We Lived Paycheck to Paycheck

Now We Live Storm to Storm

Welcome to “Weathering the Storm.” This feels like the most opportune time to start this column. My husband and I are currently at the time of the year where we do the most weathering. The hardest part of our job isn’t deploying to “ground zero” post hurricane, or loading our family up and traveling long hours across multiple states or even spending months on the road away from home — the hardest part about our career in catastrophe insurance adjusting is waiting on the weather.

My husband Cory and I own a catastrophe insurance adjuster business and this publication is dedicated to sharing about our “Stormlife”.

Stormlife is a term coined to describe working 4-6 months out of the year deploying¹ to major weather events to assess property damage from assigned insurance claims. We are currently waiting for mother nature to decide when it’s time to pay our bills again. My husband and I do this every year. We “ballpark” our budget on what’s currently in our savings built up from the prior hurricane season. This waiting game is the largest deterrent from adjusters staying in the industry. The seasonal income and inconsistent work, year to year and storm season to storm season is a large factor on why the turnover rate is so high for independent adjusters. It can be extremely challenging to avoid running out of money before the next batch of claims. ²

“Weathering the storm” is an idiom that means to endure a difficult situation or period without being harmed or damaged too much.

There are a lot of qualities a successful catastrophe insurance adjuster must possess but the one that ranks the highest is: endurance. “On season” endurance to work day-in and day-out for long deployments following a catastrophe. As well as, “off season” endurance which is arguably more arduous. During off season you need to: budget your profits, pay your taxes, maintenance, repair & replace your equipment to prepare for a new storm season, AND avoid blowing your savings because you think you will get called out again soon. Off season endurance is all about remaining resilient through the waiting for the next storm—whenever you do eventually get called out again.

Our catastrophe insurance adjusting business is our primary household income. Our last paycheck was received the end of November 2024. So imagine making your annual income in a handful of months; but you have to budget it for the full year. $80,000 feels like a lot of money in 2-3 months during a busy hurricane season. But what if from September to November $80,000 hit your checking account but that money needed to last to till the following May.

People that are not in the industry will see on the news a small outbreak of tornados across rural America and assume we will be called out! That’s not how it always works for adjusters on CAT teams. We not only have to wait for severe weather events, but we also have to wait on a large influx of claims to fill up the local adjuster’s schedules that already reside in the area. 2025 storm season is upon us and it is still a mystery on when we will get the call from our independent adjusting firm that they need us. They will eventually call, notify us of the state we are needed, a general location, the insurance carrier, type of claim/peril and will issue us a batch of claims. Within 24 hours we will load up and set sail to whatever state our assigned property damage claims are in and just like that have income streamin’ in again. Prior to starting our own business in 2017 we lived paycheck to paycheck. Now— we live storm to storm.

I’ve included a timeline synopsis of our deployments since my husband and I got our “foot in the door” to this industry on a hail storm in Colorado seven (7) summers ago. We’ve gained an immense amount of knowledge since that first storm. We can honestly say we learn something new every storm. We also repeat this saying often: “Every storm is different.” Twenty-six (26) deployments later we can truly say, no single storm is like another. Here’s a snapshot of our experience to date:

