Insurance and work from home are two of the biggest reasons for services inflation. The second cause is slowly subsiding as more and more employers are requiring full time office work, which hopefully will also cause the wild swings in individual stock prices to subside. I have no clue on the first one.
I never made an insurance claim and so not the reason for the > 50% premium increase in my renewal letter. I am self insured for earthquake and am not in flood or mudslide risk.
@larryB, from experience, we know health and auto insurance rates are higher in poorer zip codes. It seems even house insurance is the same but difficult to say so for sure. Since you were in the business, any insight into this?

Started 500s HESM in my Schwab income-oriented account. Will double it in the coming days depending on the market moves ... but as this is newsy week w/the FOMC, I prefer to tranche into positions, especially when it's commission-free. :)

@MikeM, deductible limits may depend on insurance co. Liberty Mutual has them as $100-5,000 or 1-10% of home value. Don't know if they will make exceptions on request.
https://www.libertymutual.com/insurance-resources/property/home-insurance-deductibles-faqs

@Old_Joe, my question really is, is it possible to have a $50,000-100,000 deductible HO policy with any of the insurance companies available to you? Basically self-insuring for anything other than total loss of your home burning in a wild-fire storm or wiped out by mud slides or whatever other calamities make insurance in California so expensive or even prohibitive.

Bought a 5 year government agencies bond today yielding 6.25%. Callable of course. Ride the ride until it ends, but with inflation higher for longer, maybe that could last a year or so.
As you've said @hank, gold has had a heck of a ride ytd. I had added some to my long term holding (since 2020) earlier this year but I'll hold off buying more now. Gold was probably due for this correction. I did take a gamble on a miner stock, Barrick Gold Corp, GOLD, about a month ago after a positive Barrons article. It's quite volatile and I'm probably about even on the bet.

Early announcement on 4/30/24 for I-Bond rates 5/1/24 - 10/31/24.
Fixed/base rate 1.30% (same)
Variable rate (semiannual) 1.48%
Composite rate = [0.0130 + (2 x 0.0148) + (0.0130 x 0.0148)] = 4.28%

Just a heads-up … GDX (gold miners index) is down near 4% on the day. Gold is off $50 to just above $2300 after peaking over $2400 2 weeks ago. Is it a good buy? I don’t know. If I had some spare cash lying around, I’d take a small position (but I don’t). Have pretty much side-stepped the metals this year because of the combined volatility + age issues. I do keep 10% of portfolio in PRPFX, and have for about 20 years. It maintains a 30-35% exposure to metals + miners.
FWIW - While most observers think the miners are underpriced relative to the metal, investing in the miners is a lot more risky. For a conservative small play, I’d stick with something tied to the price of the metal itself rather than going out on a limb with the miners. Lots of such funds. I’ve used precious metals (mix) GLTR before. But there are cheaper ones.

In one of my first posts in this thread, I reported approaching my insurance co re increasing deductible by 2,500 to $7,500. The premium would go down by $80 on a $1,800 renewal which was not much of a decrease. The choices I have are stay with current Co. which does not feature among the best companies for customer satisfaction and the alternative I could find (because not too many are writing new policies) is Mercury at $1500 with below average customer satisfaction.
One of my family members has been with the same insurance company for 30 years. When he bought a 4 unit rental 5 years ago, his agent’s quote was materially higher than another agent’s quote for the same insurance company. His original agent could not match the second agent’s quote. So he has all his policies with the same insurance co. but through two different agencies. That is how strange insurance market is.

It's pretty certain that if an insurance company finds out about a loss it will affect your rates (unless you have accident forgiveness).
Except for the smallest of collisions, an insurance company will find out about an accident even if you don't inform the insurer directly. Assuming you obey the law. Insurers check police reports and most if not all states require you to report a collision if the estimated damage exceeds a certain threshold. For example, that is $500 in Florida:

Section 316.065, Florida Statutes, requires the driver of a vehicle involved in a crash involving injury or death to a person, or at least $500 estimated vehicle or property damage to immediately contact local law enforcement.

https://www.flhsmv.gov/insurance/involved-in-a-crash
There's some wiggle room there (that dent to the fender sure didn't look like it would cost $500 to fix). Still, if you are following the law, the insurer will find out.
It's different for comprehensive and for home insurance. AFAIK, there's no obligation to inform the insurer. (Though one should check one's policy terms to be sure.)

@Old_Joe, I'm curious. Deductibles seem to be a big lever for insurance companies. If you were to ask for say a $50k or even a $100k deductible, would they do that with lower premiums? Obviously this would only be for catastrophic occurrences, but that's how I see HO insurance anyway.

Schwab GTC used to be 60 days only, but now it's 6 months. Day-order (expires at the end of the day) is also an option. One thing nice is that if, say, you have 500# GTC order, and only 200# get filled on some day, then the rest 300# will remain GTC but you can cancel that. Most trading is commission-free, but in old days, single commission applied to the entire GTC order.
The first time you try to use pre/after-hour trading, you may have to go through 10-15 approval process. They have to read a scripted text before approving this feature. You may want to get this out of the way if you will be trading pre/after-market hours. Otherwise, there may be a delay. These are illiquid markets, and easily manipulated. You must use limit-orders. Orders from market hours doesn't carry over to pre/after-market hours, or vice-versa.
Similar at Fido and other major brokers.

