At what point does it become worth it to file an insurance claim?
An article linked from cnn.com has some great advice, which I think are good rules of thumb. Also, at least my insurance gives a premium price for those who haven't filed a claim in 5 or more years for homeowners or rental insurance. See if you have a similar discount, will loose it, and guess how much that will cost you over 5 years. My rule of thumb: Your premium might go up quite a bit, possibly as much as triple, especially for a large claim. But, it is certainly worth it if you are going to get more than triple your premium through your claim. The worst case: Mortgage mandated insurance, which will be about triple your current cost. At what point can you not afford the repair, and how will that repair affect your home? In your scenario, you would be claiming $1, which I could agree is universally bad. A good tip is to raise the deductible to the point you feel you can cover on your own so you aren't tempted.  (It would lower your premium too) This is what an emergency fund is for.  In your examples, if you have $10K in an emergency fund, don't file a claim.  If you have no emergency fund, and your roof is missing, I would suggest filing a claim. If you have no money, but the claim is to fix something that you could ignore (missing a back porch?  Lock the back door and don't go out of it) then save the $10K and pay for it out of pocket. When it doubt, pay for it out of pocket if possible. "We learned the hard way on this one.  First, our area was hit with what was called an ""inland hurricane"" where we forced to file a claim as our home received extensive damage.   Within the same year, we also incurred an electrical surge which took out our older big screen tv (one of those big monstrosities that sits on the floor).  We were granted full replacement with a more modern flat screen TV, TV stand, and DVD player.  It seemed like a no brainer. We quickly found it as our premium went up that it wasn't that sweet.  It wasn't a huge increase, but it definitely has us truly evaluate if it's really necessary filing a claim."
What you are doing is unethical and illegal but is very hard to catch and prosecute. The key thing for an unethical person to think about here is insurance.  For most government incentive programs you have to have the intention to live there. It is extremely hard to prove intent - unless you ask this question under your name on a public forum that is archived by many search engines and maintains a log of all changes.  For other folks, it is common for them to claim that they intended to take residence but were surprised that their finances didn't work the way they anticipated. Still, as long as the bank is paid, it is unlikely that they will investigate. However, what happens if there is a major repair needed? You have insurance -  because your bank has asked for proof of insurance before they will give a mortgage. That insurance is for an owner occupied building, which you do not have.  Your insurance will inspect your claim. If the circumstances do not match what you are insured for because you have lied to the insurance company, they will not pay your claim - which they are entitled to do.  You are operating uninsured with tenants. This is a hidden risk you may not be considering. Tenants do not treat property with the same care as an owner - this is why they are insured differently. You are now paying for insurance that you will have a difficult time ever filing a claim on.   In addition, if something were to happen that makes it time to claim the insurance value so that you can pay off the mortgage, the insurance company will investigate. They may very easily refuse to pay your fraudulent claim. They may refer you to the police for insurance fraud. The bank will want their money. If they discover that you were not occupying the property, they may just foreclose.  They may also notify the government that you were not occupying the property, at which point some one might search and find that you were showing intent to defraud the program out of money that is free for you but gotten through deception. Consider a less risky unethical path like telling people you've been locked out of your car and just need a little money to pay the locksmith to open it. You promise to pay them right back once you get in your car where your wallet is. Then take their money and go find another sucker. It's ethically equivalent and you are much less likely to go to jail. However you have to face the people you are deceiving for money, so you may feel less comfortable.  Good luck making your decisions! The point of insurance is to trade high variable costs for much lower fixed costs. The question isn't whether you can afford what would be a catastrophic event for anyone else, but whether it would be better to pay a small amount regularly vs. a possibly larger amount occasionally. One of the reasons to buy insurance is to avoid costly litigation (rich people are more frequently targeted for litigation). By purchasing liability insurance, the insurance company pays for the litigation and/or settlement. If you are wealthy enough to keep an experienced litigation firm on retainer, you may not need that benefit, but it might be worth giving that stress to a third party. Life insurance is also an important part of estate planning because of the tax treatment of insurance payouts compared to the tax treatment of a large estate. There are certainly classes of insurance that make less sense for those with great cash flow, but money doesn't obviate all the benefits of insurance. "You're asking for opinions here, because it's a matter of how you look at it. I'll give it a shot anyway. For insurance purposes - there's a clear answer: you insure based on how much it would cost you to replace it. For some reason, you're considering as a possibility negotiating with the