Dear Ken and Daria,

Do I need to re-address my estate planning documents when I move?

-Robert

Everyone -- and we mean everyone -- should have an estate plan that dictates how your assets will be handled after you're gone. We know it's not fun to think about, but without one your loved ones won't be cared for the way you'd like.

Of course, once you draw up your estate plan, it's important to re-visit it during big life events -- including a move out of state. Let's take a look at what your estate plan should include, and how to update it.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

Take the estate planning bull by the horns with Ken and Daria's guide to drafting your will the right way, only on Dolans.com.

Pay as you go isn't just for cell phones anymore, it turns out some auto insurance companies are switching to pay as you go plans in order to offer better rates to customers. Traditionally insurance rates are based on, among many things, the estimated miles that each driver will travel during a year. Many people argue that these estimates are inaccurate and that a pay as you go plan would provide consumers with an incentive to drive less. Legislation is currently underway in California to let insurance companies base rates on actual miles traveled it is estimated that it would be the equivalent of removing 10 million cars from the road!

While California is only on the cusp of letting insurance providers make use of this information to determine what your premium will be at least one other company is already offering pay as you go insurance rates in several states. Progressive offers a My Rate program in four states and requires that users hook up a device to their car which tracks the miles traveled as well as how you drive to recalculate your rate every 6 months.

Both of these plans have some similarities, neither will track where you go with GPS and both of them are under fire by privacy groups. The programs differ in that the My Rate plan from Progressive tracks WHEN and HOW you drive in order to determine your insurance rate. In California, much to the chagrin of insurers, neither of these pieces of information can be tracked.

I've lost two cellphones to water, one from a washing machine, one from a wave. I gave up on having more nifty gadgets on my phone so I could get one of the rare waterproof phones on the market, the Casio G'Zone. I really like it, but it is a bit clunky.

Now there's a new product coming on the market that may allow me to get a phone like everyone else and still not worry about water exposure.

The Northwest Maritime Institute, which offers boating related classes at its campus south of Cape Cod, came up with Golden Shellback. The company cautiously call it a splash-proof coating, but then demonstrates it doing things like protecting a iPod Touch video in a bucket of water.

Golden Shellback Waterproof Coating from gCaptain.com on Vimeo.

The coating isn't simply a spray-on application. The clear waterproof polymer coats everything inside, too. So water can wash in and out of the phone or whatever and not hurt it. There are two big catches: it won't be out for a few months and it has to be professionally applied in a vacuum.

Ken and Daria Dolan, America's First Family of Personal Finance, answer your money questions every Friday.

Click here to ask Ken and Daria your question.

Having life insurance is sort of like that TV show, The Price is Right: The winner in the insurance game is the one who comes closest to meeting their exact life insurance needs without going over. So, how do you know how much you need -- and how long do you need it for?

This question gets trickier to answer as you enter retirement. Check out our video response below to learn what criteria you need to consider when making this important decision.

Dear Ken and Daria,

I have a life insurance policy through work that will end when I retire soon. I say we still need the insurance, but my husband disagrees. What do you suggest?

-Flo

Taking care of your life insurance needs is a critical part of your financial plan. Start with Ken and Daria's worksheet on Dolans.com to make sure you're getting the right coverage.

On Monday, with Tropical Storm Fay bearing down on southern Florida, Norwegian Cruise Line decided it would avoid danger by starting a four-day cruise on the Norwegian Sky about two hours early. Instead of leaving Miami at 5 pm, it would leave at 3 pm.

Fay may have been a bust, but you can see disaster coming here. And this cruise departure was indeed a bit of a train wreck. A dozen people got left at the dock.

On its website, NCL posted an announcement of its revised sailing plan at 9:30am, less than six hours before the lines were to be cast off. But some passengers were already en route from other states by then and had no inkling of the revision. Norwegian reps also claim the company tried calling as many passengers as it could reach.

Today your house burned down, or was flattened by a hurricane or a flood. How will you replace the many elements that made up your household, from beds and linens to video games and bicycles? A good house inventory is a great tool to have in the event of such a disaster.

One of the most convenient, free helpers I've found to aid in organizing such information is the program Know Your Stuff, which you can download free from the Insurance Information Institute. The program, which runs on PCs and Macs, coordinates your home inventory information through a set of helpful screens. Adding photos of items and receipts is a snap, as well, and checklists will help you ferret out those overlooked items that can strain your budget if you have to replace them out of your own pocket.

A paid add-on option worth considering is Vault24, which for $15 a year allows you to upload and store your inventory on its server in Switzerland. All too often, homeowners who face such disasters realize they have stored their insurance info at home, now buried in the rubble.

As you can imagine, a good inventory not only will help you get fully compensated to the limits of your policy by your insurance company; it can also speed your claim.

