• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Wealth Pilgrim

No Money Worries. No Matter What.

Neal Frankle featured in
  • Home
  • Life Insurance
  • Investing
    • Build Strong Investment Building Blocks To Avoid Going Broke In Retirement
    • Systematic Mutual Fund and ETF Investing
    • Stock Market Investing Guide
    • Choosing the Right Investment Brokerage Guide
    • How Bonds Work Guide
    • How Banks Really Work Guide
    • Annuities – What You Need To Know Before You Invest
    • A Beginners Guide To Buying Individual Stocks
    • Create A Pool Of Great Mutual Funds and ETFs To Pick From To Secure Your Retirement
    • ETF and Index Fund Investment Guide
  • Earn More
  • Banking
  • Retirement Planning
    • Retirement Guide
  • Reviews
    • Upgrade Personal Loans Review
    • Lending Club Review
    • Prosper Review
    • Ally Invest TradeKing Review
    • CIT Bank Review
    • LegalZoom Review
    • Lexington Law Review
    • Airbnb Host Review
    • Should You Drive For Uber?
  • Tax
  • Courses
    • Raise Your Credit Score So You Can Buy a House – Free Video Course

Liability Insurance for Small Business Made Simple

by Neal Frankle, CFP ®, The article represents the author's opinion. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure for more info.

Liability insurance for small business is a must if you have your own shop.

When you own a small business, you have responsibility for your customers, staff and yourself. But you are also responsible for what happens when people use your product or service or set foot on your premises.

Successful business owners understand this. When owners ignore this issue, they usually don’t stay business owners for long.

So if you are interested in being self-employed (or staying in business), this post is for you.

Some people think they can avoid the expense of liability insurance if they structure the business as an LLC.

Wrong. I’m not a lawyer, but regardless of how you set your business up, you need this coverage.

Personal liability extends to owners when they personally guarantee loans, have personally injured someone or acted improperly.

Over 78% of all U.S. businesses are structured as a partnership or sole proprietorship, according to Bizstats.com.

For the majority of small business owners, this form of ownership puts your business and personal liabilities at risk.

Owning business liability insurance protects both your business and personal life from financial ruin. There is so much at stake and the cost of this business insurance coverage is so inexpensive.

You’re really not doing yourself any favors if you don’t protect yourself by having business liability insurance – regardless of how your business is structured.

What does business liability insurance cover?

If you get sued for personal injury or because of damage to property, you’re covered for the claim and the legal defense costs with most policies.

In many cases, you can buy a generic policy known as General Liability Insurance. This will provide the benefits mentioned above.

If you provide professional services, you should consider buying errors and omissions insurance in addition to the general liability policy.

If you manufacturer a product, you should protect yourself with a product liability insurance policy.

How to make sure you have the right policies and pay the lowest premium?

First, check some of the links I’ve placed above. They provide strategies to help get the best coverage at the lowest cost.

Also, never rely on your agent to get you the lowest price. The reality is, your agent doesn’t work for you. He or she works for the company they represent.

The absolute best way to get the most comprehensive coverage at the lowest cost is to meet with at least three agents. Make sure the agents understand the kind of business you are in and have clients in your industry.

When the agent understands that she is competing for business, she will understand that she’ll have to earn your business.

By doing this, I don’t always go with the lowest-cost provider. I go with the agent that demonstrates he or she understands the risks my business faces.

What kind of liability insurance do you have for your business? How did you decide what to buy? What was your process?

Tweet
Pin
Share2

Reader Interactions

User Generated Content (UGC) Disclosure: Please note that the opinions of the commenters are not necessarily the opinions of this site.

