As I watched interviews and footage from Hurricane Gustav, I was saddened by the fact that so many people’s lives in New Orleans could once again be left uncertain. One lady being interviewed held up her house keys and said that it took her 3 years to re-build after Katrina and she had just gotten her new house keys on the day that she once again had to evacuate her home.

As this hurricane season continues with Hurricane Hanna, it is hard for me to understand how people have the courage to re-build in the same location after such disasters. However, it is understandable that people don’t want to leave a place that they call “home.”

However, people do need to make sure they are prepared before disaster strikes. Although you may have homeowner’s insurance, it is best to know what your insurance company offers with regards to coverage. Often times the damage that is caused by a hurricane or natural disaster may not be covered at all.

Some Things that ARE Typically Covered:

Personal Property – Think how much money you have put into purchasing all of the belongings that are located in your home. Your furniture, electronics, clothes, etc. is covered in case something happens such as a fire burns down your home.

Personal Liability – Having people over your home puts you at risk in case anything happens to someone else while they are they. If you are held personally liable for something that happens to another person in your home, often times homeowner’s insurance will cover this liability. This type of incident would be if your neighbor fell down your deck stairs they could potentially take you to court for damages.

Natural Disasters – Only some damages caused my certain natural disasters are covered. These happen to be damage from windstorms, hail, lightning, and volcanic eruptions (now that one really surprised me)!

Some Things that are Typically NOT Covered:

War, Nuclear Accidents, Terrorism – The act of terrorism is new on the not included list. Before September 11th, many insurance companies did cover damages by terrorism. However, insurance companies became clear that they would not cover them after September 11th made the threat appear more real.

Natural Disasters – The more at risk you are for a natural disaster to occur, the more likely it is that your insurance will not cover you. Many insurance companies do not cover people for hurricanes and earthquakes. If you live on the Gulf Coast, insurance companies know that your risk of damage from a hurricane is fairly large and will not offer coverage for you in that area. The same goes for California and earthquake insurance because this is an area where they are typically expected to occur.

Mold and Water/Flood Damage – When you buy a home, you want to make sure that there is no mold damage before you purchase the home because you will end up paying for these to be fixed by yourself. Check out this article on Geezeo about Flood Insurance (which you should definitely consider purchasing if you live in regions affected by hurricanes).

I used to live in Illinois when I was younger and became terrified of the tornados that would occur during the summer months. I loved the area a lot but the one thing that stops me from potentially moving back is my fear of tornados. However, at the same time it puts some perspective on why people stay where they are despite the risks.

When choosing your home, make sure to have it inspected if you have any questions about the property beforehand. Also, if your real estate agent is doing their job, they should be able to tell you the history of the house and if previous residents have had any trouble with floods, mold, etc. It is much better to make sure you are covered for anything potential that may happen, than to find out when it is already too late that you are not.

Photo: Jari

Related Articles:
Gustav is Going, Here Comes Hanna: 5 Costliest Tropical Storms
7 Items your Auto, Home Policies Don’t Cover
Are You Prepared for a Natural Disaster?

With all the hype surrounding the Olympics (and of course Michael Phelps), it is always good to look at both sides: not just the winning and glory, but the cost behind this fame. As countries throughout the world participate in the Olympics, spending on these events continues to grow.

Not only do the facilities and production of the Olympics cost a great deal for the country hosting the Games, but on an individual level, families continue to spend more money to get their children qualifying for the Olympics.

The cost of training for the Olympics is larger than some might imagine, with families investing a huge amount of time and money.

Before 1978, U.S. Olympic athletes had a serious financial disadvantage. They were not allowed to accept sponsorships, endorsements, or financial aid to help them with their training. Forget the cost of putting your children through college, training and preparing them for the Olympics is much more costly.

Expenses include coaches, training, clothing, housing, food, travel (hotels, rental cars, flights, etc.), and physical and emotional drain. But the biggest costs? – Time and Money!

Wanting to become an Olympic athlete is a full-time commitment and also a risk you will take. Not everyone (regardless of training) meets the qualifications to attend the Olympics.

Many companies such as Nike, Visa, Bank of America, Speedo, and AT&T are huge sponsors of the Olympic Games and some of the athletes that are competing this year in Beijing.

From an article on MSN.com, it is estimated that some athlete’s travels to the Olympics in Beijing this year will cost about $20,000 for their 3 weeks in attendance.

This money is a large investment for families and puts both emotional and financial strain of everyone. But is the financial difficulty and setback worth it for the chance at fame and an Olympic medal? For many the answer is yes, otherwise the Olympics would not be held every four years.

When saving for retirement or college, families can learn a lot from the discipline that Olympic athletes have. In a quote from an article at our Mainstreet.com partners, “others will look at your good financial situation and not realize all the time and effort that you put into creating it including the discipline and setbacks that you had to overcome to be financially secure.”

