Thinking about the Christmas Eve accident, I'm getting to the point where I'm just glad that we all escaped relatively unharmed (physically, at least), and it could have been much worse. While insurance in this case is fabulous and serves its purpose, the crash that wasn't my fault still has fairly significant consequences.
The first problem is that my lease payment was stupid low, just over a hundred dollars. The market being what it was in March 2010, and with the bad PR around Prius brake pedals (which turned out all to be bullshit, as it turns out), the lease deals were fantastic. I also had my old car to put down and a little cash, making the payment even lower. When you're done with a lease, you have to start over. That would be fine if it went to term, because I could have prepared for it financially.
So knowing we were always going to buy the next car instead of lease, because we didn't want mileage restrictions, I knew we'd have to put a lot down to keep the payments down. With my new philosophy being that wealth is about less expenses, and not necessarily about more income, that was going to be a bitch jumping in 15 months before planned. I had to dip into the "move to a warmer client" savings.
Now I'm trying to find ways to make up the "loss" to savings. I was thrilled to find out that I'll get about a grand and a half back from the wrecked car, essentially because I did have equity in it from the money and trade down on the lease. That was unexpected. I finally sold my last bit of Microsoft stock, so there's a little more there. Now I'm crossing my fingers for a substantial tax refund. If I can get to 60% of what I took out, I'd be content with that.
The financial negatives of a lease ending prematurely is not something I ever thought about, I suppose because you don't expect that some moron is going to smash into you and destroy the car. I guess in the worst case, if I wasn't working and had no savings, I'd be getting a used car, or at best, a new Corolla, which wouldn't be awful considering how good those cars have been to me over the years. But still, it's a punch in the nuts of my bank account I wasn't ready for.
No comments yet.