Insurance, Car Payments, and Salesmen Who Don’t Know Their Customers

Killing time until it’s good and dead.

Bought me some car insurance tonight–now I feel like a real grownup. I wanted to buy the bare minimum required by law ’cause I’m a really good driver and don’t go around hitting things. California is a screwy state. It requires you to have car insurance; however, the minimum property liability is $5000. How useless is that? Five grand? Maybe I’m jaded ’cause I live in Orange County, but there are very few cars on the road worth less than $5000.

I even called an agent today to try and figure out this insurance thing. The dude seemed kinda surprised that I didn’t want any coverage in case I have an accident that is my fault.

“I’m looking to keep my rates as low as possible,” I told him.

“We can set you up with something that has a high deductible–like $1000,” he offered.

“My car is only worth $2000–why would I want a $1000 deductible?”

I really don’t understand people. Folks always wanna have a new shiny car–it’s so vain. A car’s only job is to get you from point A to point B. My 18-year old Honda is just as good as your 2007 Hummer. The amount of money people put into cars is absurd. When someone buys a new car nowadays, they rarely have the cash to purchase the thing so they gotta finance. Most people who have car payments fork over two or three hundred dollars a month. On top of that, you gotta get insurance. You can’t go the cheapo route like me ’cause when you’re driving around in a $10,000 car, you sure as hell want insurance to cover any damage. That’ll run another hundred–hundred fifty a month.

That’s just insane–how can anyone put three to four hundred dollars a month into a car? It just seems like a poor use of dollars compared to getting an older car for one tenth of the cost. That kinda money could be applied to something far more useful–like getting rid of those credit card bills.

And the worst part? When someone finally gets their car paid off, most of the time they go a buy a new car–so the process never ends! No wonder we live in a debt-filled society.