Figuring flood insurance into financing cost
We recently had a sump pump fail during a rainy weekend. Never had more than an inch or so of water on the floor.  Total cost to remove the water, dry out the basement, and repair the damage to the paneling and wallboard: more than $7,000 plus the new sump pump. We are not in a flood zone.  In a flood zone the cost of the loss could be total. A flood is also the type of hazard that can also destroy the value of land.  No way I would want to self insure for this known hazard. Self-insure a $250K+ house that's deemed to be in a flood zone? Wake up, have coffee. If you don't change your mind, have another cup.
"In economics, there is a notion called the Sunk Cost Fallacy.  In a nutshell, the sunk cost fallacy says that human beings tend to prefer to ""throw good money after bad"" because of a strong loss aversion.  That, coupled with how we frame an issue, makes it very tempting to say, ""if I just add these funds, I'll recoup my loss plus..."" In reality, the best best is to ignore sunk costs.  (I know, far easier said than done, but bear with me a second.)  How much you've invested is really irrelevant.  The only question worth asking is this: ""Would I invest this money in the asset today?"" Put it this way - any money you spend on ""rescuing"" this upside mortgage is an investment that trades ready funds for a little more equity.  Knowing that the mortgage is $100K in excess of the value, why buy that asset?  If you could do a HARP, different story - but as you say, you can't. As such, buying into that investment is not the best use of your funds. You are throwing good money after bad.  Invest your money where it will earn the best rate of return - not where your heart lead you." "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.princeton.edu/rpds/events_archive/repository/Naidu040313/Flood_HN_Jan2013.pdf) reduced by 99%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Outcome Y in county c and year t is regressed on the fraction of county land ﬂooded in 1927, state-by-year ﬁxed eﬀects, and county ﬁxed eﬀects: Yct = &amp;beta;t F ractionF loodc + &amp;alpha;st + &amp;alpha;c + ct Note that  is allowed to vary by year, so each estimated  is interpreted as the average diﬀerence between ﬂooded counties and non-ﬂooded counties in that year relative to the omitted base year of 1925 or 1920.  &gt; 53 In a modiﬁed version of equation, the fraction of county ﬂooded is interacted with a dummy variable for whether the county is a &amp;quot;plantation county&amp;quot; and a dummy variable for whether the county is a &amp;quot;nonplantation county.  &gt; Column reports the within-state difference for each county characteristic by the fraction of the county flooded in 1927: the coefficients are estimated by regressing the indicated county characteristic on the fraction of the county flooded in 1927 and a state fixed effect, weighting by county size.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6q2327/when_the_levee_breaks_black_migration_and/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~177559 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **county**^#1 **ood**^#2 **Black**^#3 **agricultural**^#4 **estimate**^#5" What you are looking here is the cost of capital, because that is what you are effectively giving up in order to invest in those loans. In a discounted cash-flow, it would be the *i* in the denominator (1+*i*). For instance, instead of purchasing those loans you could have lent your money at the risk-free rate (not 100% true, but typical assumption), and therefore you are taking a slight risk in those loans for a higher return.  There are several ways to compute that number, the one most often used would be the rate if the bank were to lend that money. In this way, it would be the Fed Funds rate plus some additional risk premium. Basically you need to use a time-value-of-money equation to discount the cashflows back to today. The Wikipedia formula will likely work fine for you, then you just need to pick an effective interest rate to use in the calculation. Run each of your amounts and dates though the formula (there are various on-line calculators to pick from, and sum up the values. You did not mention your location or jurisdiction, but a useful proxy for the interest rate would be the average between the same duration mortgage rate and fixed-deposit rate at your bank; it should be close enough for your purposes - although if an actual lawsuit is involved and the sums high enough to have lawyers, it might be worth engaging an accountant as well to defend the veracity of both the calculation and the interest rates chosen. "Just looking at the practicality: Because the total value of outstanding mortgages in the US is about $10 trillion, and the government can't afford it without printing enough money to cause hyperinflation. The cost of saving the banks was actually much less than the ""hundreds of billions of dollars"" that is quoted, because most of it was loans that have been or will be repaid, not cash payments." Having a highly liquid emergency fund can lubricate the wheels for disaster recovery.  