What can you earn as an IA?| income calculator
I put together a basic spreadsheet that you can use to project and track your startup expenses and your ongoing storm expenses.
I've also included an income projection calculator that lets you estimate what your ballpark income should be and how long it'll take you to earn that based on how many claims you can close.
More of a reader? Catch the video transcript below.
How much can you make as an IA?
Free claims adjuster income calculator tool
First of all, you’ll want to grab your copy of the free IA Income Calculator Tool so you can follow along with the steps in today’s video and project your own income.
We’re going to start by talking about your startup expenses and your ongoing storm expenses while on deployment. Then I will show you how to figure out exactly how many claims you need to do per storm in order to reach your financial goals for the year.
Calculating your startup expenses
So this first area of the spreadsheet (you’ll find that here if you haven’t already grabbed your copy) is basically a running tally of all of the things that you have bought or need to buy for before you get deployed on your first storm.
So this is your laptop—which you may have already had prior to becoming an independent adjuster, you just need to make sure is able to run the most current version of Xactimate. Find those Xactimate Software Tech Specifications here.
Of course you got your ladder, your tape measure…I recommend getting two of those, at least 40 ft. long. They can be hard to find in store, but you can find a bunch of longer tape measure options from ProTape here. (10% off with code ADJUSTERTV)
And then of course, Xactimate, which is currently $315 a month.
This also includes any licenses, training and certifications you plan on getting, travel expenses for any conference or networking stuff. etc. And then I've got a bunch of blank cells down at the bottom for you to enter in whatever you want.
For a complete list of gear, licenses, training and certifications you need before you can be deployed on your first storm, watch the free Road To The Storm Guide training video series.
✔ Pre-deployment checklist included
Calculating your ONGOING STORM expenses
So next thing we have is our general storm expenses. Obviously, the less you can spend on expenses the more you get to take home at the end of a storm.
Hotel expenses
Now, you can go out and find a Motel 6 for $39 but keep in mind you’re not going to have a kitchen in there. If you’re going to be on this storm several weeks, you can’t be eating out every single day for every single meal. (I mean, you can…you’ll just become poor and fat.)
You’ll want to find a place that has a weekly or monthly rate to knock the nightly rate down a little bit.
Some cities simply won’t have an inexpensive option. (This is one of the reasons I don’t like to go on storms in New York.)
Fuel expenses
Next we’ve got your fuel expenses. I’ve set it up to figure out cost per mile for you.
But basically if I have a 20 gallon tank, and I get about 17.9 miles per gallon (which cost around $2.41 when filming this…that’s gone way up now), that means the cost per tank is $48.20. I get 358 miles out of a tank at $0.13 a mile.
Follow the tutorial vid to see what numbers to put where to automatically calculate fuel expense for you.
The only problem is, I don’t think that’s accurate for what you’ll spend total on gas because you’re going to be sitting in your car when it’s idling with the AC on while you write up your claim on site (which I do recommend doing) or you’ll be in there uploading photos or making phone calls or eating your lunch, etc.
And that’s going to add up over time. So what’s the work-around? Calculating fuel expenses using the tank method.
So I’m usually filling up once every other day on a storm, so I’ll put in the average of four tanks per week—basically half a tank a day. So according to my numbers above that means I’m spending $27.54 a day on gas.
That’s around $826 worth of fuel in 30 days while on deployment. (Again, it will all make sense when you watch the tutorial vid.)
Office supplies & Software Expenses
Xactimate is monthly and you got got a bunch of blank ones here and you can add stuff in as you go. Most of your office supplies will have been purchased as a start up expense, so unless you lose it or use it up (like your roof marking chalk), you won’t have to add it as an ongoing expense here.
Projecting your annual claims adjuster income
production | How many claims can you close a year?
All right, so let's talk about production.
So typically you'll show up on storm and they'll give you 30 to 35 claims. So if you do only what they give you, your total expenses are gonna be $2,100, (which we picked up from our expenses area total on our spreadsheet), and your earnings—gross earnings—are going to be $7,700 if you're making about $220 per claim.
So your total earnings less expenses is $5,600. But you’re going to want to pay yourself back for your startup expenses that first storm, so don’t be surprised if you’re in the hole if you only do those first 30-35 claims they give you.
The amount you earn per claim will change based on your fee schedule, the IA firm split on your billing invoice, and whether you are working small wind claims, big hail claims, or massive commercial claims. But if you average it out over the course of the year it’s coming in at around $220 per claim, which if you’re fast - you can do most claims in just one hour.
If you think of it as $220 bucks an hour and you want to end your year with $100,000 in your pocket after expenses, then entering in your estimated number of claims in this next section of the income calculator and how many claims you can reasonably close a day, this will tell you what you need to aim for ballpark in terms of days of the year you need to be deployed on a storm.
This will include paper days or office days, days you are rained out, days off later in the storm (I usually take Sundays off so I’m not working 7 days a week when I’ve been on a storm for 2 1/2 months straight.)
So according to the example calculations from the tutorial video, if you average $220 per claim, and you are in the field 10 months out of the year, taking two months off, closing just 2 claims a day, your gross income before expenses would be $132,000.
Generally speaking, I have a minimum that I set for myself when I'm doing regular claims—that I close at least 7 claims per day. This is doable and makes the storm worth it for me. If I really need to get caught up I can hammer out 10-12 a day. But brand new adjusters on their first few weeks of a storm will average 1-2 claims per day.
At that rate, it’s going to take you a while to hit the 600 claims a year you need to gross $132,000 like in our example, so you’ll need to prioritize improving your efficiency with each new claim.
Suggested reading:
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