind of agree with my relative that says nope, she's not leaving. She wants to stay there to protect her house. And I'm thinking to myself, how do you protect your house

00:07:22

Suze: if a hurricane hits you? How do you do that?

00:07:27

Suze: They said, well you would know if a tree fell on your house, you would know if your windows broke, and I'm like, and then what would you do then? Then what?

00:07:37

Suze: You know a few years ago there was a very bad hurricane that was coming straight towards us, not only here on the island, but to Florida as well. And it was supposed to come in as a five,

00:07:50

Suze: and it was supposed to go straight up the coast of Florida. And we knew without a shadow of a doubt that our island would absolutely be destroyed, as well as our condo that we live in in Florida.

00:08:04

Suze: So what did we do? When we heard that, we got on the plane, we went back to the mainland, we got on a plane, we went to Chicago, we took people with us, we made sure everybody was safe and sound.

00:08:20

Suze: It cost a serious sum of money by the way to do that.

00:08:24

Suze: Because there was no way for us to get out by flying commercial. Everything had already been booked out. So I did a private plane, and I took relatives, I took friends from the island that didn't know what they were going to do, and we took them all to Chicago. And while that hurricane absolutely wreaked havoc on the island, it didn't touch our condo at all in Florida.

00:08:50

Suze: And then what everybody started to say, God Suze, look how much money you could have saved if we just stayed in Florida.

00:08:59

Suze: And I'm thinking to myself, there's no amount of money that I would have risked that for. What if it hadn't changed? What if it continued like it was supposed to continue,

00:09:12

Suze: and that would have done us in.

00:09:14

Suze: So I'm thrilled that we left. I'm thrilled that we supposedly wasted that money.

00:09:20

Suze: But the lesson from that for many of the people that came with me was, see? We should have stayed. We should have stayed. It didn't hit us.

00:09:29

Suze: I took away from that lesson that whenever I hear that a hurricane is coming our way, and I know it has a great probability of hitting us, I am out of here and I'm out of Florida, and I'm somewhere where it's safe and sound.

00:09:48

Suze: But so many times we live our life

00:09:52

Suze: not with that attitude, we go well we should have stayed. We could have made it through it.

00:09:58

Suze: I just ask you to look,

00:10:01

Suze: really, even though you're not even close to Florida, you're not even close to South Carolina, you're not even close to anywhere where a hurricane could hit you, look at the devastation.

00:10:15

Suze: The absolute devastation that that hurricane caused in the lives of so many.

00:10:25

Suze: What did happen however, which was interesting in Florida, is that tornadoes started to be spurred from that hurricane. And on our TV, because we kept watching the weather channel, and it's programmed for the zip code that we live in Florida,

00:10:43

Suze: they kept saying tornado, tornado tornado warnings in effect.

00:10:48

Suze: And it kept doing it over and over and over again.

00:10:53

Suze: And I said to KT, there's going to be a bad tornado near us. And sure enough in Delray, which is very close to where we live,

00:11:03

Suze: in Kings Point, a tornado absolutely turned over cars, destroyed homes, it did severe damage.

00:11:14

Suze: But then nobody was expecting that in Delray, because Delray wasn't in the cone of the hurricane. But then we never think about the ramifications of what happens when there is something like a hurricane coming towards us. Even if it's hundreds of miles away. Now why am I telling you all this?

00:11:37

Suze: I'm telling you all this because it's not just about hurricanes. It's not just about tornadoes. It's not just about floods that half of the United States has been experiencing, or fires, or mudslides or earthquakes.

00:11:56

Suze: It's about, are you protected

00:12:00

Suze: against any of those probabilities from happening to you?

00:12:06

Suze: And when I say protected, it's not necessarily is your house strong enough, do you have an evacuation plan? I'm talking about, are your assets such as your home,

00:12:18

Suze: and what's inside your home, is it protected?

00:12:23

Suze: Do you have the proper insurance on your home? Do you have the proper renter's insurance if you are renting,

00:12:34

Suze: that if for whatever reason you were hit with a fire, a tornado, a flood, a mudslide, an earthquake. Would you be able to at least recapture the money that you have spent

00:12:51

Suze: on the things that are in your rental apartment, or in your home. Will you be able to claim money so that you could rebuild not only where you lived, but where you might want to live? Just maybe you don't want to live there anymore.

