The fallout from the recent California fires has exposed more ugliness for homeowners who've been facing evacuation, temporary homelessness and charred ruins. To add insult to injury, some 40 percent of homeowners may be ruined because they didn't have enough insurance on their homes, according to the California Department of Insurance. Several times a year Clark will advise homeowners to raise their insurance limits. It's one of those good ideas that most people never get around to doing. Say you purchased your home 10 years ago for $100,000. Now your home may be worth $250,000. But your insurance has not kept pace. So you'll be destroyed financially if you have a catastrophic loss. It gets even worse if you have a mortgage on the property. You can lose your home, be foreclosed upon and get sued by the lender for losses on the loan. Is Clark scaring you? That's his intention.

You need to have your homeowners insurance limits raised every 3-5 years -- even though it will raise your premiums. The scary thing is that the insurance company is not required to rebuild your home if you're grossly underinsured. Clark has been in his house for 11 years, and he's had to fight his insurer three times to get them to raise the insurance limits. An appraisal demonstrated that his home had greatly appreciated in value and needed to be better insured. But he still got pushback. Sometimes insurance companies are scared you'll torch your house for a financial gain. Do what you must to get your insurance limits raised. Don't end up like the California homeowners with no meaningful coverage and no way to rebuild their homes.