A while back, my wife and I passed one of the major landmarks of adulthood: we took out life insurance policies.

While we had both had life insurance before, it was provided by our employers; this, on the other hand, was something that we paid for all by ourselves. While we didn't contract for spousal-murder/film noir levels of insurance, the money should keep our daughter and the surviving spouse covered for a while if the worst should happen. If, by lucky happenstance, we make it to the end of term, we have the option of cashing out the policies and taking a long, long trip.

Recently, I learned about another possibility: if we should manage to live into our sixties, we have the option of selling our life insurance policies. Some companies, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan, purchase life insurance polices, often for as much as 20-30% of the death benefit. As this far outstrips the premium repayment that my wife and I were thinking about, it is a pretty attractive option. Some sites, including Policysettlement, offer estimates on the value of extant life insurance policies.

When it came time to quit smoking, I enlisted my wife's help. I knew that, no matter how much Zyban I ingested, how many rubber bands I put on my wrist or gum I put in my mouth, nothing would be as helpful as my wife's nose. Although she always possessed a keen sense of smell, pregnancy heightened her senses to near-Spider Man level, and if I so much as walked through a bar, she could detect the smoke clinging to my clothes. Now that I had decided to quit, I realized that her super-nose would be my best defense against the demon cancer sticks: if she smelled it on me, I was going to hear about it.

When it comes to a serious life change, like quitting smoking, losing weight, or cutting down spending, I find that there are few things more helpful than having a buddy or two to watch over my shoulder. I wouldn't call myself weak-willed, but it's a lot easier to cave in when the only person that I'm going to disappoint is myself. On the other hand, when a bunch of friends and family are also rooting for me to succeed, I'm a lot less likely to give in to temptation.

With that in mind, I found stickK.com to be a particularly interesting site. While things like smoking or dieting are easy for your friends to police, goals like cutting 10% of discretionary spending, packing lunches, or otherwise cutting down on personal expenditures don't really lend themselves to community involvement. In cases like this, while a buddy might be useful, a reward is almost a necessity.

That's where stickK comes in. Before you begin your life-changing routine, you put money in your StickK account and appoint a referee to sign off on your progress. Over the period of your bet, you track your progress on the site and ask your friends to encourage you. At the end of your bet, one of two things happens: either you win and keep the money that you put up, or you lose and the money goes to a friend that you designated or a charity of your choice. Regardless, stickK doesn't keep any of your funds.

If you're looking for something to keep you on track for changing your life and realizing your goals, this might just be the way to go!

Bruce Watson is a freelance writer, blogger, and all-around cheapskate. Although his wife has lost her sense of super smell, he's pretty sure she could sniff a cigarette at twenty yards. He has no intention of testing that theory.

Worried about being abducted by aliens? Being mutilated by an enraged lover or having your dream wedding turn into a nightmare?

Fear not, there is insurance to cover these and many other risks that you might not have even considered. Insurance is not at all restricted to cars and houses and health anymore. If you can dream up a risky scenario, chances are there's a company out there willing to hedge a bet against it. Here are ten exotic policies that actually exist:

• Alien abductions: The UFO Abduction Insurance Co. offers $10 million worth of coverage to anyone who can prove that they were kidnapped by extraterrestrials. But as with any insurance policy, it pays to read the fine print. The Florida company requires that claimants get the signature of an "authorized on-board alien" for their claim to be considered, said Mike St. Lawrence, the company president, in an interview. The policies, which cost $19.95, pay out in increments of $1 per year. Nonetheless, quite a few people take his policies seriously.

• John Wayne Bobbitt: London-based insurance broker Goodfellow Rebecca Ingrams Pearson, which quit selling alien abduction policies after the Heaven's Gate mass suicide, offers coverage to men worried that they will get mutilated in the same way that gained Bobbitt notoriety, according to Investment News. No word on whether the policy includes psychological counseling.

Over the past weekend it was announced that IndyMac was being taken over by the FDIC after customers began a run on the bank, which had denied any solvency issues. Many customers had their life savings in the bank, whose accounts are protected by the FDIC, but not all of their funds were insured. In one instance a man had been told if he simply added the names of several relatives to his account the insurance amount would be increased to cover his deposits of over $300,000. Instead he found out that initially the FDIC will fully cover the insured funds but only cover uninsured deposits to the tune of 50%.

Hopefully things will work out for everyone -- even those whose accounts went over the insured limit. If you have over the insured amount in your current bank account I highly suggest you take the needed steps to make sure you are fully insured. This could be creating a joint account with your spouse to gain coverage up to $200,000 or it could be creating several trusts for your children in order to gain the protection they are entitled to as beneficiaries. If neither of these options work, spread out your money at other institutions. As my colleague Zac Bissonnette pointed out recently, most banks are offering the same services these days.