00:13:08

Suze: Are you, do you know for sure?

00:13:12

Suze: Have you ever looked at your insurance policies to see are you insured for a hurricane, for a flood, for a mudslide? What are you insured for, and what you are not insured for? And you need to know. So you need to be able to answer the question, are you protected?

00:13:33

Suze: What does your insurance policy cover, and what does it not? Because I can tell you many of those homes, they're not gonna get any insurance. I'm sure many of them did not have flood protection, because they never imagined a 1,000 year flood happening.

 00:13:52

Suze: Did you see Naples, Florida? With all those cars floating in the water? It's not always the strong winds. It's the water, it's the flooding.

00:14:04

Suze: So I talked to you about this, because it also concerns me, let's just say that you are protected for a hurricane. You are protected for flood.

00:14:18

Suze: And now look at the devastation on many of those places in Fort Myers.

00:14:24

Suze: You can't even see the home. The home has been blown off of its foundation. All you can see is nothing remaining there.

00:14:35

Suze: So do you know what was inside your home?

00:14:39

Suze: Do you know the contents of your home? Do you know the cost of everything that was in your home that you have been paying insurance on for the contents?

00:14:50

Suze: Do you know? Could you sit down right here and right now if this happened to you?

00:14:58

Suze: So all of a sudden something has happened. A tornado, your house is gone and everything in it. A fire comes, your house is gone and everything that is in it. All that's left is ashes. Your house is gone because a hurricane has hit it and it's blown it away. Your house is gone because the water took everything.

00:15:22

Suze: Can you? Maybe you should stop this podcast right here and right now, and just see if you could really go through in your mind, every room,

00:15:34

Suze: and what's in every single room. Can you remember all the things that maybe your parents gave you, or your grandparents.

00:15:43

Suze: That you've just put away in a box because you're keeping them for safe keeping. And do they have value? Do you remember what they are?

00:15:52

Suze: Chances are you do not.

00:15:56

Suze: So therefore today's podcast is about how do you protect yourself? Now to that end,

00:16:06

Suze: I am making a free offer to all of you. Because I want all of you to be okay. I want all of you to be protected. I want it to be so that you are prepared when something happens. You don't have to think about it. What do you grab, where do you go? How does it work? What's your paperwork? You need to know that you are protected.

00:16:29

Suze: I want you to write down SuzeOrman.com, S U-Z-E-O-R-M-A-N .com

00:16:39

Suze: /A-C-T-I-V-A-T-E. Write that down.

00:16:49

Suze: And if you go there, it will ask for an activation code. And if you put in the word safe, S-A-F-E, everybody.

00:17:00

Suze: Because what is it that KT and I say to you at the end of every podcast? We want you to be safe, strong, and secure.

00:17:10

Suze: In terms of being safe, when you're told to leave, you need to leave. If you think some trouble is coming your way, you need to make sure that you are safe because when you're safe, then no matter what you're also secure.

00:17:26

Suze: Because the most precious thing that you have to keep safe is you. Because without you being safe and healthy, nothing really matters. So the activation code is safe.

00:17:41

Suze: Now when you go there and you register there,

00:17:45

Suze: you then once you put in the activation code,

00:17:49

Suze: up will come what I call the insurance selector. It covers for you

00:17:56

Suze: life insurance, home insurance, automobile insurance, disability insurance, and long term care insurance.

00:18:05

Suze: And I originally created this program years ago to be sold on QVC and HSN, where we sold millions of them.

00:18:15

Suze: And it analyzed, do you have enough home insurance? Do you not have enough home insurance? Are you over insured? Are you under insured? Are you insured for a disaster, or are you not?

00:18:29

Suze: So if you want, you can do all of those to see how much life insurance should you have. And it tells you everything you need to know if you interact with it.

00:18:39

Suze: But the main reason I want you to go there is you will also see among the list of everything that I just told you. Home life, auto, disability and long-term care. There is another category and it's called home inventory tracker. And that is the main reason that I am sending you to this site,

00:19:05

Suze: and I want you to do this, and it's absolutely again free of charge.

00:19:11

Suze: When you go to the home inventory tracker, it will take you room by room. And you are to go room by room, and it allows you to take pictures of everything that is in every single room, every single cabinet, every single closet. So you have a record of what is there. It also allows you to add

00:19:37

Suze: a dollar value of what everything that you are photographing is worth. So now you have a record of every item that is in your house.

