Chances are if you spend any significant time on the internet like our family does here at Todd Russell Insurance Agency you have run across several websites which try to do no good to your computer and internet experience. Websites that will take your information and then send you spam or insert something malicious into a ‘free’ program, game or other software.

Clearly we have to be vigilant as internet web travelers.

With that in mind, we’re happy to report that McAfee has found the Todd Russell Insurance Agency website safe according to McAfee’s SiteAdvisor results.

McAfee SiteAdvisor is a free internet service that checks the following of websites visited:

Web sites are tested for ‘phishing’ and other online scams, affiliations with dangerous sites, excessive pop-ups, and browser exploits.

SiteAdvisor has tested sites representing more than 95% of worldwide Web traffic.

How to add SiteAdvisor free to your internet browser

Simply visit the McAfee download page and it will detect the browser you are using (Internet Explorer, Firefox) and give you the option to download and execute the program. Then as you visit sites all over the internet, you can look to see how the site is rated: green for good, yellow for warning and red for warning.

It’s especially important to watch out for red flagged sites when it comes to shopping on the internet.  Our family hopes your internet browsing is safe.

Do you have some other great, helpful tools to share that help keep our internet browsing experience safe? Feel free to use the comments below and tell us about it.

We also have an open/closed sign in the window and our office hours which the picture above might not do justice. The three red x’s are not the correct entrance doors if you are coming to our office for the first time.

Our neighbors in the building to the right are an apartment and to the left an appraiser. We added to the right neighbor’s door the following sign to help point the way:

We also have ordered a new sign for out on the building street side, so look for that to appear next month. You should be able to see this sign heading east on SR162.

We found I Drive Safely online where you don’t even need to leave the comfort of your home to take a class, you can just visit their website by clicking the above graphic (affiliate) and take the course for $19.99.

Click here to Register for IDriveSafely Mature Driver accident prevention course (affiliate)

Once you complete the course online you’ll receive a certificate that you can give to your insurance agent to get qualified for the mature driving discount.

Special note to existing Washington State Todd Russell Insurance Agency clients: I have checked with the companies we are appointed with and this course complies as of this writing with the guidelines required to receive a discount. You must successfully complete this course or one with similar Washington State every two years to be eligible to receive the discount.

If you live in Washington or Oregon and are curious how much taking this course could save on your auto insurance premium then please give us a call toll free at the office 888-737-8368 and we’ll run a quote and let you know. If you live in another state then contact your friendly local independent insurance agent.

Disclaimer: links marked as ‘(affiliate)’ means that our separate web-based business (KMR Enterprises) will earn a commission if you register for this course by clicking and following this link. You do not pay anything more for the course by signing up through this link than you would by visiting idrivesafely.com and signing up directly.

As a member of the Trusted Choice (see Trusted Choice Pledge of Performance), our agency receives access to articles written by others from time to time that we are encouraged to share with others. The article below about Life Insurance is fairly well done and wanted to pass along.

- Todd

Life Insurance: Can You Live Without It?

In the thick of an economic slump as 2009 begins, many consumers aren’t likely to have “buy life insurance” at the top of their to-do lists.

Yet life insurance is indispensable. Parents and business owners—indeed, anyone who has people dependent on them financially either at home or at work—can benefit from the unique advantages of life insurance.

In the United States, consumers and businesses owned more than $19 trillion of life insurance as of year-end 2007, reported the American Council of Life Insurers.

Yet a myth persists that life insurance is too costly, falsely contributing to the perception that life insurance is not a necessity. But life insurance has actually declined or flattened in price in the past several years, according to a recent report by the Insurance Information Institute.

A 2008 survey by the Life and Health Insurance Foundation for Education noted other obstacles for consumers: 23 percent of consumers just had not gotten around to buying it, and 22 percent confessed they did not know enough about it.

What is life insurance? Life insurance is a financial contract in which a life insurance company agrees to pay an amount of money to a person upon the death of another person, in exchange for regular payments (known as premiums).

