Entries Tagged 'Cars' ↓

Today at lunch my coworkers and I discussed the frugal and interesting people at my company and came to the conclusion that I am definitely not the most thrifty person here. This is an article featuring some of my rich and frugal coworkers without giving names. These people profiled here are all brilliant and I think of some of them as rolemodels. If you’re my coworker and you recognize yourself below please don’t be offended! I respect all of you very much!

• This coworker is an extremely intelligent Harvard grad who has been with the company for more than seven years. He is getting paid more than six figures and has racked up a stock compensation package worth at least few hundred thousand dollars in the past few years. He doesn’t own a car because he rollerblades to work, and he rents a very reasonably priced apartment near downtown San Mateo. One funny frugal story about him is that he went to McDonalds downstairs and bought a hamburger, and then added cheese that he brought with him to make it a cheeseburger! Despite his frugality, he really seems like a truly nice and generous man.
• I work with this particular coworker a lot and he’s usually very reserved and quiet. He carpools with two other people to work because in his words, “everytime I hear the FastTrak beep my heart sinks a little”. For those who don’t know, FastTrak is the electronic toll collecting system in California and every beep is four dollars now. His own car is a Toyota from the early ’80s and his carpool buddy helps him shop for cheap things when he needs them. He’s also very into saving money and like me, he is a housing bubble fence sitter. This person also makes more than six figures but lives on a lot less. The funniest story I remember about him was when he looked very depressed and our supervisor asked him what’s up. He then revealed that his new wife is demanding diamonds. Then our supervisor pointed him to some sales, and he pretty much gagged at the prices and frowned. I don’t think the wife got the diamonds.
• We’re not too sure about the motivations of this particular coworker. We theorized that he is always at the office to save energy at his own abode. He is always there and one of our other coworkers actually found a picture of this guy on Google’s streetview near our office. Once I left my keys at the office and went back to retrieve it at 2 am, and this guy was still there. We know he’s not working all the time, so he is probably trying to save on internet and energy costs. He also buys groceries and brings them to the office to consume. This guy is in the same league as the first guy in terms of wealth, but he lives like a true office bum.

I don’t think I am ready to go to the extremes of living at the office or packing my own cheese, but my coworkers are truly inspirational. I am nowhere near them in income yet, but I will try my best to continue to be frugal when my income does rise.

Share This

Today I arrived at the fubby’s place and he was on the phone with someone, and sounded reasonable upset. It turned out to be his car insurance company. He made a simple call to update his address, and the customer service representative increased his insurance rate by almost 100%, even after removing some coverage, the insurance rate still went up more than 50%. The reasoning was that now he drives longer to work. The fact is, we are moving less than 10 miles away from his old apartment, and he is actually closer to work now than he was before. The problem is that, he also changed jobs last year and did not feel like it needed to be reported to the insurance company. So from the perspective of the insurance company, fubby’s commute length changed from 5 miles to 20 miles, and more driving means more risk. From our perspective, my fubby just moved 10 miles closer to work. Honestly, we did not know that moving could affect the car insurance rate that much. So we proceeded to shop on the internet for cheaper insurance, and along the way, I learned a few things.

• Being single increases your insurance — since we’re getting married in less than a month, at first we input “married” as a marital status. Then we thought about it, and wondered if “single” is the correct status since he is technically not yet married. Well, it seems that married people are considered more safe, because the six months quote for “married” was around 21.5% cheaper than the “single” quote.
• Being young increases your insurance — Apparently 25 is the magic number for the auto insurance industry. The quote difference between a 24 year old and a 25 year old is approximately 10%. My fubby is 24.5, so he has the higher rate. Auto insurance is the main reason why many people under 25 have to pay a higher rate to rent a car.
• Even tickets negated by driving school can increase your insurance — on one of the quote forms we filled out, they actually asked for if we’ve gotten tickets that weren’t recorded because of driving school. What is the point of driving school if that information is collected by insurance companies? Not quite sure how much this increases your insurance exactly, but the mere fact that they asked for this information means that they use it somehow, otherwise, it would not fit into their business logic.
• Getting in accidents increases you insurance — I think everyone knows this one, but it seems that different companies assess this very differently, and the difference in quotes is sometimes thousands of dollars. It definitely pays to shop around.

So finally, we settled on Progressive Direct because their forms were the easiest to use and the rate was reasonable. The new policy actually covers more than fubby’s old policy, and once he gets married they said they will adjust his rate down 20%. Anyway, insurance companies all use some sort of proprietary formula to calculate how risky a person is, and some things they do are plain bizarre. I guess we all live and learn.

Share This