Is it worth it? Calculating the cost of insurance.
Sure they are legit. You are basically taking out insurance.
Absolutely. However, some times insurance is worth it, and sometimes it's not, depending on how much money you have, the potential for catastrophic disaster, and the laws in your area. Let's examine this further:
In my neck of the woods, the overall crime rate is 4181/100,000 i.e. 4.1%, so there's only 1 chance in 25 of my being a crime victim in 2011. However, chances don't add normally, so over a 10-year period, it's not 1 chance in 2.5, but rather, 1 chance in 2.98 ~ 1 chance in 3.
This figure is for all crime, however, whether committed in one's presence or not.
Since my concern with respect to this thread is the liklihood where I'll have to draw my firearm, I'm only concerned about crime involving personal confrontation i.e. when I'm , Therefore, I'm removing burglary, theft, auto theft, and arson (car jackings are exceedingly rare around here, and arson's not a very deterrable crime), based on the following definitions:
Robbery: committed against someone or within their presence
Burglary: theft from one's home or business without one having been present
Theft: theft other than the above
This leaves me with a crime rate of 490/100,000, which is only about 1 chance in 200 in 2011, or 1 chance in 21 over the next 10 years.
So what's a good price for the insurance? That will vary widely, most notably so based on the laws in your area. Here in Colorado, we have a castle law, so if I shoot a bona-fide home invader, the liklihood of any charges being pressed against me are practically nil, and the liklihood of any civil suite making it to court is similarly close to nil. Thus, I can knock another 25% off the top, so my defensible encounter rate rises to 1 chance in 28 over the next 10 years.
By the way, that's also 1 chance in 6 over 50 years. Back to the calculations:
Legal costs: This will vary widely depending on a lot of factors. It could be as little as $1000 if the lawyer is successful at getting it thrown out before it goes to trial, or as much as a couple hundred thousand if you really goofed in your procedures or are in a state which takes a dim view of the average citizen "taking the law into their own hands."
For the sake of argument, let's call it $50,000.
With the chance of a defensible encounter being 1 in 28 over the next 10 years, the monthly cost of self-insuring would cost you $50,000/(28*10*12)=$14.88.
Thus, if an insurer is charging you $5 a month, his estimate of the monthly cost is between half and two-thirds that, so call it: $3 a month. Thus, the insurer's estimate of the legal expenses are actually only about $10,000, not $50,000.
Knowing this we can start asking some questions:
1. Can you afford to self-insure at $3 a month? I think for most people that's a "definate yes."
2. Do you have enough cash reserves to handle a $10,000 legal bill? Most people could probably swing this, even if it meant taking out a small second mortgage on their home and tightening their belts for a year or two.
But that's only if the actual legal expenses are the average of $10,000. They may be a lot less, but they may be a lot more, so:
3. Do you have enough cash reserves to handle a $100,000 legal bill? I don't, although I could probably figure out a way to pay it off in three to five years.
Insurance companies have an advantage: They're dealing with hundreds, if not thousands of insured people. They know there will be a few cases exceeding $100,000, but they also know that most of the cases will be settled for less than $10,000. Thus, their mean cost per case really is $10,000.
Our cost per case couple be $1,000, but it could be $100,000.
This brings us to the key point with respect to insurance: It's not about whether you can afford to self-insure, as that's always the less expensive route. Insurance companies are in business for a reason: They make a profit on the premium they charge you above and beyond what it would cost you to self-insure.
Rather, insurance is about whether minimizing the risk of being wiped out, financially, should your case be the one that's 5 or 10 times more expensive than the average case. Insurance is all about pooling risk, while paying a 20% to 50% premium over self-insuring for the luxury of doing so. By pooling risk, you'll pay more than you would to self-insure, but provided you act in accordance with the policy, you'll never be wiped out.