Life insurance serves two key financial functions. First, it’s a tool for prepaying for immediate expenses needed soon after the time of a person’s death. Second, it’s a way to generate substantial investment capital to produce future income (to replace income that an insured person would have been providing if they had not died).

Because a deceased breadwinner no longer is providing an income stream from salary, commissions or wages, a family needs to have invested funds that can generate replacement income. Likewise, a business owner who passes away leaves behind co-owners and employees who need funds to replace the person’s expertise and revenue-generating capabilities, or to restructure the business.

Life insurance provides that large sum of capital, at a time (death) that cannot be predicted.

To determine if and how much life insurance is appropriate, a Trusted Choice^® insurance agent or broker can help answer two important questions:

1) How much cash will be needed upon the death of a parent, business owner, or other individual? These immediate costs often include uninsured medical expenses and funeral expenses. Additionally, many consumers and business owners have financial obligations that do not go away upon death: a mortgage loan, auto loans, business loan or line of credit, credit card debt and college costs, to name the most common.

2) How much annual income would sustain a household? An estimate of income for a family starts with the amount of income earned in the year prior to a breadwinner’s passing. From there, additional expenses (child care, for example) should be added; while living expenses for the deceased person can be subtracted.

An insurance professional can help calculate the amount needed today that would provide an annual income for a certain number of years in the future. That’s the starting point in a decision of how much life insurance you need for your family or business.

Your Trusted Choice^® agent can help sort out other potential sources of funds, such as Social Security benefits, pension income, group life insurance benefits, and investment income from other assets. These amounts typically reduce a person’s need for life insurance, but don’t eliminate the need.

Life insurance comes in two broad types: term (or temporary) and permanent (or lifetime). Term life insurance pay benefits if the death of the insured person happens during the “term” of the policy (anywhere from one year to as much as 20 years). Permanent life insurance pays benefits no matter when the insured person dies. (It is known as “whole life” since it is in force the whole lifetime of the insured person.) There are varieties of permanent life insurance, such as universal life, variable life and traditional whole life.

More than 1,000 licensed life insurance companies in the United States make for a competitive marketplace for consumers. That competition has driven down costs for term life insurance, reported the Insurance Information Institute, while keeping permanent life insurance costs stable.

Premiums are calculated for each person who applies for life insurance, based on cost tables. Age (the older, the higher the cost) and health status are two key factors life insurers use to set premiums. One lesser-known discount: per-unit cost for life insurance goes down with larger amounts purchased.

Life insurance is distinct from other financial products because of two key tax advantages: the money paid into a permanent life insurance policy can accumulate free of income taxation; and the benefits paid from a life insurance contract are free of income taxation.

Some people may think they can live without life insurance, but in reality it’s their families and businesses that cannot. If you want to start 2009 by increasing the financial security of your family or business, contact a Trusted Choice^® insurance agent or broker to begin a discussion of life insurance needs and solutions.

The picture above is of the family emergency waiting room where we waited for news from the ER doctor last night. The good news is that our family member was released and able to come home late last night when at one point it was looking like he might have to stay awhile. The not so good news is that he’s still not well and one of his parents must attend to his needs today while he heals.

Therefore I will be home playing nurse today while Kara is at Labor & Industries with a client. As a result, our office will open at 1pm PST instead of the normal 9:30am PST on Monday February 9, 2009. The office phones are forwarding so if clients need anything we’ll try our best to help while we’re both out of the office.

Please keep our sick family member in your thoughts today.

Now here we are some 14+ years later in 2009 in the digital age where many people do their reading online and many in this format called a blog which offers a fresh way to publish information to a wide audience.

I’m here in the office on this fine Saturday morning as the sun is slowly rising and have been thinking most of the month about a good way to introduce this blog and what it will be. The title has a disco feel to it, doesn’t it?

