Who is Eligible For USAA Insurance
Two auto insurance companies that can offer you good rates on auto insurance policies are Amica Insurance and USAA Insurance. Both are sold by insurance brokers who also sell other products, but you can also get car quotes directly from them online.
USAA membership has some serious benefits, which is why you’ll definitely want to check your USAA eligibility status.
For example, my husband and I just switched our auto and homeowners insurance to USAA after receiving an offer that is a whopping $1,600 less than what we have been paying annually for the past few years!
Who is Eligible For USAA Insurance?
Let me go through “who is eligible for USAA insurance eligibility” requirements, how it is passed from generation to generation, how it is not, and the benefits of membership.
Persons who is eligible for USAA insurance membership include active, retired and honorably separated members of the US military; cadets and midshipmen at US service academies; and their eligible family members.
Children (including stepchildren), spouses, widows/widowers and ex-spouses who have not remarried are eligible. For children to be eligible, the parent must join USAA while alive.
Once someone becomes a USAA member, eligibility extends to their family members (even if those family members are not in the military). For example, if the child of a person who was a USAA member also joins USAA, that person’s spouse and children are also eligible for membership. It can be passed further down this way. Eligibility does not extend to siblings or parents.
Who Is Eligible for USAA Insurance – Main Highlights
If you are one of the 2.4 million military personnel serving in the US Armed Forces, you qualify to become a member of USAA, which consistently provides excellent customer service and affordable insurance rates to their constituency. It is a full-service financial company offering a variety of insurance, banking and investment products to military personnel and their families.
- USAA coverage applies to service members and their families, including spouses, children, stepchildren, and widows.
- USAA offers various auto insurance discounts such as: B. Good driving record, defensive driving/driver training, good student discount, bundled/stacked discounts, breaks for newer vehicles, less driving, multiple vehicles and anti-theft devices.
- USAA offers discounts from retail partners such as B. FTD Flowers orders, FedEx shipping, fitness center discounts, prescription drug discounts through GoodRx and TurboTax tax prep software.
- USAA has an excellent mobile banking app and a telematics app that tracks your driving habits and can give you a discount on your auto insurance.
USAA, which stands for United Services Automobile Association, began as an auto insurance company and was formed in 1922 when 25 US Army officers founded the company because they could not get auto insurance.
At the time, insurance companies viewed military officers as a high-risk group and formed USAA so that they and other military personnel could obtain adequate insurance coverage.
If you’re thinking about getting insured with USAA and are wondering how to qualify for USAA insurance, if it’s military only, and what the requirements and qualifications are, we have the answers.
Who Can Get USAA Insurance?
USAA provides insurance for military personnel and their immediate family members.
Along with enlisted US military personnel, which includes those who are on active duty or part of the guard or reserve, you may be a retired or honorably discharged member of the military.
Here are some people who qualify for USAA insurance:
- If you are a Pre-Commissioned Officer, such as For example, if you are a contract cadet, midshipman enrolled at a US service academy, or an officer cadet, you may purchase a USAA insurance plan.
- If you are an adult child of a USAA member parent, you may become a member.
- If you are the widow or widower of a former USAA member, you can purchase USAA insurance.
- If you, your spouse, or a parent are currently employed by USAA, you may become a member.
Benefits Of Joining The USAA
Joining the USAA has some serious benefits – I want to share them with you to get you excited.
- Discounts: There are discounts for members only for all sorts of things like travel (car rentals, flights, members travel privileges), online shopping, TurboTax, home security systems, etc.
- Rewards: You can be rewarded with cash to use for purchases/travel/donations through the Member Benefits loyalty program. What I love about this program is that you earn the rewards by completing different financial challenges!
- Financial Advice: Post your financial questions on the USAA forum, which is accessible to members. You can also get your Financial Readiness Score, have your home value monitored for you, get a real estate risk assessment, and all sorts of other things.
