Today, my husband and I were all set to go visit our insurance agent. We planned to talk about life insurance, and sign some papers. At least, that was our plan this afternoon. It turned out, however, that my car died, which instantly changed our plans.
We got into the car, closed the doors, and put on our seat belts. I put the key in the ignition, and turned it, but the engine wouldn’t turn. Unexpectedly, the car made this weak, pathetic, almost coughing sound, as if it was trying to clear it’s throat, and was failing at the attempt. I removed the key, perplexed. My husband and I stared at each other as if to say “Why won’t the car start?”.
Hoping that this was just a fluke, I tried again, and again had no success. I wanted to hear the engine rev, and the car start, so we could be on our way. Instead, I was listening to my poor, ancient, car make the same awful noise that that one of my neighbor’s cars frequently makes. This neighbor generally tries to force their car, over and over again, to start, and it refuses. Usually, I sit inside my house, and say “Give it up, it’s never going to start”, to my unseen neighbor, in a voice quiet enough to be certain that he, or she, wouldn’t actually hear me. Today, it was me being dumb, trying desperately to start a car that just wasn’t going to cooperate. There was nothing left to do, but get out of the car, and start making the necessary phone calls.
“Why won’t it start?” I asked.
“Because the universe knows we have money again”. My husband said.
He had a point there. It seems like every time we get paid, something unexpected happens that instantly eats up all the money. Last time the car died, we needed to replace the alternator, which was very expensive. New alternators are not covered under car insurance policies. We paid for the whole thing, out of pocket.
The first phone call we made was to our insurance agent to let her know we would have to miss the meeting we had scheduled. I’m so glad we called her! It turns out, our car insurance policy covered the cost of having a tow truck come out to us. Our agent called the towing company herself, and they got in touch with us right away. Then, she called back, to make sure the towing company was on their way. The guy got out of the tow truck, used jumper cables to spark our battery back to life, and had us sign a paper that he would send to our insurance company. It didn’t cost us anything at all! He even was able to tell us, without a doubt, that the problem was that our battery was dead. All we had to do was take the now functioning car to a garage, and tell the mechanic that we needed a new battery. I am so glad that we renewed our car insurance policy! It saved us some money today.
Image by Bucklava on Flickr