1. July 2018 - Colorado Springs, CO HAIL

2. August 2018 - Flagler, CO HAIL

3. September 2018 - Fayetteville, NC- HURRICANE FLORENCE

4. October 2018- San Antonio, TX - WIND

5. April 2019 - San Angelo, TX - WIND

6. May-July 2019 - Katy, TX - WIND/FLOOD

7. September 2019 - Beaumont, TX - TROPICAL STORM IMELDA

8. May- June 2020 - San Angelo, TX - HAIL

9. July-October 2020 - St. Louis, Missouri - WIND

10. October- November 2020- Houston, TX - HURRICANE HANNA

11. July - August 2021 - Omaha, Nebraska - WIND

12. August- September 2021 - Phoenix, Arizona - HABOOB

13. September -October 2021- Galveston, TX - HURRICANE NICHOLAS

14. December- January 2022 - Salina, Kansas - Derecho

15. May-June 2022 - Watertown, South Dakota - WIND

16. June- July 2022 - Watertown, South Dakota- WIND

17. October- November 2022 - Fort Myers Beach, FL- HURRICANE IAN

18. March 2023 - Phoenix, Arizona- HABOOB³

19. April-June 2023 - Minneapolis, Minnesota - HAIL

20. July-August 2023- Indianapolis, Indiana- WIND

21. September-November 2023 - Perry, Florida - HURRICANE IDALIA

22. May 2024 - Houston, TX - WIND

23. July 2024 - Alvin, TX - HURRICANE BERYL

24. September 2024 - Houma, LA- HURRICANE FRANCINE

25. September-October 2024- Clearwater, Florida HURRICANE HELENE (While working Helene we had to evacuate as family to Alabama to avoid direct impact from Milton and then returned to assess new damage from the second hurricane)

26. October- November 2024- Clearwater, Florida HURRICANE MILTON

Cory is a licensed independent Insurance Adjuster and has his General All Lines license in our residential state of Texas. He also carries many non-residential licenses in other states where our firm has PIF’s or “Policies in Force.” We are essentially paid as subcontractors from a firm that issues claims assigned by insurance carriers. We file a 1099 each year and have never worked directly for any insurance carrier or been considered a “staff adjuster”. We have state guidelines, firm protocols, and regulatory timelines we abide by ; but out in the field…boots to the shingles…we are our own boss.

My name is Becka and I am the author of this publication: Weathering the Storm. I began sharing about our “Storm Life” on TikTok in 2020. I wanted to spread awareness and educate about this industry. It was important to me to share the catastrophe side and how my husband and I were able to operate as a team. I also wanted to share a perspective that I wasn’t seeing anywhere on social media. Other insurance adjusters were sharing about catastrophe adjusting as a “get rich quick job”. They were marketing with egotistical dollar signs, plastering their paychecks and preaching empty promises that “anyone can be successful”. While i appreciated some adjusters efforts and branding like: “Adjust your way to 100k”. It all fell flat for me and frustrated me that so much of what I saw on social media was not transparent, lacking context and down right MISLEADING. I also had a great concern that it was attracting the wrong people into an industry that already had such a high turnover rate. I began sharing OUR experience of building a career as catastrophe adjusters as an attempt to offset any noise.

This year is our lucky number seven (7) in the industry. It’s finally time to create a new tangible resource in long-form written format. I’m using the platform Substack to compile detailed information for people that are truly looking at getting into the industry. I am also sharing for those handful of humans that love learning how people afford what they can afford and make an honest living in unique careers. When you subscribe to Weathering the Storm, you will receive an email anytime there is a new newsletter. The information will cover real-life insights on how we started our own business and career in insurance adjusting. This column will have an index and be written out in a way you can reference and truly map out a clear path into a widely exciting and rewarding career.

Disclaimer: I want to be clear. This column is not a get-rich quick guide. Don’t go and get licensed as an adjuster thinking you finally know what you want to be when you grow up. Not yet at least. Please, do not go and quit your day job assuming you can get paid really well to work one hurricane and make all your money problems go away. If you go about it in that way—you will never make it. And that’s just the truth. People have been successful in this industry. My husband and I are living proof. This career has changed our lives for the better. But there are countless times, between smashed laptops, and stranded highway vehicles breakdowns that my husband and I look at each other and say, “This is why people don’t make it!!” We want quality adjusters to actually “make it” in this industry. To do that we need to break it all down and share the real life details of how we operate and different approaches you can take to be successful in away that fits you and your family. Don’t forget to subscribe + share to help us help this industry.