- Access to Members-Only Services and Products: Gain access to insurance plans, checking/savings accounts, investment products, and even a real estate rewards network that non-members don’t have.
- Fractional Ownership with Potential Cash Back: Because USAA is a mutual company, each member owns a tiny portion of the company. This means that the USAA Board of Directors can decide how the amount of revenue the company earns each year is used – either to support the company’s current goals/mission or for distribution to its members.
How To Start A Membership In USAA?
If you haven’t set up a membership yet – and you’re eligible – then you probably want to do so so that you can qualify other dependents for future membership (if they want to join one day, or even want to do so). Join today).
To set up your own membership so others in your family can become eligible:
Step #1: Make sure you’re eligible
You must ensure that you are actually eligible to join the USAA.
To recap, you are eligible to participate if you:
- Active military member
- Former military man
- family member of a military person
- Cadet or Midshipmen
Step #2: Apply to USAA and Get Eligibility Verified (How Does USAA Verify Eligibility?)
How does USAA verify eligibility? You must have the following information at hand:
- Your data: your date of birth, your contact details and your social security number.
- Military Service Details: You will need some details about military service from you or your family member. Military verification may include any of the following documents – DD214 Member 4 Copy (including type of discharge), Certificate of Discharge, Leave and Earning Statement (LES), Military Orders (if actively serving), NGB22, or Academy Letter of Appointment/ROTC Contract. You will also need a photo ID, e.g. a driver’s license, government-issued ID, or passport.
- For Non-US Citizens: You will need your passport or permanent resident card.
Step #3: Sign up for an insurance product/account
Whether or not you can pass membership to someone else depends on whether you enroll for an insurance product with USAA.
So this step is important!
You can register for:
- Auto insurance
- Property insurance
- Life insurance
- Valuable personal property insurance
Remember that it pays to build a membership within a family. Once a person joins, they do not lose coverage (even if the person who qualified them to join dies). Then they can pass the membership on to their family members even though they never served in the military! What a beautiful chain of options it creates.
What Types Of Insurance Does USAA Offer?
USAA offers various insurance products including auto, home, life, and health insurance. The company also has many checking and savings account options and allows policyholders to carry a USAA credit card with multiple reward options.
Since USAA started as an auto insurance company, it is still best known for its auto insurance options. But USAA offers property insurance as the second largest product in the US. If you are looking for USAA auto or home insurance, you may want to learn more about the options.
Does USAA offer full auto insurance?
Buying auto insurance from USAA can save you big on annual premiums. USAA offers the following auto insurance options:
- Liability
- collision
- Full
- Uninsured/underinsured motorist
If you know you want to carry personal injury protection (PIP), medical payments (MedPay), GAP coverage, or other options, USAA may not be for you. However, you can call the company to speak to a representative and see other coverage options available.
USAA offers many different discounts including:
- Military on the base
- Automatic payments
- Bundle up
- Annual mileage
- Storage
- Multiple Vehicles
- Family
- Good Student
If you are interested in auto insurance with USAA, you can research the company to see how much a discount could save you.
Does USAA offer homeowners insurance coverage?
The second largest insurance product that USAA offers is home insurance. Homeowners insurance with USAA covers events such as:
- Fire
- Theft
- Vandalism
- Weather-Related Incidents
- Identity theft
- Liability cases
Because USAA homeowner insurance offers versatility and flexibility, policyholders can choose the types of protection that are right for them. Some of the most common options for protection with a USAA renter or homeowner policy are:
- Apartment Coverage
- Personal Possessions
- Personal Liability
- Home sharing coverage
- Earthquake cover
- Loss of benefit
- Other structures
Similar to USAA car insurance, homeowners’ or renters’ insurance offers policyholders opportunities to save with discounts. If you are interested in learning more about homeowners or renters insurance, you can call USAA and speak to a representative.
What is USAA Life Insurance?
USAA offers term life insurance and permanent life insurance to its customers. Term policies are available from 10 to 30 years, and permanent life insurance policies provide policyholders with coverage throughout their lifetime.
