My poor car is broken.
Well, not broken. Her beauty is just marred.
Thursday morning, I was pulling into the tiny parking garage at work. It’s very tight. And all of a sudden, someone came flying towards me from the other direction (they were probably going 20). I overcorrected and… CRUNCH.
Yep. Ran the side of my car all along a concrete barrier. Awesome.
I kept driving and pulled into a parking space. I didn’t want to get out of the car, because I didn’t want to know how bad it was. I used my side mirror to look out and see the damage. Bumper appeared to still be attached. That’s a good thing. So I got out of the car and walked around to check it out. Yep, completely scraped and dented, all along the passenger side of the car. Managed to hit just about every panel, as well as the front bumper. Missed the side mirror somehow, so that’s something.
Not a good way to start the day.
Knowing this was going to be a pricy fix, I opted to do it through insurance. And I am so glad I did. The claims people at State Farm could not have been nicer and really took care of a lot of the hard work for me. They recommended a body shop (who I later checked out online – good reviews). They also set me up with a rental car. All I had to do was go to the body shop, get the estimate done, and schedule the repairs and the rental car.
Based on the estimate, going with insurance was the best plan. Ouch! Over $3500 worth of repairs! But my deductible is only $100, and I have rental coverage that covers 80% up to $500, so I just have to cover 20% of the rental car. Excellent.
Should only take a week or so to get my baby back. And I’m going to be extra careful with her from now on.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
I had an uncle who had a body shop and it’s amazing how much that type of work can cost… Glad you are OK, the cosmetic stuff can easily be fixed.
And yes, insurance is a pain to pay but a blessing to have!