insurance company about that, but I've never heard of insuring something at a ""possible sales value"" unless you're talking about a one of a kind thing, or a particularly valuable artifact: art, jewelry, etc. That it would be appraised and insured based on the appraised value. Besides, most of the stuff usually loses value once you bought it, not gains, so insuring per replacement costs makes more sense because it costs more. As to your estimations of your own net worth to yourself - its up to you. I would say that something only worth what people would pay for it. So if you have a car that you just bought brand new, replacing it would cost you $X, but you can only sell it for $X-10%, because it depreciated by at least 10% once you've driven it off the dealer's lot. So I would estimate your worth as $X-10% based on the car, not $X, because although you spent $X on it - you can never recover it if you sell it, so you can't claim to have it as your ""net worth""." You should probably talk to a lawyer experienced in such matters, it is really hard to tell from what you described whether there is a problem or not. Are they trying to put majority of blame on me so that they can   increase my premium or are they acting the right way? Both may be true. They are acting in their own best interests, not yours. They're trying to minimize their exposure. Had the other guy had insurance they would be much more susceptible to shift the blame, but since he doesn't - it is unlikely that they'll recover their money. So it is not in their best interests to accept your claim. Whether they're right or not - you answered yourself. A person backing out is usually responsible and the burden of proof that you aren't is on you. Does the insurance have something to gain from assigning more fault on me? Of course. Less money to shell out, more premiums to get. That said, they are willing to admit that some of the blame is on the other driver, which means that they're not entirely dismissing your claims. In general, I'm just trying to make sure I'm not being cheated   monetarily by the insurance company in any way. Sue them. It's always hard to know the exact policy terms, but as a general rule there are two main contributions to insurance payouts. The first part covers expenses aimed at restoring the situation to its previous state pre-incident. This may include repair work and materials etcetera. The second part kicks in when it's not reasonably possible to repair the damage, or at least not in a financially efficient way. In this case, the insurer can decide to pay out the decrease in value. This is in fact very common in car accidents, where the car is a total loss.  In your case, it's quite possible that your roof, even with the two partial repairs is in a worse condition than it was before the storm. For instance, the new shingles may not match the old ones exactly. Thus the value of your home has decreased despite the reasonable repair attempt. And as mhoran_psprep points out, there can be hidden damage as well, which is a lurking liability. If you've accepted the cash payment in lieu of a full repair, you also accept the roof in its new condition. "For most situations the ""no need"" answers are 100% correct. The corner case to think about depends on your health and your family history.  Not to be morose, but if folks in your family who died young from heart issues, clusters of cancer or other terminal illnesses, you may want to consider getting medically qualified for a modest amount of insurance when you are young. Then, when you have children, you usually have the option of incrementally upgrading your coverage over time." In the terms of profit, you're most likely not going to make any. The other posters had good suggestions about donating and I say the same.   The fact that you had no business insurance leads me to believe that you may just have an expensive hobby and not an actual business. Talk to your accountant/tax preparer and see what and how much loss can be deducted, although that doesn't help in the present.   This is a hard lesson to learn but I hope it sticks. **Always** have business insurance, especially in an area such as yours where hurricanes are relatively normal. It's absurdly foolish and unacceptable not to have insurance.   I hope all works out. Credit risk and insurance risk are highly correlated for a single legal party.  Trouble with one could indicate trouble with another. Any increase in credit risk such as new borrowing will be perceived to be an increased likelihood of insurance risk, manifested as a fraudulent or subconsciously induced claim.  Any claim of insurance will be perceived to be an increased likelihood of default, manifested as a default, voluntary or not. To a creditor/insurer, only the law applies; therefore, private arrangements between the borrower/insured and third parties do not factor because the creditor/insurer has no hope of recourse against such third parties in most places around the world. Regardless of whether there is a price ceiling on compensation for damages to assets, limiting an insurers costs, if a risk is realized then it can be presumed through sequential sampling as well as other reliable statistical techniques that future risk has risen.  The aforementioned risk dominoes subsequently fall. Generally speaking, the lower one's financial variance, the lower the financial costs.  In other words, uncertainty can be mostly quantified with variance and other mathematical moments as well.  Any uncertainty is a cost to a producer thus a cost to the consumer.  A consumer who is perfectly predictable with good outcomes will pay much lower costs on average than not, so one who keeps a tight financial ship, not exposing oneself to financial risks and better yet not realizing financial risks, will see less financial variance, thus will enjoy lower costs to financing, which includes insuring.