If you’re looking to get life insurance, USAA might be a good option. But you need to know what kind of life insurance you and your family need. For example, if you are in your 20s or early 30s and just beginning your adult life or family, term life insurance can be a good choice.
People over 40 who want life insurance that has cash value and offers more protection for their children and grandchildren may prefer a lifetime policy.
Remember that your age, occupation, medical condition and lifestyle can significantly affect your life insurance rates with USAA and most other companies.
Does USAA offer health insurance coverage?
Many people are unaware that the USAA eligibility offers robust options when it comes to health insurance. For example, the company has individual and family plans, Medicare coverage, dental and vision insurance, and accident insurance.
If you are looking for an individual or family policy, USAA offers comprehensive plans, short-term options, and fixed health insurance plans. Open registration for these plans typically begins on November 1st.
Let’s say you’re considering a Medicare plan or are looking for additional coverage options. If so, you can research the company’s website or call to speak to a USAA representative.
What Are The Areas Where I Feel USAA Falls Short?
Brokerage And Investment Management Services
My biggest issue with USAA is their brokerage services (which I use). They have a decent selection of mutual fund offerings, but their fees aren’t the best of their kind.
Fees are important.
Let’s compare the USAA S&P 500 Index Fund (USSPX) to the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Fund (VFINX). We will invest $10,000 in each fund on the inception date of USSPX, June 28, 1996, and see how they performed through November 14, 2013.
That’s a difference of $801.79, which might not seem bad, especially over the age of 17. However, let’s say you need $1.5 million in assets to retire by age 50.
You would have 60% of your investments in stocks, and if you used an S&P 500 index fund as your stock investment, that difference would be $19,939.14. You may have to work another year to make up the difference.
Just in case I didn’t mention it before, fees are important because they are cumulative and we end up dealing with big numbers as we approach financial independence.
If you decide to use USAA to manage your wealth, the fees, while below the industry average, are still too high. Assets under management fees hurt your portfolio, and you should only pay a flat fee if you want someone to manage your money for you.
Also, their money managers have incentives to invest money in USAA funds. So you pay them AUM fees to get invested in underperforming funds. That’s a double whammy.
Bank Account Restrictions
I am a heavy user of USAA banking products. However, they are not perfect. There are a few things that continue to bother me that I would like to see changed.
- Mobile Deposit Limits. I occasionally receive payout checks from the company I co-founded that are higher than the mobile deposit limit. Yes, I can go to a UPS store and cash the check, but when I leave home to go to a bank, I go to a real bank. Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t trust the UPS guy not to screw up a check with big numbers on it. I’d rather go to a bank. Actually, I’d rather deposit it from home and have it taken care of, but that doesn’t happen.
- Limits for transfers in and out of the bank. Also, due to the previous deposit limit issue, I’m forced to make multiple transfers to get the money I deposited elsewhere into the USAA system.
- Can’t get bank checks. Now if I lived near a military facility where the USAA had a branch, it wouldn’t be a problem. In fact, they have a great new feature that allows you to use your mobile app to request a bank check and then pop into the bank and print it yourself without having to see a real teller. But I don’t live near any of their branches so I can’t do that. As someone who buys multiple rental properties per year, this is an inconvenience and requires me to use a different bank to complete my transactions.
I realize that the first two issues are primarily due to their fraud detection and loss prevention policies, and they are conservative to ensure they don’t get scammed.
The downside is offset by the immediate availability of funds I transfer to USAA from another bank or checks I deposit using the mobile app. It still doesn’t make those other inconveniences go away.
Another concern I have with USAA is the exchange rate fees for both ATM withdrawals and using credit cards. They charge 1% on credit cards for international transactions and 1% for ATM withdrawals abroad. As we love to travel internationally, these fees eat up our travel budget and force us to use other banks’ cards and accounts to access money.
