My Cegep philosophy classes are long behind me. Most of what I had learned back then is a complete blur. Thankfully, I remember bits and pieces of it once in a while. We had studied sophisms, a concept that is pretty vague when you\u2019re 17\u00a0years old. But with time, the concept became clearer. To refresh your memory, sophisms are false arguments, a confusing or slightly incorrect argument used for deceiving someone. We\u2019ve all had this kind of reasoning, including myself. However, that type of thought process should be avoided. Today, I will be doing a risky exercise to tie philosophy and insurance together.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause it has always been this way, it will always remain this way\u201d<\/em>\u00a0is a sophism. A sophism takes into account the past by affirming that something that had always yielded a positive result in the past will always generate the same result going forward. In the insurance industry, such reasoning is rather risky. As an insured, you should never rely on the past to forecast the future \u2014 the past is not always an indication of what the future holds. Some insurers will base their insurance decisions on past history, which I strongly advise against. Here are a few mistakes to avoid in order to stay away from useless claims.<\/p>\n \u201cMy last water heater hasn\u2019t leaked in 25\u00a0years, which means I won\u2019t have to replace my next one before the 25-year mark\u2026\u201d<\/em> Unfortunately, things are not made as solidly as before. What\u2019s more, the quality of the water is variable from one region to the next and the effect of corrosion can act faster from one environment to another.<\/p>\n \u201cIn 15\u00a0years, I\u2019ve never had sewer back-up so it doesn\u2019t scare me.\u201d<\/em> It is important to know that rainfall has been heavier than in the past; we\u2019ve all witnessed it in the past few weeks\u2026 And the city\u2019s sewer system may have overspilled because of a new real estate development project.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never had an accident in my life so please remove as many coverages as possible\u201d<\/em> And what if\u2026 Because you must always plan for the worst\u2026 What if you were in an accident and your car was a total loss? You mustn\u2019t forget to calculate the actual impact of having to replace your car on your finances rather than paying a low premium that you\u2019d be able to afford annually.<\/p>\n \u201cMy roof comes with a lifetime warranty and I\u2019m not worried about water damage\u201d<\/em>\u2026 But as all warranties go, there are exclusions and contingencies! The manufacturer is not guaranteed to be in business for as long as his product will last and the warranty does not necessarily cover wear and tear, wind damage, shingles laying, etc.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s okay, it can be dealt with next week. I doubt that there will be a fire this weekend\u2026\u201d<\/em> Bear in mind that a fire will not warn its victims before striking!<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/em>Statistics show 1 in 10 or 20\u00a0clients will need to file a claim each year. Undoubtedly, your turn will not come every year, just like it would be abnormal for it to come too often. Ken Scott, a Quebec director, played a role a few years back in which his character said these words that ring very true: \u201cThe longer things have been going wrong, the closer you are to things going well.\u201d Tell yourself the opposite \u2014 the longer things have been \u201cgoing well\u201d, the closer you are perhaps to \u201cthings going wrong\u201d. Once you experience a loss, you will be happy to have been adequately covered even if at the time of purchasing the insurance you had told yourself that the chances of it happening were slim\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Cegep philosophy classes are long behind me. Most of what I had learned back then is a complete blur. Thankfully, I remember bits and pieces of it once in a while. We had studied sophisms, a concept that is pretty vague when you\u2019re 17\u00a0years old. But with time, the concept became clearer. To refresh […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":441,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[237,55,190,66,102,316,317,318,265],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-accident","tag-car-insurance","tag-claims","tag-fire","tag-home-insurance","tag-philosophy","tag-roof","tag-sewer-back-up","tag-water-heater","sector-auto","sector-home","sector-personal"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lareau.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What now?<\/strong><\/h3>\n