When summer begins to wane, it’s easy to reflect on holidays as warm, cozy respites — time to relax with your family, to strengthen the ties that bind, to make the most of your days. Just when you think it’s safe to enjoy the eggnog, there’s something lurking around the corner, in the dark, a danger unlike any other: the danger of the holidays.
Okay, we may be exaggerating a bit. The holidays really are a time for revelry and rejoicing. But there is also a bit of truth in our dark and scary story. It may be something as simple as an icy sidewalk that leads to a broken ankle. It could be a flare-up in your oven while you’re cooking a turkey. It could be a mishap with the lights on the Christmas tree. Or it could be a lot more serious. Insurance can help protect you and your family from long-term consequences associated many of these unfortunate incidents.
How Car Insurance Can Help Keep Your Holidays Safe
When you’re driving, there’s a lot to pay attention to. Danger can erupt from just about any corner. This is especially true during the holidays for a wide variety of reasons. On Halloween, for example, there are many children on the road who may not be easily seen. This could cause a wide range of accidents, from swerving to avoid a suddenly visible child to accidentally striking a pedestrian. Your insurance can make sure that not only would your injuries be covered, but any other party’s as well.
Granted, Halloween is not the only holiday that can bring about danger. Indeed, one reason why holidays are an especially important time to be insured is Americans tend to travel for the holidays, most often to be closer to loved ones. According to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 91% of all holiday travel is accomplished by personal vehicle — meaning significant majorities of people are on the roads around the holidays. Thanksgiving, in particular, marks the most heavily traveled holiday of the year.
For travel density reasons alone, having car insurance around this time of year is vital. But holidays throw in another complication: drinking. It’s well known that drivers should not mix driving and alcohol, but you can’t control the behavior of other drivers. In fact, 36% of all accidents over the Thanksgiving weekend were due to alcohol impairment. That, in part, has traditionally made Thanksgiving the deadliest four-day holiday weekend on American roads.
But it’s not alone. Four-day holiday weekends bring with them a heightened sense of risk, according to the following data:
- Thanksgiving: Average fatalities 576
- Labor Day: Average fatalities 544
- Independence Day: Average fatalities 543
- Memorial Day: Average fatalities 508
- Christmas Day: Average fatalities 414
- New Year’s Day: Average fatalities 401
Part of this increased risk is simply a side effect of more traffic on the roadways. But part of the risk can be attributed to holiday traditions: generous food and beverage digestion, as well as late nights and lack of sleep. Having car insurance can help mitigate some of the consequences that can occur while you are in your car by helping you pay for damages or medical costs.
By their nature, holidays will mean you’re on the road. Even a small accident can put a dent in your holiday plans if you don’t have insurance. With a history as the best car insurance provider in the Harrisburg area, Strock Insurance Agency is well positioned to ensure that your family keeps driving over the course of the holidays. After all, many holidays involve travel, which means that if you are stuck at home, you will not be able to participate in holiday celebrations.
Let the best car insurance provider in Harrisburg keep you on the road. Contact us today for a free quote.
How Homeowners Insurance Can Help Keep Your Holidays Safe
The home is often the place where we feel the safest. It may feel as though nothing bad can happen between those four walls. During the holidays, we tend to do even more to spruce up our home to make it acceptable and impressive to our friends and family. The reasoning is simple: We love our friends and family and we want to impress them, to make them feel welcome.
This can lead to some behaviors that, otherwise, we might not engage in. For example, we rarely go up on our roofs or climb excessively long ladders, especially in the cold of winter. However, in the interests of hanging Christmas decorations, people tend to do exactly that. Depending on the conditions outside, this can be extremely dangerous. The problem seems to be getting worse. After the year 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has noted an increase in these types of cases every year.
Protect Yourself From the Risk of Traumatic Injury
In 2014, over 15,000 persons were admitted to the Emergency Room for holiday-light related injuries. These injuries could come from any number of activities:
- Hanging holiday lights
- Use of improper climbing equipment
- Slipping off an icy roof
- Improper safety precautions when working with electronic components
- Frost bite
- Fall off a tall ladder
The CDC survey also notes that the use of alcohol during any of these activities greatly increases the risk of injury.
Having homeowners insurance will protect you from some of the cost of these injuries, depending on the depth of your coverage. Of course, that’s not the only way that homeowners insurance can cushion your finances against a Christmas disaster. One of the most common holiday dangers is fire, and it can, unfortunately, destroy your entire home.