PIMIX outperformance was largely due to MBS acquistions in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis.
Messrs. Ivascyn and Murata backed up the proverbial truck. Kudos to them!
This may have been a once-in-a-generation opportunity.
PIMIX returns have generally been decent the past five calendar years but they pale compared to the past.
The fund's 5 Yr and 10 Yr trailing returns were in the top 1% of the Multisector Bond category as of 10/31/2017.
PIMIX returned 6.87% and 9.33% during these periods which exceeded the BBgBarc US Universal
benchmark's return by 4.38% and 4.85% respectively.

From Bloomy -
"Boeing raised $10 billion from a bond sale on Monday that attracted about $77 billion of orders and allowed the planemaker to ease some of its financial strains by refinancing part of its massive debt load. The outsized demand for the bonds—which Boeing attracted by initially dangling a relatively juicy yield premium to prospective investors—allowed the company to ultimately shrink that premium before it priced."

"The company sold bonds in six portions, with maturities ranging from three to 40 years ... The 40-year portion yields 2.25 percentage points more than Treasuries, said the person familiar with the offering. Initial discussions called for around 2.65 percentage points."
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/boeing-looks-sell-bonds-reporting-125719270.html

This doesn't help explain why M*'s ticker search can't pull up the ETF, but CCOR (Core Alternative ETF) is available on this investor.morningstar.com webpage:
https://investor.morningstar.com/quotes/0P00019XXB (login required)
That page seems to have been removed from the www.morningstar.com site. The last capture by the Wayback Machine was on Dec 5. At that time, it was a 2* fund; the live page above says it is now a 1* fund.
Here's the captured page:
https://web.archive.org/web/20231205113350/https://www.morningstar.com/etfs/arcx/ccor/quote

Fund Allocations (Cumulative), 3/31/24
Notable shifts into stocks. The changes for OEFs + ETFs were based on a total AUM of about $34.88 trillion in the previous month, so +/- 1% change was about +/- $348.8 billion. Also note that these changes were from both fund inflows/outflows & price changes. #ICI #Funds #OEFs #ETFs
OEFs & ETFs: Stocks 60.73%, Hybrids 4.60%, Bonds 17.89%, M-Mkt 16.78%
https://ybbpersonalfinance.proboards.com/post/1451/thread

I think it is worth reading the articles @msf posted in this thread.
I would be interested in posters' comments comparing BUFB (and BUFF) and HELO, the laddered buffering ETFs. if you have to choose one, which one would it be to buy on May 1?
https://www.innovatoretfs.com/etf/?ticker=bufb (buffering against first 9% loss)
https://www.innovatoretfs.com/etf/?ticker=buff (buffering against first 15% loss)
https://am.jpmorgan.com/us/en/asset-management/adv/products/jpmorgan-hedged-equity-laddered-overlay-etf-etf-shares-46654q724 (buffering against the losses from 5 to 20%)
BUFB has been around for two years and BUFF has been around since Aug 11, 2020 (a different fund before this date) and neither made any distributions - management fees 0.1% and acquired fund fees 0.79%. If we like the returns and risk, tax efficiency is a welcome bonus here.

@rforno,
May 1st is only a couple of days away.
Any additional info you are able to share about CPSM?
The mechanics may be simple. The fund could just buy 1 year collar from a legitimate counterparty.
Below are my notes for me to explore and if you already have answers, please share.
Do they disclose who the counterparties are for the derivatives they are employing? Does the ER include upfront cost of the collar the fund purchases when it launches? unlikely!
Does the fund allow new investors (via creations) after the launch?
(If the fund is greedy and lets other investors to come in after the launch when the cost of the collar is high, that cost will be shared by all investors if the defined outcome (0-9.65%) is before all expenses and fees.)
I think the idea is legitimate. My only concern would be how it is implemented. JPM and BLK have buffer products but not products with complete down protection (even at the end of the defined period). May be @David_snowball can find out if they are planning to launch.

Looks like PIMIX has done a little better longer term than the previous post reveals. (+7.68% over 15 years). Let’s remember how dastardly low interest rates were over most of the past decade. That said, for a fund that’s invested about 35% in sub-investment grade paper, I’m not overly impressed either. The .62% fee is a bit high as well.
Take a look at (probably riskier) RPSIX over that same term: 3 yr -1.06%, 5 yr +2.03%, 10 yr +2.62%, 15 yr +4.83% . Interestingly, RPSIX carries an identical .62% fee.
So, with a 10-15% equity component, RPSIX lagged PIMIX over all the terms cited. No horse in the fight. Just adding to what’s already been said.

Let's not kid, or let anyone else, kid us.
If you "held onto" PIMIX for the last 5 years, you got yourself an average annual TR of of 3.07%, and for 10 years, 4.27%.
Again, in an attempt to beat a dead horse, our 5-yr CP CD ladder was paying ~4% during that 5-yr period and is paying over 5% now.
PIMIX sounds like a "free lunch" (sic) at McDonald's or worse to me.

Another bite into Schwab Gummint MM SNVXX with 5.02% yield this morning.