Funny Insurance Story

[ben-o]

Thought you guys might appreciate this one...

So my wife and I traded in both our cars for our new P5. My wife has a couple of tickets and an accident on her record (not her fault, but the cop said it was, so she got points for it) whereas I've been lucky and have a clean record.

When I called my insurance guy to change our insurance over to the P5, he said that the policy had to be written on my wife's record, the "least desirable of the two."

"No credit for my clean record at all?" I asked.

"Sorry," he said, "that's the law."

"So what you're telling me," I responded, "is that I can get like 4 speeding tickets (which would bring my record in line with my wife's) and suffer no consequence at all in terms of insurance premiums?"

"Yep," he said, "that's pretty much the way it works."

Looks like I just saved some money on that Radar Detector I was considering...

 

[derrick1623]

well, sucks that it cant be on your perfect record, but at least you have some leeway(sp?) on speeding now...at least you got away with that(so far)........

 

[KamalaMP5]

Massachusetts insurance laws are a bunch of monkey crap:mad: It's rightfully the state legislature's fault, not your insurance agents. There some nice upsides to the Mass. laws, but then there's nonsense like this and we end up with no national insurance companies and no real competition between insurance firms to drive down prices. Okay, enough ranting. I'm up too late and way too old to be watching the crap that I'm watching, but still giggling like I did when I saw it when I was 10 (Police Academy 2)

 

[colnago1331]

Looks like I just saved some money on that Radar Detector I was considering...

Of course, you'll still have to shell out money for each of the four speeding tickets you get, so in the end a radar detector may be well worth the investment.

 

[JPerezz21]

Now i know some of the Reasons why my Employer doesn't Write Insurance in Mass. I work for Progressive and NJ & MA are the only states we don't write in.

 

[ben-o]

Kamala- so true. My insurance agent is awesome; he'd have hooked me up if he could have. It's definitely the wonderful commonwealth of MA. Don't get me started on excise tax... which my friend pays every year even though he's leasing. Heh.

Colnago- very good point!

 

[KamalaMP5]

Don't even get me started on F**!@#@#$en excise tax! Little did I know I'd be getting another bill for this year when I traded in the ES. And then even though I'm a taxpaying resident of the city of cambridge, I only get my parking sticker but NO guest permit because I live in school housing. BASTARDS!!:mad: :mad: :mad: I do have to say the Mass. rules aren't so bad for me being a single male with a newer car, my insurance payment isn't terrible compared to what it could be.

 

[ben-o]

Gotta love Taxachusetts...

 

[BigBlue]

Haha...in terms of complaining about taxes I think us Canadians have you beat. Our income tax is a fair bit higher, especially in the middle income ranges and we have a federal Goods and Services tax of 7% which is applied to pretty much every damn purchase....plus every individual province(except Alberta) has it's own provincial tax of 7%....so when buying a car here, I had about $3500 just in taxes on my car.

 

[cjstringer]

Can't you write your excise tax off on your taxes each year? We can here in Indy. Doesn't recover it all, but help a little in the long run. I always use TurboTax and write off my excises on all my vehicles. (Car, bike, trailer, Seadoo, etc.) Get's part of it back at least.
NEVER FILE SHORT FORM!

 

[KamalaMP5]

You can if you make enough money and you have enough deductions. I'm a poor student, so I'm just out the scratch.

 

[cjstringer]

What do you mean by "enough" deductions? I don't make all that much money, and I'm thinking it might be a state tax deduction. Give it a shot next year and see if it does anything for you. It just might help.
As for the insurance topic, I'm not yet married, but since my girlfriend lives with me, my rates went up because she had a couple wrecks and a ticket on her record. Thank God it's all supposed to drop off the end of this month. I could use the extra cash.

 

[KamalaMP5]

You always do the long form to calculate/itemize your deductions, if you have more than the standard deduction, you file the long form, if not file the short one. That's what I meant by having enough deductions. When you make too little money for the year, like by being a student, you get all your fed/state tax money back, so for something like excise tax that may be deductable, but you don't have enough tax money paid to deduct it from, it's a moot point. And excise tax isn't deductible in Massachusetts.

 

[MP5Raycer]

got a funny one

hey all .. check this out .. my previous car was a 1993 Honda Prelude si (red) and I was paying $241.50 a month fo rit ..then i got my wifes BMW z-3 convertable (red) inmy name and switched the insurance and it was only $167 a month .. now i got my new MP5 and it is higher then the BMW convertable . and he siad it was because it was considerd a Sport utility wagon???????

 

[Protege Type 5]

weird..when we(my family and I) were doing insurance checks..p5 was the cheapest, out of
2k1 honda civic ex coupe manual
2k1 nissan sentra SE manual with performance package2
2k2 subaru WRX
2000 honda civic Si

 

[colnago1331]

Geez, I feel bad complaining now. I pay $110/month for both the wife's P5 and my Outback wagon ... and that's with $100k/$300k coverage!

 

[hihoslva]

Hey, Big Blue -

I know you're complaining about Canadian taxes and all, but don't you Canucks have socialized medical care?

Worth the taxes, IMO. Medical insurance in the US is DAMN expensive if you have to purchase it yourself or for your employees.

And I am a Union tradesman - I'm not even "top level" in the union payscale yet, and my entire benefits package (includes various annuity and retirement funds contributions, medical coverage) and taxes on my wages costs me over $600 per WEEK. And that goes up when my payscale increases. Plus I have union dues of $51 per month on top of that.

Dunno - socialized medicine sounds like a good deal to me.

Just my $.02 (and that's US money, not Canadian )

~HH