Keeping up and being strong with your savings will definitely benefit you in the end. Just like Olympic athletes benefit from their hard work that they put towards their sport each and everyday. In order to save you may have to give up things that you would like to buy in the meantime, but further down the road you will benefit.

Just know that if your dream for yourself or your children is to be an Olympic athlete, you must invest a lot of time, money, and a great deal of your life to make it happen. Saving works just the same!

Luckily for athletes today, times have changed and people now seek and receive financial help to relieve some of the economic burden. And in turn we are able to watch the competitions and participate in the excitement when your country wins!

Photo: dtcreations

Related Articles:
A Money Lesson From Gold Medalist Nastia Liukin
Finance Lessons Olympians Can Teach You
Get Toned Like Michael Phelps, For Mere Pennies

Imagine being out of work for a few months or even years! How would you get by without income? I know many of us (if not all of us) never want to find out. But if it does happen, it is best to take preventative action.

Not everyone has disability insurance and some may think they will never need it. However, disability insurance may be more important than life insurance due to the fact that you are more likely to get injured than to die (although neither is pleasant).

According to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners (NAIC) and an article on MSN.com, “Every year, 12% of the adult U.S. population suffers a long-term disability. One out of every seven workers will suffer a five-year or longer period of disability before age 65, and if you’re 35 now, your chances of experiencing a three-month or longer disability before you reach age 65 are 50%.” These statistics are greater than you would think.

Only being 22 years old, disability insurance has never even crossed my mind. I always assumed that it was for older people closer to the age of retirement.

Our partners on MainStreet.com explain that long-term disability insurance usually costs about 1% - 3% of your yearly income and protects you against the loss of your ability to get income. This seems minimal to me when you think about how much it can save you if something critical happens.

Long-term disability insurance typically covers an injury that lasts 6 months or longer where you aren’t able to earn an income.

MainStreet.com explains further that you will not regain all of your income while you are disabled and will usually get about 60% back.

The reason for this is clear – why would an insurance company want to pay you back all of your income? What incentive would you then have to return to your previous job?

Unfortunately, many companies do not offer their employees disability insurance and life insurance appears to be more popular. However, often your company may offer you workers compensation but it will not always cover as large amount as disability insurance and for different lengths of time. Make sure you know what your company offers before making a decision on disability insurance!

Different insurance companies will offer different plans with varying costs. Although it is impossible to predict what the future holds, preparing yourself for the worst possible outcome will be beneficial. Better to sacrifice a small percent of your income now than to lose it all in the future.

Photo: Stuart Whitmore

Related Articles:
What To Do If You Are Sued At Work
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Are you planning a party in the near future? Perhaps it will be for a graduation or a wedding. I for one, have offered to a friend of mine, to throw her a baby shower!

First off, I was so happy that she told me she was expecting. I was so excited, right off the bat I said to her, “You should let me throw your baby shower!” But when I sat down to think about the cost of it all, I almost wish I hadn’t. After all, the cost of everything is going up. However, it is not my style to back down from something I have already committed to do. So my question comes to this:

How much is too much?

I want this shower to be spectacular! I would love to be able to go all out, and get her everything she could ever imagine. But to keep things in perspective, I will have to come up with a lot of money for that, and that’s just not likely to happen. So, I have to work with what I’ve got. And that means making a plan, and sticking to a budget.

Here are some things to keep in mind when throwing a party of any kind:

1. Where will it be located? Depending on the size of the party, you might not be able to have it in your living room. So the cost of renting a building or even just a room of a building is an important factor to consider.

2. How big should the guest list be? This goes hand in hand with the first item. If you have a larger guest list, then you will need to have a larger area to entertain. However, having a small intimate party could be lots of fun, and you could quite possibly spend more money on decorations and things.

3. What kind of party will this be? More specifically, are you planning on feeding a meal, or will this be a “floating party”, one with finger foods and snacks? This is where things can get expensive. If you are not careful, you can easily use up the majority of your funds. Keep in mind your guest list here too, as you will want to make sure you have enough food to feed everyone, but not too much that it goes to waste.

See how easy it is for things to add up? Make a budget, write out a plan, and stick to it. Set a goal to put aside a certain amount each month so the cost won’t surprise you! And if you do happen to over spend (don’t feel too bad, we all do at some point), clear your conscience and confess here!

(Photo Courtesy: Earl53 / Morguefile.com)

With graduation just around the corner (for both college and high school graduates…but mine being college), I am realizing that not only is this a celebration, but just another expense to add to mine (or my parents) credit cards!!

I was surpised how quickly all the expenses add up…and how I always thought of graduation as a celebration, not really as a time to spend a lot of money. I suppose high school is a little different, graduation just kind of happens and your parents deal with the money aspect of things. But college is a little bit different, there are the parties, the celebrating at bars, senior week, the drinks…you name it the expenses just keep on coming!

