Personal Insurance Blog

Risk. Danger. Peril. Hazard. These words certainly do not have the best connotations. In fact, it's next to impossible to use these words to express something positive. After all, risk is a possibility of loss.

Did you know that every single action you do carries some form of risk? Whether it's walking up the stairs, folding some laundry, or eating a bite of that delicious ice cream sundae (see right), each and every action has some possible form of risk.

Severity of Risk

Ok, so the examples above are pretty mild when it comes to risk. If you are an optimist, I encourage you to think of the positives. If you are a pessimist, try not to get too paranoid. But here are several outcomes that can happen when walking up the stairs:

   1. You walk up the stairs safely with no issue.

   2. You stub your toe on the steps. (Ouch!)

   3. You trip and fall up the stairs, embarrassed and slightly injured.

   4. You fall backwards and break something important (like an arm).

Ok, so we only have four of any number of possible outcomes that can occur while walking up the stairs. While, if you walk up stairs often, the first outcome is the most likely (let's say 99% of the time), you cannot ignore the other 1% of possible outcomes.

Likelihood of Risk

So now that you've opened your mind to some of the several possibilities that could happen to you when walking up the stairs, turn your attention to other things, like car accidents and hurricanes.

If you are a licensed driver, how often do you drive? How good of a driver are you? How long is your commute, what type of roads do you drive on, and what type of drivers drive around you? All these (and more) are essential factors to determine your risk of driving on the road.

We've all heard the statistics about car accidents, and in recent years storms have gotten a lot worse (Katrina, Sandy, Irene, etc.) causing billions of dollars worth of damage. Has that damage happened to you? No? Will it happen to you? Maybe.

You can't predict when loss will occur. All you can do is know that you are always at risk. Will you live a risk-free life? The odds say that no, sometime in your life you will most definitely face loss. We don't know when that one (if it's only one) time will be. And depending on your lifestyle, you could be facing multiple instances of loss within a few years. You won't know until it happens.

Reducing and Redefining Risk

Here at Andrew G. Gordon, Inc., our job is risk management. We want to reduce the risk of your loss, and we have many ways for you to do so. For starters, we have a wide variety of checklists - (hurricane preparation, homeowner's) of steps for you to follow to reduce your loss. We also post a wide variety of blogs, which include several different safety tips and guides (ranging from pumpkin carving safety to motorcycle safety to skiing safety). For a more interactive experience, we also have our famous whiteboard videos.

If you subscribe to our blog, watch a video every now and then, or check our website out once in a while, you are reducing your risk by educating yourself. However, to effectively reduce risk, what you learn must be put into action (i.e. actually stopping at a stop sign vs. knowing that you should stop at a stop sign).

Unfortunately, risk can never be completely eliminated. However, reducing it to the smallest amount possible is by far the best option. By preparing, we redefine risk as something that even if it happens, there is minimal (if any) loss.

If you have any other questions, feel free to click the button below to contact us directly. Learn more about personal insurance here.