Pro Tips

Thanksgiving holiday insurance tips!

Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at the Kinney Insurance Agency! Our wish from our family to yours is a long weekend full of quality time with family accompanied by fantastic holiday food favorites! Leading up to the big day we wanted to share a few of our favorite Thanksgiving tips for our Vermont home and auto insurance clients and friends:  

Tips for hosting:

• Don’t lose track of what you are cooking. Cooking related home fires double on Thanksgiving day compared to any other day of the year. The biggest cause of this is unattended food on the stove or in the oven. There will be a lot of friends and family around and distractions can be high.
• Double check that your home insurance is up to date before guests arrive.
• Have an up to date fire extinguisher ready in the house just in case.
• Do we even need to mention the deep frying precautions at this point? Make sure that turkey is outside, in an open space, and completely thawed. (We’d also appreciate an invite to enjoy it!)

Tips for the road:

• Did you know that estimated 45 million Americans will travel more than 50 miles for Thanksgiving? The roads will be busy. Make sure that car Insurance is up to date.
• Give yourself some extra time… you’ll likely need it with the increased traffic.
• If you’re transporting your favorite casserole or side dish make sure it’s properly secured in case you need to make a sudden stop. You don’t need want a flying hot dish!

Tips for going out of town:

• Make sure the house is all buttoned up, the heat is on, and all the locks and alarms are set.
• Don’t announce your plans to the world. Thieves can and do monitor social media to find unoccupied homes to burglarize.
• You don’t need to recreate Kevin McCallister’s decoy party from Home Alone, but be sure to use light timers to make it look like you are home… a potential thief will move on to another home if they suspect someone may be home.

That’s just a few of the home and auto insurance tips we could come up with. We hope all of our Vermont insurance clients and friends have a great Thanksgiving. Enjoy the food and company. We certainly will as we have a lot to be thankful for!