On 10/31/2010 5:15 PM, Gerald Groot wrote: > We have phone's, insurance, business insurance, health insurance, life > insurance, some even carry ear insurance or hand insurance. We would have phones anyway. Not all of us have all that insurance. I, for instance, carry home owners insurance and car insurance, and that's it. I admit people with a family would worry without life insurance, and maybe some kind of disability or health insurance. I think that unless they are very anxious types, most single people are better off without most of those other insurances: the tool insurance, (HAND insurance??), liability insurance (which just makes your pockets deep enough for someone to want to sue you). I went 30 years without health insurance, ever since coming home from Canada. And last spring I became the poster child for what can happen as an uninsured person gets older. Here I am, aged 64, and I had a medical crisis and a hospital stay last May, and found myself with a hospital bill for $30,500 (after negotiations.) Plus other doctor bills. Okay ... my gosh, how could she do without the insurance?? Well, first, if you prorate my hospital bill for thirty years, you end up with about $1,000 per year -- you couldn't buy a whole lot of health insurance for that. Second, these days if you have been a good and faithful customer for years, paying premiums the whole time, and you suddenly have a major medical cost, the companies have whole rooms full of people whose only job is to go through your history with a fine tooth comb, to find an excuse not to pay. Now, there is overhead for you -- pay the insurance (at what I think are exorbitant rates) and THEN pay the medical costs yourself anyway, plus maybe some legal costs trying to collect. To sum up again -- I think a very important skill for a person in business is to keep overhead to the bare minimum. I don't remember Jer mentioning advertising, but that's another one which I think most really good piano techs should do without. Word of mouth does it all so much better, and is scot free. Susan Kline -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20101031/d6a9cd59/attachment.htm>
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