If you have enough money to be over the FDIC limit, you should really spend some time with someone who can provide an expert opinion on keeping your money safe as well as growing it. The FDIC provides an explanation of the protections afforded to different accounts as well as how your protection changes based on the beneficiaries of the accounts. If you are an IndyMac customer the FDIC has also set up a specific site to keep you up to date on the fate of your loans and deposits. While I'm not predicting a huge bank run in the near future, why not take a few minutes to make sure your savings are covered? The FDIC insurance is free so take advantage of it!

When I was a Boy Scout, one of my favorite activities was wilderness survival. I built shelters out of found items, made pots out of raw clay, learned how to identify and eat dozens of wild plants, and mastered a bunch of ways to start fires without resorting to a lighter. In the process, I also assembled my "Emergency Survival Kit," a little bag that was filled with all the things I would ever need if I somehow got kidnapped and dropped off in the mountains. Granted, this was a long-shot, but the Boy Scouts were big on the whole preparedness thing.

I spent tons of money assembling a variety of pricey, arcane items that were necessary to keep myself alive and restart civilization, if doing so were left in my capable hands. Over the years, I regularly packed and repacked my kit, getting rid of snakebite kits and replacing pocket knives, trading out magnesium firestarters and waterproof matches, and trying to decide if a pocket bandsaw was more useful than a set of needles.

In retrospect, however, I realize that I missed the most important item: A bra.

Recently on WalletPop, I discussed how the fine print in marketing contests can be disturbingly tricky for a customer who thinks that they've won a prize with no strings attached. But offering giveaways can also be problematic for the business owner as well. In fact, it can happen to any entrepreneur. It happened, for instance, to Goober Pyle in Mayberry, North Carolina.

On April 10, 1967, an episode of The Andy Griffith Show aired, entitled "Goober's Contest." Goober, who was Gomer Pyle's cousin, decides that he needs more business at his service station (I guess at this point, he had bought it from the previous owner, Wally; I'm a fan of the show, but I don't have every episode memorized in the order it appeared... yet). Anyway, Goober comes up with an idea for a contest, in which he gives out prizes of money for $10 or less. Unfortunately, an error at the printer that Goober hired caused one of the coupons to be worth $200. Floyd, the barber, got that ticket and wanted Goober to pony up and hijinks ensue.

If only Goober had had promotional insurance. He could have avoided a mess that almost cost him more than $200. It almost cost him a dear friendship.

Recently, WalletPop has carried stories about the free-market value of your plasma, sperm and hair. However, those are a mere pittance compared to the value of various body parts as listed by MoneyCentral, based on the amount for which they were insured. Imagine what you'd be worth with

• Mariah Carey's legs: Insured for a cool $1 billion, the pair.
• David Beckham's bod: $200 million. Imagine what he'd be worth if he could still score goals.
• Michael (Riverdance) Flatley's legs: $50 million. That's a lot of bouncing bucks.
• Bruce Springsteen's voice: $7 million. Wonder what Dylan would have to pay?
• Heidi Klum's legs: $2.3 million. She should so fire her agent and hire Carey's.
• Dolly Parton's boobs: $700,000 (around $10,000 a pound). What happens when the 'market' drops?

Amazingly, there are some people that not even Lloyd's of London will insure, including Lindsay Lohan and Robert Downey, Jr. My guess is Amy Winehouse is headed for this list, as well.

What part of your body would you insure if you could? I'd probably want to cover my butt. Without it, I don't know where I sit, and it would limit where I could talk out of.

Late on rent? Loan shark breathing down your neck? Can't fill your car with gas to get to work on Monday? Assuming all available funds and traditional sources of credit are tapped out, here are 25 (legal) ways to raise cash in a few days. We list them in order from least to most desperate.

Yes, you did buy that life insurance for a reason and you may have family members who would desperately need the proceeds in the event of your untimely demise. But if things are getting desperate now, you may be able to turn that policy into cash. And, no, you don't have to die to do it.

If it is "whole" or "universal" life (a type of insurance you buy to last your "whole" life and your heirs get the payout even if you live to 104), you pay higher premiums, but the insurance has a "cash value" that you can tap any time. All you have to do is call your life insurance company to access the money. It won't be much if you've only had the policy a few years, but at least you won't be paying premiums anymore. This is an option that you should only take if you are still fairly young and healthy, really desperate for cash and can't afford the premiums anyway.

However, if you are elderly or terminally ill, there is another way to cash in your insurance policy that may indeed make sense for you and can net some serious dollars right away. If you've never heard of it, it sounds like a scam (and, beware, this industry has been filled with scammers). Here it is: You can sell your insurance policy to an investment company (usually through a broker), who will continue paying the premiums until you die, at which point the company will collect the benefits.