The other driver runs the red light. The fault is not in question, the police report is clear, and your medical bills from the weeks that follow climb past one hundred thousand dollars. Then your attorney makes a phone call and learns the number that decides everything: the at-fault driver carries Washington's minimum bodily injury coverage, twenty-five thousand dollars per person. That is the entire pool of money available from their policy. Your remaining seventy-five thousand dollars in bills has to come from somewhere, and the somewhere is the part most drivers have never thought about.

Here is an uncomfortable fact about homeowners insurance. The dwelling coverage number printed at the top of your policy, the one that looks reassuringly large, is an estimate. It is not a promise that your home can be rebuilt for that amount. It is a calculation, made at a particular moment, based on your home's square footage, construction style, and the cost of materials and labor in your area at the time. Estimates drift. And a covered total loss is exactly the moment when the gap between the estimate and the real cost becomes money out of your own pocket.

There is a tidy little belief about umbrella insurance that deserves to be retired. It goes like this: an umbrella policy covers everything extra. Whatever your home or auto insurance does not catch, the umbrella does. One policy, total backstop, nothing to think about.