You can see my desk spot to the right. Kara, my best friend and office working mate for those 14+ years at TRIA is at Orting High School helping to raise money for Project Graduation.

Yup, that’s a guitar by my desk. Got to keep the calluses. It’s not for serenading clients or anything dramatic like that. Sometimes I’ll take a break from the insurance world and work the fretboards. I play in a couple bands, one of them a client is in, and have written a few dozen original songs.

This blog will be a little like the newsletter we published in paper form once upon a time, but we plan to update more frequently.

For those reading who are new to world of blogs, I’m jealous of you. There is a wonderful world of seemingly endless free reading material that awaits you. For those who already know what a blog is, then you can safely skip the next section.

What is a blog? And why should TRIA have one?

A blog or weblog for short is simply described as a chronologically organized online diary usually written in a more personal style. Blogs are typically updated frequently, at least in the beginning, but can vary as far as updates go. We are going to try and update this blog an average of once a week.

Most blogs have something called an RSS feed which conveniently allows readers to subscribe to the feed so they don’t have come directly to the website.

You can subscribe to Todd Russell Russell Insurance Agency blog RSS feed here:
http://www.trinsuranceagency.com/blog/feed/

If you are a client or thinking of possibly becoming one someday (we’re only licensed in Washington and Oregon, just FYI) or simply want to read an insurance-related blog, please subscribe.

There are many different free RSS readers out there like Google Reader which allow you to keep up with your favorite subscriptions. Think of this RSS reader like having a bunch of different magazine subscriptions streaming to you an article at a time.

Some blog posts are a lot like articles and others are shorter. What you’re reading right now serves as an example of a typical blog post.

As mentioned above, blogs typically have a more personal tone than professional. The better ones in many people’s opinion are informational and/or entertaining. For example, I’m not sure how many clients knew I even played the guitar.

Now onto the second question in this section: Why should TRIA have a blog? The business aspect of this blog is that it will give us a chance to share agency-related news, helpful information about the products and services our insurance agency provides as well as general information about insurance in general in the states where we are licensed.

The (somewhat) non-business aspect of this blog is that we will be able to share with friends, family, clients, prospective clients and readers what is going on with our family. Our family is our business and vice versa. For example our oldest son Joel is now helping to scan documents for the agency and working with Kara and I in the office every day.

Being in the small town of Orting all this time, we’ve made a number of friends in the area and would also like a digital place to allow both long time and new friends to see who we are and what we’re doing. This blog won’t get too personal about our family of course, but readers are bound to learn some things you didn’t know.

Comments are welcome

Comments are welcome on this blog subject to moderation using a few basic guidelines:

• Please keep comments on topic for each post and G rated.
• Be respectful to each other and us. No flaming, trolling or other web anti-social behavior.
• No spam. We use rel=nofollow on all external links in the comment section

The TRIA moderators reserve the right to edit or delete any comment or trackback that does not follow the above guidelines.

Todd Russell Insurance Agency now proudly an Independent Agency

The biggest news of the month of January is that we are now an independent agency. I can’t let this first post go by without explaining a little bit about what this means for our insurance agency going forward.

As of January 6, 2009, Todd Russell Insurance Agency has become an independent insurance agency allowing us to place insurance risks through multiple standard and non-standard insurance companies where the agency is appointed. We no longer have any contract that binds us to only place business with a specific insurance company for a specific line of insurance.

What this means for our clients is:

• we can shop around and help clients find the best coverage and premium for the companies we are appointed with at or in between renewal periods
• clients will have more options at renewal including but not limited to changing to a different company should the premiums increase
• more diverse range of insurance products and services available

Three of our directly appointed companies are AM Best A+ rated and have a combined years in business totaling over 250 years experience, so we’re pretty jazzed about the opportunities before us.

January 2009 was also the reboot for our business and while I’d love to stay here and keep typing, I need to get on the phones and working. Thank you for reading and if you have any questions, feedback or concern about this blog, please let us know below.