A Word to the Wise

So since I'm on my advice kick, I'd let you in on another little bit of wisdom I picked up recently. Today, actually. I was at work drafting some wills when I got a call from Big D. He was so excited: he had gotten off of work early and was rattling off all the things he was going to get done during his 5 hours of peaceful bliss before The Monster and I got home and the chaos began. Then I heard a big "crash!" and he yelled "Dammit!" Yup - Big D crashed his Prius. Oh boy, I was scared and pissed all at once. He told me he was okay, and deep down, I knew he was. But seriously - he wrecked the car?!?!?! Y'all know how every extra dollar I have goes towards that loan I mentioned last week. Fear insued.

Apparently, he was on the feeder road of a big highway. Up ahead, a big commercial truck made a wide turn onto the feeder, taking up 2.5 of the 4 lanes. A lady (a very skittish lady, I might add, as I did get to meet her) decided to slam on her brakes and come to a complete and total stop - on the feeder road. Idiot. So of course, the lady behind her hit her. And Big D hit the second lady. Fabulous. Yes, everyone is fine. I wouldn't be complaining like this if someone had been hurt. So the first thing I did was call my mom and cried about how I hadn't added the umbrella policy to our insurance. I actually made the call to my agent this morning. She told me it'd be okay. But knowing that Big D was in the back of it all didn't bode well. In our state, the guy in back gets blamed by default for failure to control speed.

So, I left work to go get Big D, since his Prius was not driveable. It's not as badly damaged as I had pictured with my overactive imagination, but it does have a big chunk taken out of the front corner. They had moved into a parking lot of a nearby office building and were waiting for the cops. When I got there, we had been waiting an hour. We sat there for another two hours. No cops. Big D had called 4 times, and each time, he was told he was at the top of the list. (This is the part where I miss small towns. If we had been in a small town, the cop would have been there right away, and one of us probably would have gone to high school with the dude.) For real. So the whole pack decided to go to a nearby police substation and get a report issued there. The cop we met with was absolutely appalled that a cop didn't come by when 2 of the 3 cars were disabled and it had been 3 hours. But anyway, he filled out an accident report. All three witness statements matched exactly - yet, guess who gets the blame? Yup - Big D. I asked the cop to list a fourth vehicle - the big commercial truck - hoping that it would be considered by our insurance company to be a contributing factor, thus hopefully limiting our liability to our own car. He agreed. I'm meeting with our agent in the morning, so we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, I've got to pull $1,000 from savings to pay the deductible on our car repairs. While I'm not sure if we'll be responsible for the other two cars, I'm 99% sure we'll have to claim our car on our insurance. So there you go. Luckily there is not a separate deductible for the other cars. What does suck is this -- and this is where you listen very closely and learn from my mistake -- we don't have rental car coverage. I couldn't believe it. My dad is insurance guru dude, and when I got this policy through my dad's agent, I said "copy my dad's policy." I know they have rental car coverage, because my mom drove around in a freakin' Jaguar when her Maxima was wrecked a few years ago. Yet, I don't have it on my policy. And there's more - I don't have tow truck coverage. This is where my dad would say, "You should have gotten AAA." Yup. He's right. So we're out our $1,000 deductible, plus $143 for the tow, plus a $10 a day storage fee for our poor little Prius until we can get it to the dealership so State Farm can work its magic. Estimated rental car costs for a month: another $1,000. OMG. Right when I thought I was getting ahead, BAM! slapped in the face. At least that's what I thought, until I was looking around at my sweet husband, sad to see his car banged up, and I thought about my blessings again, and how awesome it is that no one was hurt. Thank God.

So - go check your policies - make sure you have rental car coverage. And maybe tow truck coverage, but I'm not completely sold on it. And also make sure you have coverage for uninsured motorists too. Despite being against the law to drive without insurance, you'd be amazed how many people aren't insured. Our friend R was hit by an uninsured motorist last year.

Lessons learned and passed on to you... :-)