I’m a registered nurse by trade, and have been trying to get out of healthcare almost as quickly as I got into it. When I met my husband he was also ready to get out of corporate America. Cory is true blue collar. He prefers to work with his hands— a master tinkerer. He has at least a bachelors degree from YouTube university and started out with a strong foundation of construction knowledge before getting his adjuster license. When we met in 2016; I was working night shift, at a small rural hospital he was a manager of a Sherwin-Williams paint store. He would often have to open and close down the store and we would sometimes get to see each other in passing as he was pulling out of the driveway and I was pulling in. We would barely have enough time to hop out of our vehicles and exchange a hug and kiss. Some days he would get to tuck me into sleep during the daytime on his lunch break. We were a new madly in love couple stealing time and desperate for consecutive hours together. On top of the overtime hours, open to close storefront shifts and unmatched schedules: we were living paycheck to paycheck. I plan to share about the financial aspects of our catastrophe adjusting business, including biweekly paychecks, profit loss margins, tax deductions and claim and storm averages. Although the income is seasonal; it has been prosperous. However, we didn’t get into this industry for more money we got into this industry for more TIME. Time is the new currency.

When I refer to home, that is: Central, Texas When I refer to homebase: that is describing our deployment location; often times an RV park where we park our camper but sometimes it’s an Airbnb or a long term hotel. Homebase varies storm to storm for multiple reasons. Are we traveling as a family or is it just my husband going on a short deployment? Is the power restored? Are the roads accessible? Are the roads accessible enough to pull a camper through? What does the crime reports look like for that area? As a veteran catastrophe adjuster we are typically positioned at the area that has received the highest impact of damage from whatever peril i.e. CAT 3 hurricane, derecho, haboob, hail. I will refer to a lot of new terminology, insurance jargon and even slang we have learned along the way. Please comment or email me directly if I ever need to better define something or expand upon a topic. If you are in the industry and disagree with how something is worded—I welcome the discussion! I’m open to edits and clarification as I only want to represent this industry in the best light.

This publication is written through the lens of a catastrophe insurance adjuster’s wife. As well as a mother, a teammate, an entrepreneur, and business owner. I’ve been able to hold my own with the fast paced workflow, construction material verbiage, podcast interviews and will most certainly shed some light on where there is room for women in this male dominant industry. I credit a lot of our success in this business because we’ve always operated as a team. There are storms I’ve been on the roof with him holding his ladder for a step-up. And there have also been those storms where I’ve been in charge of the home front and he’s traveled solo. We are both a huge advocate for teams in this industry: husband and wife teams, empty nester teams, father son teams, sister in law and brother in law teams— we’ve seen a lot!

The primary purpose of this publication is to educate. We also hope to pull back the curtain on areas of this industry that seem shadowy or even difficult to find. We’d like to offer up our own real-world insights and tips that we were taught or have learned along the way. We do not know everything. We also recognize the industry has changed since we got into this seven years ago. The industry is constantly evolving. What industry isn’t?

Each year when we are waiting for the next storm, there’s a small whisper that creeps in the back of our minds. It always questions or even taunts this narrative of: what if? “What if this career has ran its course and we have to find another way to make a living?” But then his phone rings, the adrenaline hits, he starts making “first contacts” to our insureds and I start packing the camper. Storm season is officially underway again. Once we are on the road, usually late into the night, no more calls can be made, no more voicemails to be left. My husband and I will glance over at each other. I’ll see the headlights gleaning sporadically in his eyes from the highway traffic. We will both reach our hands out to one another over the truck console interlocking our fingers. We will take a moment to connect after the BUUUZZZZ of getting ‘Called out’ and Cory will always say something sly like: “See baby, Mother Nature is the best kind of job security! Let’s go run em’ and get back home!”

Thank you for Weathering the Storm with us.

Becka + Cory

1. Deployment- I hold the utmost respect and regard for all branches of the military. Throughout this publication, the term ‘deployment’ is also used in a broader sense, referring to the “action of bringing resources into effective action,’ in additional to its conventional military meaning. This term is also widely used across the insurance industry and independent adjusters negotiate contracts by individual “deployments” or CAT events.

2. Batch of Claims- This is insurance jargon referring to a large batch of claims assigned to a specific adjuster. We’ve had batches of 20 and upwards of 50 property damage insurance claims assigned to our queue for different events. Each claim needs a 24 hour first contact, a timely inspection and a thorough estimate.

3. Haboob- a violent and oppressive wind blowing in summer.