Here are a few things I have realized in the past few weeks:

1. Cost of Cap and Gown — In high school we didn’t have to BUY our cap and gowns…they were given to us on “loan” and the tassle was FREE! Nope…that definately is not the case with college. A basic package of cap, gown, annoucements, and your tassle at Boston University cost $85.00!…what a bummer! When am I EVER going to wear my cap and gown again? I mean come on!

2. Adding a Frame to your Basic Package — The frame for your diplomas were nice, I will give BU that. But I mean come on, over $200 for a frame with the BU crest on it. I thought that was a little bit excessive. I figured I would just get mine framed once I received it.

3. Cost of Dinner and Celebration — This my parents will pay for for the obvious reasons…its my celebration I suppose and they want to be a part of this. But with 7 people attending this dinner, drinks, appetizers, you name it…the price will definately add up!

4. Cost of “Senior Week” — This is fun! And actually, the prices weren’t so bad. Senior week in total probably cost me about $150, but we are doing some really fun things. Martha’s Vineyard trip, Mogegan Sun, Jake Ivory’s (I highly recommend this Piano bar…it’s near Fenway Park and it really is just amazing), and we are also doing a few other trips as well, all at a reasonable cost. But the catch is…NO DRINKS INCLUDED! That kinda puts the cost of these trips up a little bit. Besides our “Champagne Reception”…drinks are not included at any of the other events…we shall see what my bill accumulates to after that week is over.

I think the costs are definately worth it though! This is a once in a lifetime thing. I won’t be graduating from college again…and this achievement is much greater than high school. I just can’t believe 4 years has gone by so fast. I’m sure many of you are stuck in the same predicament…where the heck did the time go? And can’t I just live this lifestyle for a little bit longer!?

haha, really the answer is nope! After you walk across that stage…it really is time for the real world! But don’t worry…”Work Hard, Play Hard” is how I think of it! Don’t look at this as the end of all your fun, its just another stage in life with more fun to come! :o)

(Image by Heather)

Ladies, look away. This is for those of us who have want to buy flowers for that special someone but don’t see the point in feel like $90 dollar roses don’t adequately show our appreciation for that special someone. Keep the money in your pocket to pay off your debts but still get her a beautiful bouquet of two dozen red roses.

Amazon Flower Deal
(no affiliate link)

I believe you can select any roses, but I chose the two dozen roses. Add them to your cart, complete shopping, and then at the point your would enter your credit card look at the right. The flowers are only $12 dollars TOTAL! Talk about a slick deal. The flowers are for delivery on February 14th so your special someone should have no idea. Obviously, this deal probably is only for TODAY or the week so act quickly. One of the best reasons to read Geezeo everyday.

For more savings tips, check out our Geezeo group: Couples and Money! Happy Valentine’s Day!

We’re excited to announce that we will be presenting at Finovate 2007 tomorrow, October 2nd in New York City. Finovate is hosted by Jim Bruene of Netbanker and Online Financial Innovations. We were proud to be presenting along with some of the most innovative companies in the financial, banking and lending industries including Lending Club, Prosper, CheckFree, iPay, Billeo and many others.

We’ll have 7 minutes to “wow!â€? an audience of 200 leading executives, investors, analysts, members of the press and bloggers with an actual demonstration of Geezeo so wish us luck!

This new wave of financial portals, service providers, social finance and investment sites is so exciting. It should be a lot of fun getting together with so many like minded individuals in this space.

If anyone would like to connect while Shawn and I are in town, shoot us an email at pglyman[at]geezeo.com or sward[at]geezeo.com

See ya there!

So last night, James Elwood, Geezeo’s network master ninja, and I both presented at the Amazon Startup Project - Boston event.

We finally got to meet some of the great folks we’ve been working with over the past few months who’ve been helping us get our infrastructure set up with AWS. Our presentation went over the various ways that we use AWS, as well as our short term plans for AWS. Here’s what one blogger had to say:

There was also a lot of creativity leveraging EC2 to support production environment. Geezeo, located in Boston, have put everything on EC2: Front-end, app-servers, and database. Because MySQL replication and clustering is relatively easy, they could set up a small MySQL farm and then do frequent off-site backups to S3 (Amazon’s Simple Storage Service — you pay for that, but it’s not too expensive). Geezeo is sort of a mix of Quicken and Facebook. I’d been very leery of Geezeo because I don’t think I want my bank data up in the cloud. But after this presentation, I think they may have a good architecture for security; I might actually try them now. Which is saying a lot, because if you had told me their service was in EC2 before I saw their presentation, it would have actually increased my worry. They have SSL in the right places, and, apparently, private IPs running in EC2. Nice job.

The current services we use from AWS are the Elastic Compute Cloud and S3 (simple storage service), however we have plans to incorporate more AWS services to help us with various tasks we have planned, so stay tuned!

The other presenters were AideRSS, Curbside MD and WeoGeo.