...get gap insurance! My wife recently cracked up our "new" 10 year old car to the point where it was "totaled". She's fine now, thank you (I always told her that she is "fine as frog's hair"), but the two month old car was beyond repair. One quick clue is that if the air bags go off, it's toast.
Several days after the accident, we heard from State Farm with a settlement offer that placed the car's value about $2500.00 below what we had just paid! Yipes! During that phone call the claims officer asked me if we had "gap insurance" and I had to confess that I had never heard of that. When confronting my car dealer about the car being overpriced he admitted that he left this mysterious item out of our contract because he knew we wanted to keep the payment low. He never gave us the option. Later, when challenging my local agent to get the offer up higher somehow, he asked, predictably, about gap insurance! What is this strange entity everyone in the world knows about, except me?
Gap insurance is a separate policy that one might take out to insure that the lien holder gets paid completely off after an accident. It fills in the "gap" between what the insurance company will pay and what you owe. "Now you tell me!" After 5 or 6 weeks of research and office visits, many phone calls, and writing a somewhat lawyerly letter, my State Farm settlement was raised substantially, leaving only a relatively small "gap", so I am happy. But I am forewarned about the next loan.
And I'm thinking about a spiritual gap insurance we all might need. I am often amazed and dismayed at how so many people face the inevitable end of life with such nonchalance. They think about their conscience such a little bit; they rely on their parent's religion overmuch; and they settle for a life philosophy that could readily be summed up in a sound bite or on a bumper sticker. I suggest there is a huge gap that must be faced more deliberately....and my time is up.
By the way...MILLERWRITES copy is COPYRIGHTED. Why cut and paste when you can simply copy the link?
Several days after the accident, we heard from State Farm with a settlement offer that placed the car's value about $2500.00 below what we had just paid! Yipes! During that phone call the claims officer asked me if we had "gap insurance" and I had to confess that I had never heard of that. When confronting my car dealer about the car being overpriced he admitted that he left this mysterious item out of our contract because he knew we wanted to keep the payment low. He never gave us the option. Later, when challenging my local agent to get the offer up higher somehow, he asked, predictably, about gap insurance! What is this strange entity everyone in the world knows about, except me?
Gap insurance is a separate policy that one might take out to insure that the lien holder gets paid completely off after an accident. It fills in the "gap" between what the insurance company will pay and what you owe. "Now you tell me!" After 5 or 6 weeks of research and office visits, many phone calls, and writing a somewhat lawyerly letter, my State Farm settlement was raised substantially, leaving only a relatively small "gap", so I am happy. But I am forewarned about the next loan.
And I'm thinking about a spiritual gap insurance we all might need. I am often amazed and dismayed at how so many people face the inevitable end of life with such nonchalance. They think about their conscience such a little bit; they rely on their parent's religion overmuch; and they settle for a life philosophy that could readily be summed up in a sound bite or on a bumper sticker. I suggest there is a huge gap that must be faced more deliberately....and my time is up.
By the way...MILLERWRITES copy is COPYRIGHTED. Why cut and paste when you can simply copy the link?