Protect Your Home from the Devastation of Fire
Generally, when it comes to the holidays, fire can strike in one of two ways: as a side-effect of cooking or as a side-effect of the use of electronics and electricity. During Thanksgiving, for example, one might give the oven, stove and microwave a more robust workout than any other nights. The confluence of cooking oils, grease and fats around all that heat can often lead to unwanted combustion, and once a fire in the kitchen gets going, it can be quite difficult to stop.
When it comes to Christmastime, perhaps the most common cause of fire is the Christmas tree. Often jerry-rigged with electrical cords strewn all over, an overly-lit Christmas tree can be quite a hazard. According to the National Fire Protection Association, U.S fire departments responded to an average of 230 home fires caused by Christmas trees between the years of 2007 and 2011.
To be sure, these are rare instances, and most modern Christmas trees are incredibly safe. In fact, most of these holiday fires are caused by natural trees and they often take place just after Christmas. In any event, these incidents do occur, and they can be financially devastating.
Homeowner’s Insurance Can Help You Bounce Back More Quickly
A robust homeowner’s insurance policy can help protect you from the financial blow of a fire-related disaster by not only covering damage to the home, but also covering damage to objects within the home. At a time such Thanksgiving or Christmas — when so many valuables tend to be clustered around the tree — that can mean a significant financial savings.
Having homeowners insurance is generally a good idea, but during the holidays, it can mean the world to you and your family. If you’re looking for the best homeowners insurance agency in the Harrisburg, PA area, Strock Insurance Agency should be your first stop. We have a history of helping clients absorb the unexpected shocks of life and of the holidays. Contact us today to get a free homeowners insurance quote.
How Business Insurance Can Help Keep Your Holidays Safe
Businesses are members of the community and as such, they often participate in community events. In fact, as a business owner, putting yourself out there is one of the primary ways to find new customers and spread brand awareness. There are plenty of opportunities for this kind of social engagement around the holidays, largely because communities are often looking for sponsors for local events.
That’s good news for the community and, usually, good news for your business. However, sometimes, that can leave your business open to some specific types of liability or danger. For example, if someone gets injured during an event you helped to sponsor, you may be liable for some damages. Or if someone gets sick because of Christmas cookies a co-worker brings in, you could be liable for that, too. Having business insurance can help protect you from the financial damages of that liability.
And that’s in addition to the other, more mundane risks that businesses encounter. Indeed, businesses have the same risks of fire and robbery, for example, that homes do. Having business insurance can help you absorb any of the financial shocks that may come with such unfortunate turns of events.
Use Business Insurance to Insulate Yourself From Shocks
There’s another holiday-related threat out there that businesses can help insulate themselves from: Christmas cards. It may sound silly, but around the holidays, people tend to send around Christmas cards as email attachments. That may sound innocent enough, until an illegal hacker uses a fake Christmas card to gain access to your business account. Hackers have been known to hold companies ransom, threatening to destroy all the data on company servers unless a large amount of money is paid. Christmas card attachments can often give them sufficient access to accomplish just this. Business insurance can help protect you from this particular financial shock.
Of course, there are many ways that your business may interact with the public during the holiday season. Business insurance can help protect you in a number of ways:
- If someone slips on your property during holiday festivities, business insurance can protect you from financial shock.
- If you are the victim of a robbery or other crime, business insurance can help you recover quickly so your employees do not feel the shock during the holidays.
- If your business has to shut down due to a natural disaster, such as a snowstorm, business insurance can help mitigate financial damage, meaning your employees will still be able to afford holiday shopping.
- If your business sponsors an event or participates in festivities, you can be insulated from large financial shock due to unfortunate incidents.
- If your business suffers a fire or other calamity, you may be mitigated from much financial shock if you have business insurance.
- If one of your employees or invited guests is injured at a holiday party, business insurance can help you mitigate the costs of that injury.
Business insurance is a great way to help insulate everything you’ve built from the shocks of the world. Those shocks may be felt more profoundly should they occur during the holiday season. But if you have business insurance, you can enjoy the peace of mind that comes with knowing you have a way to smooth out many of those shocks.
If you’re looking for the best business insurance provider in the Harrisburg area, then be sure to look into what Strock Insurance Agency can do for you. Our agency has a well-earned reputation for helping businesses stay on their feet, even during more challenging situations. Strock Insurance Agency can help insulate you from taking a huge hit during the holidays, but only if you come to the best business insurance provider in Harrisburg and contact us today.
