Grandy’s breakfast buffet slapped back in the day. If you had a bunch of teenagers at a basketball tournament and they were going to be playing 3 games that day, it was an excellent way to pump some calories into them. On a side note. I came across a Grandy’s that is still open last month while I was driving through a part of town I don’t go through very often when I had to renew my drivers license. Curiosity got the best of me, and there are 20 or so of them still around across 5 states.
She lived by herself. They had full kitchens in their apartments and it wasn’t uncommon for people to go out for meals. The cafeteria was actually a restaurant with a menu, and it was like a country club, there was a minimum spend per month required, but once you met that minimum, you could do whatever you wanted to. There were months when a few of us would have dinner with them there at the end of the month because they hadn’t met their minimum for the month because they ate out so much and it was use it or lose it. It was one of the nicer options for this sort of living arrangement in DFW and we had no complaints while they were there. Old people are just fragile and shit. Old people living alone need something like an Apple Watch.
The answer to your question is that there is a certain subset of insurance customers that view their insurance policies as an investment, and they try to maximize their return. Insurance companies try to weed those people out. Multiple claims in a short time period is a leading indicator. I’m not going to defend it, but that is how the math is done. Do some innocent policyholders get caught up in that process? Sure. I’ve seen enough insurance fraud in my time to know with relative certainty that insurers exercising caution in what they chose to underwrite is a reasonable approach. I investigate insurance fraud for a living, to be completely upfront about why I have a little knowledge about this.
Fraternities are uninsurable. I don’t know how they currently do it, but they use to all band together and basically self insure. I can recall a fraternity back in the day who basically rented every apartment in a small complex in west campus. It was their de facto fraternity house. As someone with an insurance background, that would make an underwriter say no thank you, we will take on other risks.
Apple Watches here as well. It really doesn’t matter until they are living alone. Grandma fell and broke her hip 6 months after grandpa died. In a senior living facility and she laid on the bathroom floor for over a day before someone checked on her because she missed multiple meals. Died of pneumonia a month later in a rehab facility. The watch makes them feel young and hip. The necklace/lanyard thing makes them feel old.
I have a butter churn and cast iron skillet that I eventually inherited from my great grandmother. Beyond those two items, I’m fairly modern. The parents still have two landlines. The second is for a dedicated fax machine. They have both been retired for 10+ years. I showed them how to scan docs and send the with their phones/tablets, but that was a no go. They want to fax them.