Comments

  1. Larry Briggs says

    March 21, 2012 at 1:51 PM

    I will be starting up a new Heating & Air-Conditioning business May of this year and will need business liability insurance. The business will be a single member LLC with me as the only employee. I will be working in Boulder County. I will be servicing primarily residential customers. There may be some commercial customers in the future. My services will include maintenance, repair and replacement of heating and air-conditioning systems including any peripheral equipment such as filtration, humidification, fresh-air ventilation and control systems.
    I have been actively working in this industry for 10 years and have EPA and NATE certifications. I also recently passed the Master Mechanical Contractors License N29 Exam and will be applying for a business license.
    Because of insurance costs I have not yet decided whether or not to include hot water hydronic systems (boilers) in my services. Therefore I would like 2 bids, one to cover boiler service and one without boiler service.
    Of course, it is difficult to estimate gross income for the first year but I hope it would be at least $50,000.
    If you need further information to be able to provide accurate insurance quotes feel free to call or email me.
    Thank you,
    Larry Briggs
    720-936-8198
    thehvacguy@gmail.com

    Reply
  2. JT McGee says

    February 22, 2011 at 9:38 AM

    Liability for mine is covered as an additional clause in a general umbrella. A lot of people choose to add it onto their homeowners as an additional rider, but obviously this works only for sole proprietorships.

    I’m of the mind that its worth having even if you have 0 assets. Going to court/paying for court/dealing with a financial headache just isn’t worth the few bucks a month a general liability insurance rider costs.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Are You Human? * Time limit is exhausted. Please reload CAPTCHA.

Primary Sidebar

Who is Neal Frankle

Neal Frankle

I'm a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ Professional with more than 25 years of experience. I feel very blessed and hope to share my personal financial experience and professional wisdom with readers of WealthPilgrim.
Read More »

Stay Connected

Facebook Twitter YouTube RSS
We are on YouTube
Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement.  We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement. We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

YouTube Video UCoU0buhwVplzXrsyf342nOg

Retirement Crusaders

June 10, 2022 1:19 PM

Subscribe
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error 403: Requests from referer are blocked..

Domain code: global
Reason code: forbidden

More Categories

Career Development
College Funding
Credit Cards
Credit Score Fixes
Money and Marriage
Debt Relief
Estate Protection
Property Investment Loans
Small Business Strategies
Spend Less Money
Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement.  We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

Retirement financial education for people age 55+ seeking to retire well and for those retired seeking to enjoy a better retirement. We discuss retirement planning, retirement investments, taxes in retirement, retirement spending, IRA and 401k distributions and we will personally answer questions that you pose in the video comments.

While so much financial information is about preparing for retirement, what about managing your finances in your retirement years? That's exactly what we cover at Retirement Crusaders.

Neal Frankle is a retired registered investment adviser. Larry Klein is a retired financial advisor and retired CPA. They have 70 years of financial advising experience to share so that you have your best retirement years.

YouTube Video UCoU0buhwVplzXrsyf342nOg

Retirement Crusaders

June 10, 2022 1:19 PM

Subscribe
This error message is only visible to WordPress admins

Error 403: Requests from referer are blocked..

Domain code: global
Reason code: forbidden

Disclaimer

Wealth Pilgrim is not responsible for and does not endorse any advertising, products or resource available from advertisements on this website. Wealth Pilgrim receives compensation from Google for advertising space on this website, but does not control the advertising selection or content. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers. The information contained in WealthPilgrim.com is for general information or entertainment purposes only and does not constitute professional financial advice. Please contact an independent financial professional for advice regarding your specific situation. Wealth Pilgrim does not provide investment advisory services and is not a registered investment adviser. Neal may provide advisory services through Wealth Resources Group, a registered investment adviser. Wealth Pilgrim and Wealth Resources Group are affiliated companies. In accordance with FTC guidelines, we state that we have a financial relationship with some of the companies mentioned in this website. This may include receiving payments,access to free products and services for product and service reviews and giveaways. Any references to third party products, rates, or websites are subject to change without notice. We do our best to maintain current information, but due to the rapidly changing environment, some information may have changed since it was published. Please do the appropriate research before participating in any third party offers.


About · Contact · Disclaimer & Privacy policy

Copyright © Wealth Pilgrim 2023 All Rights Reserved