Thursday, February 05, 2009

How to earn $1,440 an hour

…for ten minutes annually.

OK, yeah, the full disclosure part kind of takes the wind out of the old sails. Still! In ten minutes start to finish, I got $240 taken off my annual car insurance premium.

Back when one or both of us was commuting daily, we put a lot of miles on the vehicles – especially our little Civic. It was being driven a whopping 25,000 miles annually, sometimes even more.

Since my husband started working almost exclusively from home over a year ago, that’s dropped considerably. Last year, we put less than 9,000 miles on the car.

So I called up my faithful representatives and mentioned this fact, and about three seconds later my annual bill was $240 less. Sweet.

In somewhat related news, I do not see why it is necessary to emblazon Twenty-five years together all over my cards. Why don’t they add, We’ve been with you through ten vehicles and over a million miles! or Gee, you really are getting past the dewy-fresh-youth thing, aren’t you sweetie while they’re at it?

I’m gratified that they recognize our long-term relationship and all, but at the same time some of us are perhaps a tad sensitive about things that make plain the fact that if we look thirty-something, it is probably Maybelline.

...but perhaps I am just a little extra-super-sensitive at the moment because a sweet little girl-child on the beach Tuesday asked me if I had GRANDCHILDREN...ooooooh, SNAP!

Anyway. If you haven’t really looked your policy declarations over in a while, give it a squint or two. There might be some money waiting to be found on it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Tama,
I was wondering if you had also tried getting a reduction in property taxes? Since the value of most houses has dropped (duh) you might be able to get your local municipality to drop your home valuation.
Recently some fly-by-night company offered to do this for us, for $200...

We can fill in a one page form ourselves, thank you.

Worth a try!

-goodstuf3

Michelle F said...

It's always worth a try to politely complain - my Mom was slammed by the Ice Storm that hit the Northeast in December - No power for a week, lots of tree damage, fortunately minimal damage to the house - just needed to replace the electrical service...But anyways she called her Insurance agent whom she had been a client of for over 40 years and got her deductibles waved and a generous check out within a couple of days. If she hadn't said anything she would have been stuck with the $950 bill to fix the electrical.