For example, several years ago I returned from a vacation to discover that, during my absence, a plumbing fixture had broken and my house was flooded. Since we had sufficient liquidity to cover the cost of the repairs in our emergency fund, the insurance company was much easier to deal with, and the relationships between the contractor, bank, and insurance company were much smoother. The bank was able to approve the insurance in minutes versus days. Ironically, we didn't actually have to touch our emergency fund precisely because we had it. Clarification - I make it a point to have no debt. Understandably, it appears as if one must construct the flows oneself because of the work involved to include every loan variation. First, it would be best to distinguish between cash and accrued, otherwise known as the economic, costs. The cash cost is, as you've identified, the payment.  This is a reality for cash management, and it's wise that you wish to track it. However, by accruals, the only economic cost involved in the payment is the interest.  The reason is because the rest of the payment flows from one form of asset to another, so if out of a $1,000 payment, $100 is principal repayment, you have merely traded $100 of cash for $100 of house. The cash costs will be accounted for on the cash flow statement while the accrued or economic costs will be accounted on the income statement. It appears as if you've accounted for this properly.  However, for the resolution that you desire, the accounts must first flow through the income statement followed next instead of directly from assets to liabilities. This is where you can get a sense of the true costs of the home.  To get better accrual resolution, credit cash and debit mortgage interest expense & principal repayment.  Book the mortgage interest expense on the income statement and then cancel the principal repayment account with the loan account.  The principal repayment should not be treated as an expense; however, the cash payment that pays down the mortgage balance should be booked so that it will appear on the cash flow statement. Because you weren't doing this before, and you were debiting the entire payment off of the loan, you should probably notice your booked loan account diverging from the actual.  This proper booking will resolve that. When you are comfortable with booking the payments, you can book unrealized gains and losses by marking the house to market in this statement to get a better understanding of your financial position. The cash flow statement with proper bookings should show how the cash has flowed, so if it is according to standards, household operations should show a positive flow from labor/investments less the amount of interest expense while financing will show a negative flow from principal repayment.  Investing due to the home should show no change due to mortgage payments because the house has already been acquired, thus there was a large outflow when cash was paid to acquire the home. The program should give some way to classify accounts so that they are either operational, investing, or financing. All income & expenses are operational.  All investments such as equities, credit assets, and the home are investing.  All liabilities are financing. To book the installment payment $X which consists of $Y in interest and $Z in principal: To resolve the reduction in principal: As long as the accounts are properly classified, GnuCash probably does the rest for you, but if not, to resolve the expense: Finally, net income is resolved: My guess is that GnuCash derives the cash flow statement indirectly, but you can do the entry by simply: In this case, it happily resembles the first accrued entry, but with cash, that's all that is necessary by the direct method. Another fun fact: only ~10% of property southern California is covered by earthquake insurance. Why? Same reason as here.   1) It is a difficult to measure the risk. Think: Texas has experienced 3 100-year floods in 18 months. This amount of rain could have caused a wide range of different outcomes (anywhere from tens of millions to tens of billions in damage) depending on location, soil saturation, structural integrity of dams, wind direction, drainage/sewage systems, etc. Insurers who have covered these types of disasters before have paid out more in claims then they took in premiums.  2) It is expensive. Yes, you can reinsure but most of the reinsures won't take this type of risk in their property portfolio in such a soft market that has persisted for roughly a decade. Consumers don't want to pay for the coverage because it is expensive even with government backstops.   The smart money would be in investing in resiliency programs (infrastructure) that would mitigate damage to sensitive areas which would in turn drive down premiums. But that requires governments, citizens, and businesses to engage in long run thinking and execution. Some areas have discussed these types of plans (New Orleans comes to mind) but most of our coastlines need to have plans like this in place given sea level rises, high concentrations of valuable assets on shorelines, and warmer oceans having the potential to generate more intense storms.   tl;dr this is not a new problem. It is nobody's fault but everybody's responsibility. Fuck nature, man "Every bank/financial institution uses different terms but I read ""cost of carry"" as the 'risk' cost of the portfolio. that is, what is the equivalent maturity risk-free rate + the principal-weight probability of default (or to make it more complex, loss give default) %. If this summed % is less than the rate earned on the portfolio of loans you would buy loans. The difference is your spread or profit." "Your mortgage agreement probably gives you three options: Pay off your mortgage in full. Use the insurance company's deck-repair payment to fix your deck to be similar in quality to what it was when you took out the mortgage, allowing for normal wear-and-tear since you took out the mortgage. In other words, you can ""restore or repair the property to avoid lessening the Lender's security"". According to most American mortgages, if you can make the repairs for less than the insurance settlement, and the lender is happy with the work, you can keep the savings. Hand over the insurance company payment for the deck to your lender, and have them apply that amount toward the principal of your mortgage. If the repairs are not ""economically feasible"", and you are current with your payments, most American mortgages specify this use of the money. Here are some typical mortgage provisions in this regard.  