Bill McKee wrote:

If you have some assets, insurance is not optional.

"Chris" wrote in message
...

Just wondering if it is mandatory that a boat have insurance (like cars,
bikes, etc)???
Specifically in Ontario Canada.

Is this something optional, or what?

Liability insurance is required to protect you and the public if you
do not want to pay, or cannot, should you lose a lawsuit for
damages. In some cases, eg. road vehicles, you must have such
insurance, by law, or be able to demonstrate convincingly that you
could easily afford to pay the required minimum liability in cash
out of your own pocket. If you cannot produce proof of insurance,
you must be able to write a check for the minimum required in your
area. The cash must be in the bank.

All other insurance is optional, once you reach that stage, since
only a financeer will refuse you financing if you refuse to agree to
insure, if only temporarily, the chattel for which you may want a
loan for finance. It is a gamble. Will you get drunk and sink your
boat, or sink another's, or set your cottage on fire? Will someone
else? Will you get sued for a wobbly step?

Buy good old stuff, cheap. Get liability insurance if you can't
afford to pay a million in damages. Stay sober. Be responsible.
Buy legal insurance. Yup, you can get such legal coverage plans.
Free lawyers, yippee! It's a better plan.

I don't finance or need to insure my old car or truck for damages,
only liability. I pay cash, and drive a junker. I pay no interest,
and the banker can't scare me into comprehensive, tornado, fire and
flood. It is cheaper in the long run to keep repairing an old
junker, and not finance it and have to pay interest and for
insurance for bird poop, runaway boat thieves and drunken joyriders,
etc, at the behest of the banker who is the guy that really benefits
in the end. He probably underwrites insurers, for tremendous profits
with money borrowed on margin. You should be so smart, too. Sue the
malefactors, with a benefit lawyer, if they dare to scratch your
old, paid for, comfortable junker. Name your boat or get a license
plate that says "Pade 4", or summat like.

It's funny, a few yrs ago, I took my daughter to her graduation
dance in an old rusty Taurus, amid a parade of chromed jitneys, a
few rented Shelby Cobras, caddilacs, '63 T-Birds, etc, rented
limousines and all. She was embarassed because I kept yelling out
the window to the jeers "It's paid for". They put our picture on
the front page. Next year, they came in muddy old jeeps, on
skateboards, even hitchhiked to the prom. They still do, outdoing
each other in outrageous, scandalous, individualist vehicles. She is
a wizard with money, not sunk in Visa, whatever. She pays cash. She
saves. She will wind up rich and happy, not behind the joneses, but
ignoring them and their debts.

Save your money. Invest in bank stocks. When you are old enough that
the government might take all you have to pay for an "approved" old
age home at a thousand dollars a week, then put you on welfare and
keep it, and give you cheap drugs and disgraced doctors, and drunken
nurses, and tatty pyjamas, and busted TVs, and no air conditioning,
and rotton food, you should spend all your money on travel, fun,
gifts to the kids, etc, and THEN go to the workhouse, if you were
that big a prick to your kids they won't take you in. It's your
life. You keep it, or take it, on your terms. Christ tells us that
our lives are paid for by our deaths, and His.

YMMV, which of course, means, "You take your chances, I'll take mine."

Screw the insurance crooks, especially Parizeau, they are worse than
lawyers, worse than bankers, much worse than even mechanics. Do the
math. Screw the surveyors, too. Look for yourself. If you can't
tell a good boat from bad, practice. Pay cash, or take the bus. Be
patient. Save. Whittle your own boat. Sail, it's cheaper. Don't take
any crap about sails costing as much as diesel. I've used the same
sails for 10 years, not abused them. They are still fine. Galvanised
fittings last longer than stainless and cost less. Reef early. Never
hurry. Do all you can as soon as you can, as well as you can, as
long as you can.

Alternatively, borrow, borrow, borrow, pay interest and insurance
on everyhing, and just pray you never run past the end of credit.
Leave your kids a bunch of debt and junk that's not payed for. Do
the math. Budget. Save.

Start up an old age co-op. Don't trust anybody that doesn't like
sex. Don't allow the world to limit you. Limit yourself. Choose,
don't be pushed.

Terry K -SofDevCo- Strange strategies a speciality. Security advice,
too. "Be inconspicuous."

ROTFLMAO -trust me.