Category Archive for : ‘Farrell Backlund’

Holiday stress plagues many Americans every year. Top holiday stressors include staying on a budget, managing multiple commitments and finding the perfect gift. Use these three tips to help keep holiday stress at bay this year.

Create your budget now. If you’re stressed about how your holiday spending will impact you after the holidays are over, you’re not alone. Remember, the sentiment of a gift is much more important than the cost. Set a realistic budget and do not go over it.
Shop early. Sometimes, you can get great deals on presents

Each holiday season, our Jeans Day program would partner with an organization called Christmas Wishes.  This program organized donations from anonymous givers to provide gifts, food, and supplies to under-privileged families that would have otherwise been in need during one of the most joyous times of the year.  Sadly, while this was a very popular program, they discontinued their work a few years ago.  We wanted to continue to help our community during the holidays and searched for similar organizations where we could give back in such a special way.

In

A father gets a call that his 12-year-old son is complaining of chest pains and is being rushed to the local hospital. A second call: the son is being transferred to Boston Children’s Hospital. “It was like a scene out of a movie or a medical drama on TV,” describes Chris Corso of the ordeal. Little did he and his wife know that series of calls would begin the surreal experience that changed his family’s life.

It started as just a normal day at school for his son, Matt Corso. He

When preparing to leave for a vacation, it’s easy to overlook basic home safety precautions. To protect your residence while you’re away and enjoy a worry-free trip, keep these tips in mind.

There are a number of hazards that could affect your home while you’re away, including lightning, theft and flooding. In order to keep your property safe while you’re on vacation, consider the following:

Unplug small appliances and electronic devices.
Stop the newspaper and mail. To do this online, visit the U.S. Postal Service’s website.
Lock all windows and doors.
Arrange to have your

Practice makes perfect. Well, close enough.

Anything less than perfect can be costly when it comes to driving. That is especially true for young, inexperienced drivers. “The 100 Deadliest Days” is an ominous tagline referring to the period between Memorial Day and Labor Day when teen-related crashes sky-rocket. Unfortunately, these crashes usually result in fatalities, if not for the teen driving then for the passengers in the other vehicle. According to Newsday, “Not only are teens themselves more likely to die in car crashes, they also have the highest rates of

We live on our phones and couldn’t imagine the horror of something happening to them, so why are
they not protected? Cyber Attackers are acutely aware that tablets, computers, laptops, and smart
phones are an integral part of today’s world. Smart assistants, like Google Home and Amazon Echo, are
becoming increasingly prevalent. Another rising smart tech is Bluetooth smart security systems for
homes. As a whole, this presents a lot of entry points for Cyber Attackers to get in. Keep in mind, a lot of
these are still new tech and are still gaining in

You can never learn enough about protecting your big day.  Planning this type of event has many moving parts and if it’s your wedding that you’re planning, you are no doubt in the midst of countless hours of preparation and paying out exorbitant amounts of money for this special day. But what happens if the wedding is postponed or cancelled, or if something happens to the wedding gifts? Lucky for you, there is an insurance policy to cover such things.

Wedding insurance is a special type of policy, often referred to as

Massachusetts’ law is now imposing a penalty on employers with employees enrolled in subsidized health coverage, like MassHealth in place of an employer’s plan. These modifications are hitting employers hard!  This act, passed in August 2017 is now effective for wages paid as of January 1, 2018 and expires at the end of calendar year 2019.  It boils down to this simple fact: the State has a deficit paying for MA Health and the EMAC charge is the intended answer to that problem.  Read below to understand how these charges break

With another year over and a new one in our grasp, many of us are feeling as though it is the right time to start things off with a clean slate. We may find ourselves writing down and working on resolutions to be more active, go to the gym more often, lose weight, spend more time with the family, the list could go on and on.

For example, this year I’d like to earn my CPIA designation in insurance. Write more blogs. Go to the gym two times a week, make

Contracts have always been a very important part of the insurance industry. An insurance policy is a contract that you (business or individual) enter into with an insurance carrier.  In business, insurance requirements are getting tougher and tougher.  This is especially true in the Construction Industry, where contract language alone can be challenging in and of itself.  I would like to point out a few of some of these terms that you might encounter.

Indemnification Agreements – These contracts are stipulating what parties you are indemnifying. Typically, these agreements flow downhill (meaning the General