Write For Us
I am always looking for user submitted personal finance articles (guest articles to enhance the content of this blog. If you are interested in submitting your article(s) for consideration, please read the rest of this page.
Benefits
Writing for Amateur Asset Allocator is a great opportunity to share your experience with the rest of our readers. If you are a blogger, or a writer, this is also a great way to showcase your work and get some visitors to your web site, not to mention search engine exposure from a PR5 domain.
Submission Guidelines
- Article must be at least 350 words; 500 preferred.
- The article must be your original content, not published anywhere before.
- Any finance related topic is good; however, I prefer topics with general appeal — i.e., no personal journal type article. Bonus points if you write about a topic I haven’t written much about in the past, or write about a topic I have covered from a different perspective.
- Feel free to add 2-3 links back to your own web site within the content.
- No affiliate links.
- I reserve full editorial and approval rights, including removing your link(s) and adding my own links to the article.
- Include images if you like, but only if you own them outright. You can suggest images from sites like Flickr, but they have to allow derivative rights (so I can resize and use them).
- Please include your introduction. This will be shown at the bottom of the article under “about the author” section. You can link back to your site, 2 links max.
- You’re free to republish your content after a 30 day period. You can republish it anywhere you want after that, I only ask you wait 30 days.
What To Send
- Short 1-3 sentences bio with a link to your home page and your RSS feed
- The article in HTML code or formatted Word document
Send both items above to:
Kyle at <this domain>.com
6 Responses
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Hi Kyle,
Feel free to republish anything from NerdWallet’s blog at any time, as long as you include a link somewhere. I recently wrecked my rental car and learned way too much about rental car insurance, and what’s covered and not covered by your credit card, hence the following article.
About: NerdWallet is a credit card ranking engine. It’s hard to find the best credit card on the internet because card websites only list cards that pay affiliate fees, NerdWallet ignores this convention and lists them all. That’s why our search results are better – we list 7 2% rewards cards, and 38 rewards cards that give you better than 1% rewards.
Title: Rental Cars: Should you Pay for Extra Insurance?
What Happens If I Wreck a Rental Car?
You will be charged rental vehicle repair fees, as well as repair fees for damage you cause to other vehicles. In terms of damage to other vehicles, every rental car company has to make sure the car they rent you meets the state’s minimum level of liability insurance, but it is under $50,000 in most cases, so you are liable for anything above and beyond that. This is especially pertinent to medical bills.
Unfortunately, the fees do not end there. The rental company will also charge you “loss of use”, “diminution of value”, and “administrative” fees.
What’s Covered?
Your primary source of coverage is almost always your auto insurance, and not your credit card. Generally speaking, if you buy auto insurance that extends beyond minimum liability insurance, it will extend to “leisure” automotive rentals. The only way to find out for sure is to call your insurance company. However, with this coverage comes your usual deductible of $0-$1,000 depending on your policy.
Most credit cards (major exceptions being Amex Delta card and Discover Student card) offer “secondary” coverage to your auto insurance. Diner’s Club is the only card that offers “primary” coverage, a big thing to consider if you rent cars with an abnormally high frequency.
The big difference is, secondary coverage requires you to file a claim with your auto insurance, and basically only reimburses you for the deductible you pay for your primary auto insurance. In addition, if your liability exceeds your primary auto insurance coverage, secondary coverage kicks in, often for another $50-100k. Also keep in mind that having to report a rental accident to your primary insurance company could potentially result in higher premiums.
In effect, this deductible reimbursement is usually the only benefit of using a credit card to rent a car.
Not Covered: Loss of Use Charges
Loss of use charges can really add up depending on the car’s damage severity. If it’s in the shop for a month, you’ve effectively just rented the car for a month out of pocket!
While everyone except Discover claims to cover these charges, Visa cards provide the best protection, while MasterCard and American Express will often hang you out to dry. They do this by refusing to pay unless the rental company shows proof that their vehicle fleet is fully utilized during the repair process, which rental companies will then refuse to provide, leaving you stuck with the bill.
Even Amex’s premium $24.95 / time rental insurance does not protect you, according to a lot of web commentary.
Not Covered: Diminution of Value Charges
A “diminution of value” can be pretty substantial, because the resell value theoretically drops after you wreck the car, therefore you have to compensate the rental car company for this. However, this generally only applies to a more limited set of situations where the car is severely damaged, but not totaled.
Not Covered: Administrative Fee
Arbitrary, but in the ballpark of $200 dollars.
Should I pay for it or not?
Generally speaking, no. On my trip to Hertz in California this week, the fees add up to $21 per day, $15-25 is typical. My maximum liability out of pocket in a wreck is loss of use + administrative fees, say typical scenario of $1000. $21 per day is only worth it if I have a 2.1% chance per day of wrecking. I’d venture to guess that even the worst daily drivers on the planet wrecks less than 7 times per year.
Subject: Would you consider writing about this…
Or having me as a guest blogger?
Watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPBNXXBbpGU
Thank you.
Philip, I am always interested in guest posts so long as they follow the guidelines laid out in: http://amateurassetallocator.com/write-for-us/
Hello,
My name is Jason. I am a professional blogger who loves to write on financial topics. I’m writing to you because I am currently trying to take my author identity to the next level by supplying informative articles to personal finance bloggers. I don’t believe in writing promotional articles, instead I feel informative stuff are something users are most interested in reading.
I would hereby like to request an opportunity to write a guest post on your site, ofcourse free of charge. You can send me your preferred topic, if any, and I would be happy to write an article on it. I can show you some of my past work that have attracted good number of visitors.
Anyways, you are doing a great job on with your blog and I’d like to talk to you in person, so I’d be happy if you could answer either way!
Sincerely,
Jason Holmes
Hello Guys
I’m David C. Atkin I am a professional blogger in the classic car niche, and would love to guest post on your site.
I write content related to the restoration of of classic American cars, and muscle cars, to help people get their cars restored if they plan to do it themselves.
I try to concentrate on helping people with certain problems that they might be dealing with in a restoration of their cars, such as repairing rust. Or helping them find the perfect muscle car, or classic car.
Hi,
Just wanted to suggest a tool (livevol.com) you may be interested in adding to your site
http://www.livevol.com
Livevol offers free and paid options data & trading tools. We can provide a link exchange if you are interested as well.
Warm Regards,
Jesse James