00:19:50

Suze: And you can do two things with it. You could print it out and keep it, because what everybody right now in Fort Myers and everywhere, and what people always have to do when they suffer a disaster like this, is the first thing you have to do is contact your insurance agent. And file a claim.

00:20:09

Suze: And now you would have a record

00:20:12

Suze: of everything you're making a claim on. Yeah, it's easy to say my house was worth X, this is what it would cost me to replace it.

00:20:20

Suze: But you don't have a record of everything that is in your house. But now you do if you simply take the time to do this, you could also email that record to your insurance agent, so that they have a record already on file, so you don't have to do anything else.

00:20:39

Suze: The good news is, let's say you did that, but you lost everything including the print out of everything you have. Not a big deal. Somewhere down the road, you're gonna have access again, to either your phone, electricity, another computer. You go back to the site, and everything is there for you.

00:21:03

Suze: I mean one of the good things also I just have to say about the Must Have Documents, which is your will, your trust, your advanced directive and durable power of attorney for healthcare as well as a financial directive,

00:21:14

Suze: is let's say you had all the originals in your home. Let's just say that's true. Because only originals are valid.

00:21:25

Suze: And before you know it, you are hit and everything is gone, and you don't have a copy of anything.

00:21:32

Suze: You can just go back to the must have documents, print them out again, go and get them notarized and witnessed again,

00:21:41

Suze: and now you have it back and it didn't cost you anything. For those of you who want the Must Have Documents, there go to SuzeOrman.com/offer, it is $99 if you use that URL. If you go to my website, it's $198.

00:22:01

Suze: These are things that not only protect you, but they also protect your family.

00:22:08

Suze: Obviously they are must-have documents, protect you personally as well as your assets. If you were to die or become incapacitated,

00:22:18

Suze: but the inventory tracker protects you

00:22:22

Suze: and all the things that you have accumulated over your life if they have some dollar value to them. Now obviously there's no way to protect sentimental items. And that's what's so very sad. I'll never forget years ago I lived in the Oakland Hills when that horrible Oakland fire came in, 3,000 homes were burned to the ground, and the fire stopped one mile from my house.
00:22:52

Suze: But as I packed up to go, because everything was in the car to absolutely evacuate,

00:22:59

Suze: number one,

00:23:01

Suze: I took things like pictures. Pictures that could never be replaced.

00:23:07

Suze: I took things that not just had a dollar value to it, but had a sentimental value to it as well.

00:23:15

Suze: So those things, if we lose, there's nothing we can do about it, and we have those memories in our heart.

00:23:25

Suze: But things that you are paying insurance for, you want to make sure that if they're taken from you, you can get them replaced. At least financially speaking. So today's Suze School, is you have got to answer the question,

00:23:43

Suze: are you protected? Are you?

00:23:47

Suze: Because if you're not, I beg you to look at some of the pictures that are coming in from Florida.

00:23:56

Suze: And don't think things like that can't happen to you. When we all pray for everybody who lost everything, they don't know what to do, they don't know where to go, it totally breaks my heart. It makes me want to get up and go there and help them figure out their insurance claims and everything,

00:24:15

Suze: because it's going to be another disaster. Like do they go and get a small business administration loan, will FEMA, give them a loan, what are they going to do? It's very difficult at times like that.

00:24:29

Suze: No matter what anybody does for them, they are suffering right now. Some of the biggest losses of their life because some of them not only lost everything, they lost loved ones as well.

00:24:42

Suze: Obviously KT and I are safe and sound, the only thing that we lost here was the satellite, which makes sense because even if the wind blows hard here and it's not a hurricane, we lose satellite and connection. But we were nowhere even close to danger. It was never coming towards us, and as time went on it was more and more obvious that it wasn't going to hit us, even close. We're hundreds of miles away from it. But we were prepared.

00:25:12

Suze: We still prepared as if it changed directions and it came to us. I had a plane waiting, we were ready to go.

00:25:23

Suze: So I want you to always have your financial plane ready to go. I want you always to be prepared to protect yourself not only today, but from the unknowns of tomorrow.

00:25:37

Suze: That is the Suze School for today. See you on Thursday, but until then, what do I want for every single one of you? I want you to be safe, I want you to be strong, and most of all I want you to be secure.

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