Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Without Insurance)

Accidental Damage is Not an Edge Case

Quick humidifier update: In previous posts I recommended the BlueAir InvisibleMist evaporative humidifier. Two of them stopped working recently, so I replaced them with the Vornado EV100. I’ve only been using it for about a week, so I can’t fully endorse it yet.

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Kids get mad sometimes.

They don’t have full control over their emotions, and when that switch flips, everything within arm’s reach becomes a potential projectile. There’s yelling. Sometimes things break. Then, eventually, they calm down.

Afterward, everyone looks around wondering where that came from… and why we couldn’t have skipped straight to the calm, reflective part.

In our house a few weeks ago, the thing that broke was the TV. The crack in the screen wasn’t large, but it was just deep enough to turn a very expensive piece of technology into a very large, very useless rectangle.

The two sane options

If you want a nice TV and you have kids in the house, I think there are basically two reasonable paths:

1. Don’t buy a nice TV.

2. Buy the nice TV, and plan for the day it gets damaged.

That “plan” can mean buying insurance. Or it can mean setting aside money and accepting that you might have to replace it earlier than you expected.

Why this matters more now

This matters more in 2026 than it ever has, because almost nothing is truly repairable anymore, and TVs are near the top of that list. Once the panel is damaged, you’re basically done. Repairing it often costs about as much as replacing the entire TV (or more).

And that’s a shame, because modern TV screens are basically magic. Millions of tiny pixels, perfectly aligned, producing colors that look better than real life. LED panels are hard to manufacture. Quantum dot panels are even harder. OLEDs are an engineering miracle.

Despite all that complexity, they rarely fail… as long as no one throws anything at them.

If you have kids, accidental damage isn’t a weird edge case. It’s part of the risk model.

What I’m doing (and what you should consider)

So if you’re like me and you want a nice TV in a house with kids, accidental damage coverage is worth serious consideration.

Right now, I use Akko’s home tech plan. But you might be able to get similar coverage through your existing homeowner’s or renter’s insurance.

The key is this: make sure the policy explicitly covers accidental damage.

Quick note on extended warranties

An extended warranty usually won’t help you here. A flying remote doesn’t count as a manufacturing defect. And paying out of pocket for a new TV hurts a lot more than planning ahead.