Personal Finance - Home Ownership

Thanks for the response. The initial response I received from the electric company was that homeowners are responsible for their connections. It just seems crazy that a tree falling in one yard would result in significant damage to three other houses.

Seems like someone home owners insurance would cover, but may not be worth it depending on deductible and what kind of hit your future rates take.

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That was my first thought, but also that it’s possible that it would be the neighbor’s insurance since it was a tree on their property that caused it.

Unless there was some clear negligence involved (e.g. obviously dead tree that the neighbor failed to remove), neighbors aren’t liable for Acts of God that cause damage to your yard, even if the object came from the neighbor’s yard.

Makes sense, thanks. I once had a patio umbrella get picked up by the wind and break some tiles on a neighbor’s roof, but I think the fault was more with me failing to secure the umbrella than it was with the wind.

Yeah, I checked and it would be my insurance, but the cost doesn’t meet our deductible.

California law requires your homeowners insurance company to offer you earthquake insurance. Just got my offer with my renewal.

Yes, you read that deductible right.

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Yeah but if it knocks your whole house down you’re gonna feel good about that deductible…

240k deductible and they only cover 5k of the contents of your house? Wtf

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My house was build in 1937 and has lasted this long. My thinking is that if an earthquake does that much damage to my house, the rest of Los Angeles / California is going to also be flattened and actually getting paid will be a crapshoot, AND that will probably be the least of my worries.

Yes, more on this please.

Also, obvious strategy is to burn your house down once you feel things start to shake.

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Also for less then 240k you could build a luxury yurt and get a kick-ass profile in the LATimes Real Estate section.

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Mowed my grass for the first time. Some of lawn care is just edge lording.

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Dunno if this goes in this thread or not.

We have ATT wifi. We have no trouble connecting, and when connected the signal is generally good based on my limited spot checks. However we get dropped a lot, multiple times a day, when we’re on zoom calls. Finally got an ATT person on the phone and he tried to imply our computers were too far from the router/modem/whatever it’s called. However it’s all on one floor, the signal only has to go through two walls to get to our laptops. Laptops are around 20-25 feet away.

Then he said we need a “wi-fi extender” which would concentrate/focus our signal somehow; this would be an added $10 per month forever. There was no option to buy the extender outright.

We do have a ton of signals from other houses floating around; my laptop picks up ten or fifteen possible wifi networks to join. The ATT guy tried to imply this was the problem. I don’t know why that would cause ours to disconnect though.

Is ATT just trying to avoid upgrading my router, or is this a thing (needing a wi-fi booster)? Has anyone else had to use a wifi extender/booster? I don’t know that this would solve the dropped connections.

Given the layout you describe it doesn’t sound like it should be necessary, but I would buy a mesh router before paying AT&T another $10/mo. My house has a very funky and spread-out layout and the mesh router solved all our issues. I have an old Orbi system that works great, looks like the newest basic model is only $75, which is a fraction of what I paid several years ago.

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I use my own modem and wifi router. If you’re paying a fee to rent them from your provider there is no reason not to go that route. I do have an extender for WiFi since our modem and router are in a corner basement room and signal to the opposite side of the house upstairs was sketchy.

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by “there is no reason not to go that route” you mean: no reason not to just buy my own modem and router?

I was looking at the mesh option because from my limited reading, the extender is mainly for when you have a trouble spot in your house. We get disconnects all the time, even with the tv which is almost line of sight to the router. So I’m not really sure the signal strength is the problem

One article said this about extenders: “But you’re likely to notice a significant drop in throughput speeds in the “extended” network. That’s in part because an extender relies on the same frequency band as the router itself.”

That makes me want to go the mesh route

This was exactly me at my old apt. At the current one I don’t reeeally need the extender so haven’t used it, but I still feel very strongly that you should just buy your own hardware. A cheap modem/router setup will pay for itself with a year or so of rental avoidance, and they usually last longer than that.

If/when I ever buy a home I will probably go the mesh route.

You can check your upload/download speeds using your phone just by googling Network Speed Test, which may give you more concrete data on where your troublespots are, if there are any.

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Yeah I meant I would just purchase my own router and modem if you have to pay a monthly fee for those. Nice units can be had for reasonable prices (like $100-200). Obviously you can go wild with high end stuff but I’ve never needed those in my situations.

I use a TP Link modem and router with their Tether line for the extender. It’s a little mini router looking thing that plugs into a wall power outlet in the middle of my house and provides a great signal to the previous trouble spots. Network speed isn’t an issue with it.

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