FloodInsurance

By Kimberly Lankford, Kiplinger If you have a refund check coming your way, consider using it to bolster your personal balance sheet. The average refund has been around $3,000 for the past two years. (Most people receive their refund within three weeks of filing their returns.) That's a nice...

It's bad enough that we fork over gobs of money for all kinds of necessities, such as our mortgage payments, groceries, gas, and electricity. But it's a real shame when we fork over dollars needlessly, buying things we don't need -- like many kinds of insurance.

Hurricane season comes every year, and 90% of natural disasters nationwide involve flooding. Yet less than a fifth of U.S. homeowners have a flood insurance policy. With Hurricane Irene poised to hit the U.S. this weekend, now may be a good time to ask: Are you covered, and should you be?

Flood insurance is only available through the federal National Flood Insurance Program, and this program is scheduled to expire in March. Now groups are lining up on both sides of the question of whether to include wind damage in the coverage. The Hurricane Katrina experience showed how difficult...

Insurance is a necessity of modern life. Face it, there is, as yet, no way to guarantee that nothing bad will ever happen to you or that you will live forever. Oftentimes, though, people forget that simple fact and discover all too late that they did not adequately protect themselves.The good news...

The sight of thousands of homes under water in the aftermath of Katrina was sadly familiar to many Americans. Flooding is a disaster to which few are immune, although many of us delude ourselves otherwise. How safe are you? The flood season, if there is one, is approaching. Some of our nation's...