This is an excerpt from the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac form 3048, which is the form used by most banks for mortgages in the state of Washington.  (I have added paragraph breaks and bolding for clarity.)  Many states have different wording, but the intent is the same: In the event of loss, Borrower shall give prompt notice to the insurance carrier and Lender.  Lender may make proof of loss if not made promptly by Borrower.  Unless Lender and Borrower otherwise agree in writing, any insurance proceeds, whether or not the underlying insurance was required by Lender, shall be applied to restoration or repair of the Property, if the restoration or repair is economically feasible and Lender's security is not lessened. During such repair and restoration period, Lender shall have the right to hold such insurance proceeds until Lender has had an opportunity to inspect such Property to ensure the work has been completed to Lender's satisfaction, provided that such inspection shall be undertaken promptly. Lender may disburse proceeds for the repairs and restoration in a single payment or in a series of progress payments as the work is completed. Unless an agreement is made in writing or Applicable Law requires interest to be paid on such insurance proceeds, Lender shall not be required to pay Borrower any interest or earnings on such proceeds. Fees for public adjusters, or other third parties, retained by Borrower shall not be paid out of the insurance proceeds and shall be the sole obligation of Borrower. If the restoration or repair is not economically feasible or Lender's security would be lessened, the insurance proceeds shall be applied to the sums secured by this Security Instrument, whether or not then due, with the excess, if any, paid to Borrower.  Such insurance proceeds shall be applied in the order provided for in Section 2." Looked at the luv model quickly. The most likely reason is you calculated a FCF lower than the market. You have FCF decreasing due to shrinking margins over the model period. Your terminal value then has the FCF growing by 2.3% into perpetuity so that doesn't really coincide. I mean, it could but I wouldn't use it. I personally think the shrinking margin assumption going forward is a little much.   For your terminal value calc, don't you want that to be the final model year cash flow times 1 plus the terminal growth rate?    Also, I find it interesting that the risk free rate is the terminal growth rate. Any particular reasoning behind that?  It works now at the 2.3% but probably wouldn't in a different interest rate environment. Former software developer at an insurance company here (not State Farm though). All of the above answers are accurate and address how the business analysts come up with factors on which to rate your quote. I wanted to chime in on the software side here; specifically, what goes into actually crunching those numbers to produce an end result. In my experience, business analysts provide the site developers with a spreadsheet of base rates and factors, which get imported into a database. When you calculate a quote, the site starts by taking your data, and finding the appropriate base rate to start with (usually based on vehicle type, quote type (personal/commercial/etc.) and garaging zip code for the US). The appropriate factors are then also pulled, and are typically either multiplicative or additive relative to the base rate. The most 'creative' operation I've seen other than add/multiply was a linear interpolation to get some kind of gradient value, usually based on the amount of coverage you selected. At this point, you could have upwards of twenty rating factors affecting your base rate: marriage status, MVR reports, SR-22; basically, anything you might've filled into your application. In the case of MVR reports specifically, we'd usually verify your input against an MVR providing service to check that you didn't omit any violations, but we wouldn't penalize for lying about it...we didn't get that creative :) Then we'd apply any fees and discounts before spitting out the final number. With all that said, these algorithms that companies apply to calculate quotes are confidential as far as I'm aware, insofar as they don't publish those steps anywhere for the public to access. The type of algorithm used could even vary based on the state you live in, or really just when the site code is arbitrarily updated to use a new rating system. Underwriters and agents might have access to company-specific rating tables, so they might have more insight at the company level.  