When the Best Insurance Isnt Insurance

I love the insurance business. It offers people reassurance. It's like gambling backwards: You released a little money, and when something bad happens, you win and the "house," (the insurance provider) loses. In my own book, insurance is among the greatest industries on the market.

As with gambling, the chances are stacked against you. Insurance companies use complex math to make the actuarial tables that guarantee they "win." The payouts will always be significantly less than the premiums.

For example, there are about 400,000 house fires every year in the U.S. Sounds like a lot, right? The reality, though, is that with over 100 million residences, the chances are only .4 percent your house will undoubtedly be hit in a fire. If you live to 200, there exists a good chance that your home will burn down. Still, you pay $20 a month (or whatever) for fire insurance merely to protect from that small possibility. Insurance companies find out like bandits by playing those kinds of odds.

Continue down the list -- auto, life, car -- and that's how it works.

By contrast, the chances that you will turn into a victim of identity theft are much larger. This year, the FTC estimates that you will see over 10 million new victims of identity theft. Which means that your chances of becoming an ID theft victim are about 1/30 or three percent -- only about 10 times higher than the odds your house will burn down.

Does anyone sell identity theft insurance? No. You know why? Because the it’s likely that against it being profitable to take action. It's like flood insurance in the event that you live next to a river -- very hard or very expensive to acquire. So we've this tremendous threat and nothing to safeguard us from it, at least in the realm of traditional insurance. You can get fraud insurance, but not identity theft insurance.

Can you walk down a dark alley in a bad neighborhood unprotected? Of course not! Yet this is what we are expected to do with regards to identity theft, at least where traditional insurance can be involved.

Fortunately, there exists a solution to protect yourself from identity theft. Products have been developed to greatly help families monitor their identities. This is the only defense because if it happens, early detection is your best bet for fast and simple resolution. The best of these products have even fraud insurance built-in!

The best part? It is possible to protect your family for under ten bucks a month!