Hallelujah!
As some of you may know, I royally fucked myself over a few years ago when I got into not one, not two, but three “incidents” on my car insurance in a 3-month period. I was in two car accidents (my fault) and then I got a carpool violation. (I blame Scott McNealy. Working at Sun is enough to cause anyone to want to smash their car into other people’s cars. 😛 )
Anyway, I’ve been through three years of hell with regards to car insurance. My former carrier, Travelers, promptly dropped me, and I went from paying $130 a month with them to … FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY DOLLARS A MONTH (!!!) with Progressive.
To put it very mildly, this sucked complete ass.
Well, I’m still getting reamed by Progressive, and I’m sure they’re glad they’ve taken me on, because they’re making a killing from me. (I haven’t had a single claim in that time period.)
I called my car insurance agent today to find out some good news — on January 14, I can resubscribe with either Progressive (no thanks) or another carrier, and my rates should go back down to about $130 a month. (Actually, since I’m older, they might even be lower. But I’m not holding my breath. Anything has to be better than the $470 I’m paying now!) This is going to open up a fairly significant chunk of income, which I was actually going to use for a new car payment. However, I’ve decided to stick the leftover chunk of change into the Miata instead. That means:
1) A new hood;
2) A new rear bumper;
3) A complete interior and exterior detail.
The best part of this is that I can get this all done for what would have been 3-4 months of Car Insurance Hell. Since I have some newly-paid-off personal credit cards, I plan to stick it all on there in January and pay it off later.
I also made some other decisions today. I’m getting some (and by “some”, I mean 500) wacky pens with a Simpli logo. I want a fun, gimmicky toy with my company’s logo on it, and darn it, I’m going to get wacky pens just because they’re cool. I talked to the EPromos guy today and they’re going to arrange it so I can get them when I’m in LA at IBI in December. I am greatly looking forward to this.
I also talked to my dad today about going to IBI. He says he’ll think about it. The problem is that Mom will want to go too, but December is Mom’s busiest personal month of the year. He said he wanted to go, but since Mom is going to be so busy, he’s not sure if they can make it. We’ll see.
