A Monstrous Bet. Louis Shalako.

Louis Shalako



It takes a while, and a bit of thinking before things sink in, sometimes. It’s about that ‘new’, good used vehicle sitting out in the parking lot.

So, I called up and took Balance Protection off my loan, to the tune of eighteen dollars a month. That's $864.00 over four years. Then I put collision on the vehicle insurance, to the tune of thirty-three a month.

This does not save money, but we must bear in mind all insurance represents a bet—a monstrous bet if you think about it. I'm betting that I am going to die in my bed, (in which case the vehicle could still be sold off to pay the loan), or I am betting that I will get in an accident, (and the insurance people are betting against me, odd as that seems.)

Yeah, it’s funny—the insurance people are betting that I won’t get into an accident. And they know us pretty well, don’t they?

If you want to be anal-retentive about it, you can take collision insurance off for summer and put it back on for winter, for example. You could take it off when the balance on the loan is paid down, and you can see your way to the next vehicle—perhaps your cash reserves are building up again.

But the odds of me dying in my bed, or becoming incapacitated (in terms of loan balance protection), would appear to be far slimmer than the odds of me being in an at-fault accident, or going off the road in a single-vehicle accident. (Which is always your fault, right?)

I noticed last winter that a minivan is not good on ice in a crosswind, not that I had any real problem...one way or another, I have to cover my ass. It is true I have a spare vehicle, and that a shit vehicle might cost three or four grand—however, I also have that fucking four-year loan to consider.

#financial_literacy #money #theory

So, for thirty-three bucks a month, if we wipe it out, we get a replacement vehicle, minus the deductible, and just keep on making them loan payments. #essentially

The deductible, well, I already have that in the bank—

With balance protection, I'm dead or incapacitated, and only the bank is happy, 'cause they got all their money back, including anticipated interest.

...and my fucking heirs squabbling over what's left...

It’s okay, ladies and gentlemen, the nephews are pretty good boys and they’ll work it out.

***

Sometimes I wish my math was better, and sometimes the financial literacy isn't what it should be. On the Ontario Disability Support Program, you never have any real money.

In some weird sense, we don't know what things cost. I'm luckier than some, in that I did buy a small house once, and while the mortgage payments were fairly small—less than $300.00 per month, all of those other costs, taxes, water, gas and electricity, insurance, brought it up so that I figured, on an average monthly basis, it would cost something like $765.00 per month to keep that two-bedroom, $50,000.00 house. And I was still lining up at food banks, riding a crummy old bicycle and going over to my dad's house most days to scrounge a meal and bum a few smokes...

Just to put that in perspective, it was 1999 and the pension was a whopping $930.00 per month.

When I sold it four years later, I only had about fifteen hundred in equity built up,

However, the market value had gone up, as well as the fact that I'd cleaned it up considerably, taking out an old oil tank, an antenna tower, rotten old rugs on top of some pretty nice, old style maple floors. When I sold it for $72,000.00, that $23,000.00+ was the most money I'd ever had in my entire life.

#ODSP #financial_literacy #money

Okay, I have lowered the payments on the four-year, ten fucking thousand dollar loan from about $266.00 per month, down to $248.00 per month. From the sounds of things, my car insurance will be about a hundred a month, but I sort of forgot to ask about tenant’s insurance. 

With my prior bundle, car insurance (on a vehicle worth about three grand and no comp, no collision) was maybe $67.00 per month and tenant’s insurance another $23.00 or so.

A quick rundown on the vehicle. It’s a 2010 minivan, with about 209,000 kilometres on it. 

The price after knocking him down about $700.00 was $7,795.00, and tax and some small fees, new plates for example, bumped that up to $8,928.25.

That leaves eleven hundred in the bank. While it’s tempting to just throw that back and pay down the outstanding balance right from the outset, experience teaches us that something always comes up—and if nothing else, I have the first two or three months of loan and insurance payments already covered. I suppose I wouldn’t have, or couldn’t have, done this unless my job seemed fairly secure, part-time as it is. The ODSP pension at least provides some basic income in an emergency…fingers crossed.

Wish me luck, because we’re probably going to need it.


END

Images. Zach Neal.

Louis has all kinds of books and stories available, many of them free, from Amazon.

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