Matthew's Journal

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.)