Car things : comments [Matthew's Journal]

The general principle is never to insure against a risk you can bear. Given that insurance companies make a profit, insurance can't be good value for the customer if viewed as a straightforward bet that something will go wrong, its only value is in turning a small risk of a catastrophic loss into the certainty of a small loss.

As it is, the excess on my standard car insurance is £350, because a voluntary increase in the excess makes a significant saving in the premium.

Most garages would rather collect and return your car than lend you a courtesy car by the way. It's worth asking.

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Really? I'd expect to be charged significantly for such a service! I'll try and remember to ask next time.

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I've had my car picked up for free a few times by my ex-nice local garage. (When the owner retired, the manager-cum-head-mechanic was not to my liking so we found new one).

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The general principle is never to insure against a risk you can bear.

I absolutely agree. And yet some people seem to think it's weird or foolish that I don't sign up to a direct debit to insure a £100 phone, and some people seem to be insured for every possible thing that could conceivably go wrong.

(Although, as Sally says, there's also a case for insuring if for some reason "you think you are more than averagely likely to have things go wrong".)

I love your icon btw :)

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Unfortunately, most insurers put in a clause along the lines of "if you think there's any reason why you're more than averagely likely to have things go wrong you have to tell us this so we can up the premium".

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Thankfully they don't seem to count "I'm the kind of person who loses/damages my phone", which is my reason for having had insurance on my expensive PDAphones for the past 8 years; I think I've claimed on it more years than I haven't, but they don't seem to be upping my premium.

Otherwise, I agree entirely with the point, and wouldn't pay a waiver like that.

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Me too. Although (in contrast to my post about credit card debt) conventional wisdom may have some points:

* if you *can* pay, but the hassle (financial or emotional) is out of proportion to the cost, you might prefer to make your cash flow predictable
* American health insurance seems to take it to an extreme, but the idea that you ought to be entitled to insurance, and indeed it's part of the system that insurance pays for predictable costs as well if you can get it (which always makes me disinclined, as I feel I'd probably be much worse at gaming the system, so surely it must be uneconomic for me; this applies less to hire cars where only random accidents (your fault or not) apply)
* if you think you are more likely to have an accident (this seems an obvious one, and would apply to me and bikes, but while it's perfectly reasonable to do, I just feel odd doing so; am i taking advantage (even if they are evil)? Does it make a difference if they know they're taking an average and some people are worse risks than others? Am I doing something wrong? I've become very careful how I leave my bike. What if occasionally you're not quite so careful, if you're always careless, does that void the contract, but if just once you tie up to a post that turns out to be crumbling, is that ok? But they can't tell the difference, would they fight it? Again, I feel like I just don't know the system and ought to find out.)

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That rather depends on what you mean by a risk you can bear.

I mean I have a big lump of savings from having sold my share of the house to Richard when I moved out. I could probably just not bother with contents insurance on the principle that if the house burns down I can afford to replace it all. But to be honest I'd much rather spend a 150 quid a year than risk losing all my savings.

I don't know if I'd pay a fiver in order not to risk a 500 quid payout. The point is currently moot since I can't hire a car until September anyway.

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Matthew's Journal

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October