Does your Insurance Plan violate the investors rule of: Not having all your eggs in one basket.

   Leaving our insurance or as we like to call it, preparedness, only in the hands of the professionals opens us up to potential abuse and far too often leads to enriching them instead of ourselves. At times we need and want professionals and the consumer way of someone doing it for us. The Frugal Prosumer’s way of Living Rich on Less is educating oneself on the many free or low cost alternatives to “commercial” insurance.
At the same time The Frugal Prosumer understands:

• The need to keep the balance between the extremes of blindly following the professionals and trying to do it all oneself.
• The need of community and relationships to help carry this out.
• The deceptions used to take ones wealth and freedom.

   Most of us are concerned about being prepared for the future and insurance is a big part of this.  Unfortunately, too many people think of insurance as only an insurance policy you buy from a company. Insurance, or being prepared as we like to call it, can take many forms.

• We start out preparing for a life mate (dating) and insuring we can earn a living (going to school.) 
• As we get older our preparedness concerns center more on being prepared for medical expenses (health insurance), saving for retirement (retirement funds), and caring for those we leave behind when we die (life insurance). 
• Plus many other forms of insurance (unemployment, workman’s comp, house, auto, etc.).

    Only investing in conventional insurance is akin to putting all your eggs in one basket. Conventional insurances all depend on the monetary systems, as we know it, surviving intact. Remember, conventional insurance never provides you with what you need but only gives you money so you can pay for the things you need. There are two possible flaws to this system:

1. What if they can’t give you the money because they: go bankrupt, lose it in bad investments, don’t want to give it to you, have it taken from them by thieves or governments, etc.
2. Even if they give you money what if  you can’t purchase what you need because it’s unavailable, no one wants to sell it to you, it costs more money than they gave you, etc.

   Remember you can’t eat money, it won't shelter you from the environment, keep your car running, carry away your waste, stop someone from robbing you, etc. Yes you can buy these things with money but what if you invest in the things you will need instead, then you will be assured you have it when you need the "insurance."

   Frugal Prosumers are skilled in finding ways they can self insure when possible. They understand things like: Life insurance isn’t life insurance. It’s death insurance. Insurance companies know selling death insurance is harder since people don’t like to talk about death. Life insurance does nothing to keep you alive. What if you spent that money on real life insurance? --- Lifestyle choices that keep you safe and healthy!

   Unfortunately what used to be considered normal: (years supply of canned food in the house, your own garden with some chickens running around, having a gun, friends to call on if your barn burned down, ways to take care of your waste, etc.) are now given the radical label of “preppers” and in some cases even considered a “danger” to society. What they really are is a danger to the “Robber Barons” who prefer you to give your insurance and investment dollars to them, in return for the promise that they will take care of everything. This too often enables them, not you to Live Rich.

   There is much “conventional” wisdom on insurance, that may not be the best based on ones observations of what is going on currently in the world.    


Something to Ponder!

• Health insurance isn’t health insurance. It’s sickness insurance. It may even have the opposite affect if it makes you more careless. If Americans spent as much to keep themselves healthy as they spend on health insurance (around a quarter to half a million dollars in their life time), we would have much less need for health insurance.
• Insurance is not about preventing problems. It’s about fixing problems. Prevention is far superior to fixing.
• The best health insurance is a lifestyle that keeps you healthy so you won't need “death” and “sickness” insurance. 
• "UnInsurance": A paid off house, emergency fund, food stockpile, minimal fixed expenses, and a community of good relationships could be the best form of retirement, workman's comp, unemployment, disability, health, etc. insurance.
• Is it  possible that Liability insurance is a civilized form of paying criminal protection money or saying if you mess with (sue) me I have big guns (my insurance companies lawyers) that you will have to face. I.e. Doctors buying liability insurance to protect themselves from rogue lawyers and individuals who use liability suits as a way to rob the wealthy. Or individuals buying health insurance to protect their family, house, future income, and possessions from rouge medical of financial institutions or being put into a debtors “prison”.

Think different! Think UnInsurance! Some ideas:

• Building a partially underground stone structure that reduces the need for fire or storm insurance?
• Becoming judgment proof by having no assets that lawyers can get their hands on?
• Have a pound of pool shock on hand. (It’s Clorox in crystal form and can last for more than ten years while Clorox after 6 months starts to  lose it's power) It can purify 10,000 gallons of drinking water, used to sanitize and clean up body fluids if there is sickness or disease, used to clean out wounds (called Dakin's Solution), and we won't mention its use as a weapon.
• How to get rid of your own kitchen and body waste if the system breaks down with a simple sawdust toilet.
• The Frugal Prosumer knows many more!