It's February (almost), but I'm just now putting together a personal budget for 2009. The times, they are a'changin', and I want to be in a more secure financial position than my someone "spendiness" has often left me.
One of the things I was contemplating was renters' insurance. I'll still look into it next week, but we did have a devastating corporate wrinkle this week:
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State Farm Insurance withdrawing from Florida property market
1.2 million will be forced to find property insurance somewhere else. A hurricane? No. State Farm applied to hike its property insurance rates by 47% and Tallahassee turned them down.
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Sigh.
I was revisiting why in the heck I ever dropped my renter's insurance, which I'd obtained, like a good independent woman, when I got my first post-divorce apartment in 2004. Looking back, I stumbled across this entry I made for a couple of internet sites. It answered the question of why, gave me a good laugh in thinking about my second ramshackle single-girl abode, and came complete with one of the favorite poems I'd written. Here it is:
Uninsured, but I have untold wealth in family pictures...Jun 24 '06
OK, so I'm renting now. A small house, 2 bedroom, charming, 25 years old and a little the worse for wear. Yard is the worst in the neighborhood. Landlords (friends of mine, never rent from friends) are do-it-yourselfers. A small twist of wire will make the air conditioner work again, that decrepit old water heater will still work if we put a doohickey on it and turn the temperature down. That 60 foot dying tree...we'll cut it down one of these weekends, I'm sure we'll get to it before hurricane season.
As I begin my second year in my snug little nest, I've been billed a scandalous amount for renters insurance. The cost went up 300%. That's 300%. I could shop around, but I'm not a veteran and USAA is the only reasonably priced game in town. Everyone else feels the backlash of hurricanes, whether you own, whether you rent. I decided not to afford the insurance. My worldly possessions are more of comfort than expense.
I have located all of the boxes of photographs on the highest shelf....and they will be easy to load into the back seat of the car if I need to run for it. Many of the most precious have been scanned onto a share website, so I will never lose them, no matter what. And while I was at, it I recalled a poem from last year...
A Walk Through the Photographs
A task I dread and yet as I wander
Through the pictures of our lives
Now a birthday, now a trip to a place unknown…
Some unfocused, some duplicates
Some that make me laugh
Some that make me remember
What we all were, our family.
~
I try not to take the best of moments for myself
As I go through the albums and boxes
The record of those years
Some happier than others
Some years of change
Some years of sorrow and loss
The memories, the days of our growth.
~
I can’t help but smile and yearn
For the ability to travel through time
To recapture what once was and yet…
Some things are best left undone
Sometimes nothing seems to hold as much joy as
Some of what we all have now.
~
And so, I spend a moment giving thanks.
For all that we experienced, for all that it meant
And still means…for the texture of those times
For the four of us and the four of us
Some still here and living life
Some just a fond memory
Some the very fiber of my existence
Now, and until the end of time.
~
Photographs just don’t do it justice.
~ quidrock, 2005
That's Andrea and Tom, with Snuffy... 1992
