Since insurance is a topic where I have some knowledge I allow myself a longer answer
Life insurance makes sense only if you are worried what would happen to your family if you die. (Which is a reasonable concern to have if you have kids) Then you should buy life insurance without any savings component (Risikolebensversicherung). It’s like a bet. You pay a certain amount of money every year and if you die, your family gets a chunk of money. If you live, nobody gets anything.
By the way insurance agents always try to include some savings component in the life insurance which is definitely not the optimal solution for mustachians.
@julianek is of course right. If you have enough money aside you shouldn’t worry about what would happen to your family if you die.
Household insurance is not mandatory. Some landlords request an insurance, but they request private liability (Privathaftpflicht) and this is because the private liability covers damages on the house (Mieterschäden).
Mandatory Insurances in Switzerland are:
- Basic health insurance (BVG)
- liability insurance vor Vehicles (cars, motorcycles, boats, e-bikes with licence plates) if you own one
- Building insurance for fire and natural damages (if you own a building) in most of the cantons. (In GE, TI, AI, VS it is not obligatory. In theses 4 Cantons and in UR, SZ, OW you can buy the insurance wherever you like. In the rest of the cantons you are obliged to buy from the cantonal building insurance.)
I really like this approach! This is also according to me the best approach.
If someone is thinking about insurance, the first thing he should be clear about is how much risk he would like to/he can curry himself.
According to the approach above you can optimize the following way. If you decide that you don’t want/can’t curry the risk of all your belongings being lost (by fire or elsehow) but you are willing to curry a risk of eg. CHF 5’000 you
a) remove all extra coverages (Einfacher Diebstahl etc.) and
b) you increase your deductible to 5’000. This has a huge effect to the premium! (Insurance agents don’t like the high deductibles exactly because they have such a huge effect on the premiums but they do exist if you insist)
This is partially true. If you get sued for something that your private liability would cover, then they will also take care of the legal case.
Example: your landlord sais that when you left the apartment you left him with big damages. You don’t accept it and don’t pay anything. He sues you. The private liability will cover also the legal costs since they would also cover the costs for the damages of the apartment.
But there are cases when you have to take legal actions. Example: Your employer fires you. You believe it’s not justified and want to sue him.
Generally a legal insurance is mostly needed when you want to take legal steps against someone else.
So what insurances do I suggest?
Healt:
- The basic with the higher deductible and a telmed model on the cheapest (or one of the cheapest) health insurers
- Complementary health that would offer better coverages (halbprivat / privat) for serious illnesses. There are products that are quite cheep with high deductibles (Check out myFlex form CSS for example)
Vehicles (cars, motorcycles, boats, e-bikes with licence plates):
- Liability. Go to comparis (since mandatory, there are not big differences). Try to optimize in terms of deductible and added coverages (z.B. Bonusschutz).
- If you can/are willing to carry the costs of repairing/renewing your car after an accident, you don’t need anything else
House/Living:
- Private liability especially if you rent or ride a bike. By riding a bike you can have an accident with someone else which could result to health care costs which can be dramatically high
- Household if you don’t want/can’t curry the risk of all your stuff at home being gone and having to replace them. Here you can choose high deductibles (there are deductibles as high as 2’000 to 5’000 which have a high effect on premiums) and remove all added coverages like “einfachen Diebstahl”. (Then of course you carry your cost on your own)
Legal insurance:
This is a difficult one. Legal cases can be really cost intensive and sometimes you have to do them. On the other hand there are limits on the amounts an insurance would pay (usually up to 100k/200k) and such legal cases are definitely seldom. Also a lot of legal cases are not included in the coverage (like divorces). So probably not a suggestion but ypu can think about it.
What insurances I do have? (Quite a lot since I work for one)
Health, car, houesholde and Private liability as described above.
I also habe Legal protection but am thinking of canceling it.
And finaly I have travel insurance. This is because of the convenience and not because I can’t bear the risk.
But as (kind of) mustachian I book my vacations ridiculously early in order to get good rates. By having two kinds I here and there have to cancel. My balance with this insurance is positive till today which means I received more money than I paid.
By the way, since talking about travel insurance, if you want one then by one with a yearly premium from a big insurer if you go on vacation at least 2 times a year. It less expensive and has better coverages than the insurances that are offered per trip.