Small Business Support
As I have said before, one of the ways you can achieve early financial independence is through entrepreneurship. That’s the path we’ve been on, and veterans in particular have a strong entrepreneurial disposition.
Since the USAA supports the military, their families and veterans, it makes sense that they have a robust small business and entrepreneurship program to help them.
They don’t. There is no audit. There is no solo 401k program. There is no 401k manager.
Setting up a SEP program is tedious. We did this with my last company and we ended up giving it up because it was more trouble than it was worth.
I don’t expect much from a bank when it comes to supporting small businesses. Offer a checking account, credit card, help with payroll, and retirement plan administration, and don’t ask for an arm or a leg in return.
But the USAA falls short. If you are a contractor, you cannot contact the USAA for assistance.
That’s unfortunate. I would have gladly given them our business, but it wasn’t to be.
Maintenance Of Rental Properties
I have mixed feelings about this. For the rentals that I can and do insure with USAA, I have received the lowest rates I could find. They also have a pretty nifty maintenance calendar if you’re a DIY type.
But I’m not a DIY guy.
Again, investing in rental properties is a good way to go if you want to achieve early financial independence. It’s what we use to achieve PIRE.
I have two issues with USAA’s support for our effort to become Donald Trump without a combo, and, well…no political discussions here:
- You can only insure 10 rentals with USAA and they cannot be mobile homes. If you want to become a serious rental property owner, chances are you will own more than ten properties. For property #6 and beyond in Texas I used my buddy Ed Wise and was extremely pleased with the assistance he provided.
- They are not good with renovation objects. The house we bought from Auction.com was gutted and in need of a thorough renovation. When I called USAA, I informed them that this was a serious rehab project and it would probably take me three months to get into a livable state. They sent their insurer a week later and within 6 weeks I had a notice of termination because the property was not habitable. Ed Wise got this insurance contract.
- Updated November 22, 2019: Personal Liability Insurance Limitations. For several years, USAA did not insure us because we did not insure all of our rentals with USAA. Last week I received a notification that they were canceling an insurance policy on one of our properties because…no real reason was given, although I suspect the cancellation was due to the property being another serious rehab, eh the ones I described above. More business for Ed Wise. I couldn’t cancel online which was also irritating so I had to call USAA to cancel. The rep asked me about our personal liability insurance and I said we couldn’t use USAA because we had property that was insured elsewhere. She informed me that they changed their policy in November 2019, removing the USAA requirement for rental property insurance. Unfortunately we had already bought a policy through the nice folks at Scottish American Insurance – ask for Jim Tripolone.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Can I join USAA if my sister is a member?
USAA eligibility comes through military service or as a child of a USAA member. Therefore, you cannot join USAA if your sister is a member unless your sister obtained membership through your parents being USAA members
Is USAA really cheaper?
I’ve often found that USAA insurance is just as cheap as any other provider. Now that they have $0 commission trading, the brokerage fee is just as cheap.
Their funds typically have higher expense ratios than Vanguard, and some of their products, like rental property insurance, aren’t as competitive.
How do I deposit cash with USAA?
There are USAA ATMs primarily in San Antonio, San Diego, Northern Virginia and eastern North Carolina. Here you will find a USAA ATM.
We have a local bank with an ATM where we can deposit cash and then we use the USAA mobile app to transfer the money from the local bank to the USAA. We find it easier this way as transfers to USAA bank account from another bank are readily available.
Can I join USAA if my father was a veteran?
You can join the USAA if your father was a member of the USAA. If your father was a veteran, he can join the USAA.
Conclusion
The issues I’ve addressed in this part of the review may seem like nitpicking, but if you’re serious about achieving early financial independence or you’re an entrepreneur (or both), these are fatal mistakes when starting USAA as your truth use one stop provider for all your financial needs.
With that in mind, USAA should be in your suite of financial services and insurance providers if you qualify. They are our primary point of contact for insurance and banking and we are very pleased with their support.