Some people call taking care of your home "protecting your investment" or "protecting your assets." As we've discussed before, your home isn't an investment in the traditional sense of growing your money  for retirement, because you would have to sell, rent or lease it to realize cash gains. However, with Iowa and other parts of the Midwest under water, we can't quibble over semantics. 

Of course we all do the usual things: paint the eaves, caulk the windows, have the septic tank serviced…but what about flood insurance? Do you have flood insurance? The farmers in Iowa didn't have flood insurance.

Can you get flood insurance if you do not live in a designated flood plain? According to Tyler on Boston.com, you can't.

One of my neighbors did. County agencies and Realtors swear we're nowhere near a flood plain, but when I ask the city to step up management of the additional runoff created by new development, they tell me increasing storm runoff is my problem because I chose to live in a flood plain.

Determining flood likelihood is challenging, because a 500 year flood, like the one recently devastating corn crops and running up the prices we'll pay at the grocery stores, doesn't happen every 500 years. If it did, we could all rest easy and say, "OK, we're set for 499 more years."

A 100 year flood has a 1% chance of occuring every year. A 500 year flood has 1/5th that chance of occurring; in other words, a 0.2% chance of occurring every year. Meteorologists, attorneys, and insurance underwriters understand this completely, so if you're still having trouble understanding whether you need flood insurance, talk to someone in one of those professions.

It's worth a call to your insurance agent. After all, if you aren't in a flood zone, but they allow you to buy flood insurance anyway, it ought to be pretty inexpensive!

For some breathtaking photos from Iowa, look at the Boston.com link.