I’m just gonna be honest. I hate paying for insurance. Notice my selective word choice. I said I hate PAYING for insurance, not that I hate insurance. Actually I love insurance. I sleep easier at night knowing that I could have a heart attack at any moment, but my life insurance will cover my funeral costs (okay maybe thinking about me dying doesn’t really help me sleep, but you get the point).
I feel like I’m adequately insured. Medical, dental, life, auto, and renters is what I bring to the table. You can insure just about anything. Cancer insurance, pet insurance, alien abduction insurance…wait really? Yup it’s true, you can take out a $10MM insurance policy that will cover you if you get abducted by little green aliens…that is assuming the aliens bring you back to earth so you can file your claim.
I use to completely hate insurance as I thought it was a big waste of money. I haven’t had to go to the hospital in like six years so I was super bitter spending a thousand dollars a year on something I wasn’t using. It was money that was just being thrown away. Things changed though when I got in a car accident in November 2007.
I was driving in stop and go traffic in Orange County when traffic stopped, but I just kept on going. I slammed in to the car in front of me. That’s right. My 2007 Toyota Scion was wrecked. I thought the car was going to be “totaled” by the insurance company, but instead they appraised the damage at a little over $10K and began the repairs. You can see a picture of my baby right after the accident below (she’s all better now).
It was quite the depressing day, but then I realized…Hey, I got my monies worth. Let’s run the numbers. Assuming I paid an average of $100 a month in insurance from age 16 to age 24, I would have paid a total of $9,600 over those eight years. Remember though, the car damage was well over $10K so my insurance had to fork out more dough then they had gotten from me. Basically what I’m trying to get at is this: Although insurance payments suck (because we rarely use the benefits), the peace of mind I receive and the ability to have someone else pay for my mistake is worth every penny.
Basically the moral of the story is: If you’re going to need to use insurance make it worth it, total your car, have your leg amputated, burn your house down. These are the ways you can insure (pun intended) that you’re insurance is being fully utilized. Has insurance saved your butt before? Or have you had the insurance horror story experiences that I have heard exist?
p.s. please don’t amputate your leg or burn your house down….that would just be awkward
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Kind Regards,
James Duffy
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A testament to today's auto manufacturing cheapness: you were going fast enough to do that much damage to the front of your car but not fast enough to deploy the airbags.
I honestly haven't haven't gotten a lot of use out of insurance yet. But since I've got an estimated 60+ years ahead of me, I'm sure I will eventually. However, my little brother was born with a hole in his heart, and insurance saved my very young (and one income) parents about $150K of life-altering debt. And that was 23 years ago.
As thee HR persona @work, I always hear the gripe about how insurance is so expensive..which heck it is!! but I do have to say that 2 yrs ago I was diagnosed with a brain tumor, received a treatment known as Cyberknife (in San Diego =D) and from the $200 thousand + bill…I only paid $1000 =D soo Booyeah! for having insurance cause if I hadn't…well I wouldn't be commenting here cause I wouldn't be able to afford internet =D hehe
P.S. I sooo luv this website.. really really =D
Huge fan of insurance – the hope is that I'll never have to use it. To me, "losing" the money in terms of premiums really means "winning" in life. 🙂
Yeah, insurance premiums really are a pain in the butt but insurance is very important. And everyone I think should be happy not to have used their insurance 🙂 (Yeah, don't amputate your leg etc.)