In short, if there's an equation out there being used to calculate your rate, it's probably a huge string of multiplications with some base rate additions and linear interpolations peppered in, based on factors (and base rates) that aren't readily publicized. Your best bet is to not go through the site at all and talk to a State Farm agent about agency-specific practices if you're really curious about the numbers. I'm not entirely sure about some of the details in your question, since I think you meant to use $10,000 as the value of the futures contract and $3 as the value of the underlying stock. Those numbers would make more sense. That being said, I can give you a simple example of how to calculate the profit and loss from a leveraged futures contract. For the sake of simplicity, I'll use a well-known futures contract: the E-mini S&P500 contract. Each E-mini is worth $50 times the value of the S&P 500 index and has a tick size of 0.25, so the minimum price change is 0.25 * $50 = $12.50.  Here's an example. Say the current value of the S&P500 is 1,600; the value of each contract is therefore $50 * 1,600 = $80,000. You purchase one contract on margin, with an initial margin requirement1 of 5%, or $4,000. If the S&P 500 index rises to 1,610, the value of your futures contract increases to $50 * 1,610 = $80,500. Once you return the 80,000 - 4,000 = $76,000 that you borrowed as leverage, your profit is 80,500 - 76,000 = $4,500.  Since you used $4,000 of your own funds as an initial margin, your profit, excluding commissions is 4,500 - 4,000 = $500, which is a 500/4000 = 12.5% return. If the index dropped to 1,580, the value of your futures contract decreases to $50 * 1,580 = $79,000. After you return the $76,000 in leverage, you're left with $3,000, or a net loss of (3,000 - 4000)/(4000) = -25%. The math illustrates why using leverage increases your risk, but also increases your potential for return. Consider the first scenario, in which the index increases to 1,610. If you had forgone using margin and spent $80,000 of your own funds, your profit would be (80,500 - 80,000) / 80000 = .625%. This is smaller than your leveraged profit by a factor of 20, the inverse of the margin requirement (.625% / .05 = 12.5%). In this case, the use of leverage dramatically increased your rate of return.  However, in the case of a decrease, you spent $80,000, but gained $79,000, for a loss of only 1.25%. This is 20 times smaller in magnitude than your negative return when using leverage. By forgoing leverage, you've decreased your opportunity for upside, but also decreased your downside risk. 1) For futures contracts, the margin requirements are set by the exchange, which is CME group, in the case of the E-mini. The 5% in my example is higher than the actual margin requirement, which is currently $3,850 USD per contract, but it keeps the numbers simple. Also note that CME group refers to the initial margin as the performance bond instead. Because a paying down a liability and thus gaining asset equity is not technically an expense, GnuCash will not include it in any expense reports. However, you can abuse the system a bit to do what you want.  The mortgage payment should be divided into principle, interest, and escrow / tax / insurance accounts. For example: A mortgage payment will then be a split transaction that puts money into these accounts from your bank account: For completeness, the escrow account will periodically be used to pay actual expenses, which just moves the expense from escrow into insurance or tax. This is nice so that expenses for a month aren't inflated due to a tax payment being made: Now, this is all fairly typical and results in all but the principle part of the mortgage payment being included in expense reports. The trick then is to duplicate the principle portion in a way that it makes its way into your expenses. One way to do this is to create a principle expense account and also a fictional equity account that provides the funds to pay it: Every time you record a mortgage payment, add a transfer from this equity account into the Principle Payments expense account. This will mess things up at some level, since you're inventing an expense that does not truly exist, but if you're using GnuCash more to monitor monthly cash flow, it causes the Income/Expense report to finally make sense. Example transaction split: The periodic rate (here, the interest charged per month), as you would enter into a finance calculator is 9.05%. Multiply by 12 to get 108.6% or calculate APR at 182.8%. Either way it's far more than 68%.  If the $1680 were paid after 365 days, it would be simple interest of 68%. For the fact that payment are made along the way, the numbers change.  Edit - A finance calculator has 5 buttons to cover the calculations:  N = number of periods or payments %i = the interest per period PV = present value PMT = Payment per period FV= Future value In your example, you've given us the number of periods, 12, present value, $1000, future value, 0, and payment, $140. The calculator tells me this is a monthly rate of 9%. As Dilip noted, you can compound as you wish, depending on what you are looking for, but the 9% isn't an opinion, it's the math. TI BA-35 Solar. Discontinued, but available on eBay. Worth every cent.  Per mhoran's comment, I'll add the spreadsheet version.  I literally copied and pasted his text into a open cell, and after entering the cell shows,  which I rounded to 9.05%. Note, the $1000 is negative, it starts as an amount owed.  And for Dilip - 1.0905^12 = 2.8281 or 182.8% effective rate. If I am the loanshark lending this money, charging 9% per month, my $1000 investment returns $2828 by the end of the year, assuming, of course, that the payment is reinvested immediately. The 108 >> 182 seems disturbing, but for lower numbers, even 12% per year, the monthly compounding only results in 12.68%