How Life Insurance Can Help Keep Your Holidays Safe
The thought of a loved one passing is never a happy thought, but it’s an eventuality that we need to be prepared for, especially when it comes to elderly parents or relatives. When a loved one passes, there are certainly emotional hardships present, but there are often financial hardships as well. End-of-life care and funeral expenses can both be financially straining. The average funeral, for example, can cost somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000. Often, these expenses are incurred in addition to medical expenses that accumulate at the same time.
These expenses can represent a significant hardship at a time of year when families are already leveraged for the purposes of gift-giving and holiday celebrations. Life insurance can help soften the financial blows of end-of-life care and funeral expenses. After all, no one wants to provide anything but the best when it comes to saying goodbye to a loved one. Making financial decisions in such an emotional period of time can lead to increased stress and long term difficulties. Knowing that the life insurance is there if you need it is a great way to relieve some of that stress and focus on the mourning that is so vitally important.
After all, holidays are a time for a family to come together and support each other, whether they are in the process of mourning or in the midst of celebration.
Summer Holidays
Because of their high degree of popularity, we have largely been discussing end-of-year holidays. But those holidays situated in the summer months can also include some risks. Fourth of July celebrations, for example, carry with them an extreme risk of bodily injury if fireworks are involved. In the year 2014, over 230 people took a trip to their local Emergency Rooms due to fireworks related accidents. Additionally, Labor Day barbeques can sometimes spread to include the home itself, leading to damaging fires.
These situations would generally be covered under homeowners insurance, depending on where the incidents happened. There are safety measures you can take to help prevent unfortunate accidents — avoiding the combination of alcohol and fireworks or alcohol and barbeque cooking, for example — but when accidents do occur, homeowners insurance, business insurance or even life and car insurance are crucial components to maintaining the workings of your life.
In these contexts, insurance is about eliminating interruptions to your life, making sure that the unexpected bump doesn’t knock you off your course. Summer holidays carry risks as well, which means that it’s important for you to be insured in the event of any unfortunate event.
The Benefits of Being Insured During the Holidays
When it comes right down to it, the holidays can be chaotic. Whether you’re rushing to get a turkey out of the oven or struggling to put the star on top of the tree, there are a lot of heightened moments during the holidays. That is, in fact, one of the reasons we like them so much. That heightened experience adds some punctuation to the year, to our time with friends and family.
That constant sense of rushing can sometimes leave us vulnerable to small calamities, mishaps or other dangers — our minds get cluttered and our days become stuffed, and that invites some increased risks. To be fair, there are certainly some situations we may have missed. The following is a list of situations and the type of insurance they would be covered by:
| Calamity or Mishap | Covered By |
|---|---|
| Christmas tree fire | Homeowners insurance |
| Vehicular accident (Thanksgiving driving, for example) | Car insurance |
| Traumatic injury from falling off a ladder (while hanging Christmas decorations, for example) | Homeowners insurance |
| Getting bitten by a black cat (around Halloween) | Homeowners insurance |
| Untimely passing of a loved one | Life insurance |
| Employees getting food poisoning from holiday platter | Business insurance |
| Employee injured after drinking too much at holiday party | Business insurance |
There are, of course, even more potential situations that may arise. After all, the very nature of these incidents makes them difficult to predict. The idea behind any type of insurance is that you are prepared for the unpredictable or, at the very least, insulated from the most severe shocks of what could be a traumatic financial event.
The Holidays Are a Happy Time, so Why Should I Worry About Insurance?
Most people have a lot on their minds during the holiday seasons. Your head is filled with grocery lists and gift-giving lists, not necessarily which insurance to purchase or make sure you have. That’s understandable. But the holidays are an especially important time to ensure you have insurance and make sure that your family, home, business or vehicle is covered if anything should happen.
Unfortunately circumstances do occasionally arise during the holiday season. This may be the worst possible time for such problems to happen. We’d rather be focused on the pleasant side of the holidays. But there are some unique risks that come with revelry and celebration that we need to be prepared for. In some cases, that preparation takes the form of being safe: using a designated driver, using safety equipment when working on the roof and so on.
But sometimes life is going to throw a curve ball, and in those cases it pays to be insulated against some of the shocks of these unfortunate occurrences. In many ways, insurance is about peace of mind — the ability to stop worrying about what happens next because you know that, whatever life throws your way, you have some measure of stability.
You can count on Strock Insurance Agency, located in Harrisburg, PA, to help get you through this. At Strock, you can get your car, homeowners, business and life insurance in one place, so contact us for a free quote to get started on the path to peace of mind.
