If you have it, you probably won't need it

Life seems to take an interesting path, where if you have something like additional insurance, travel insurance or a roadside assistance plan, you probably won't need it. Yet if something happens and you don't have it? You'll wish that you had it. Recently one of my daughters drove alone from Ohio to Arizona. I added her on our account so that if something did happen? She'd not be stranded. With the exception of driving through a blizzard, she made it without needing the assistance plan, but it gave me a semblance of peace of mind ...

Use the Internet to check prices

The way to find the cheapest auto insurance may be just a few mouse clicks away, though some online insurance companies try to make it not quite as easy by expecting you to wait for an agent to e-mail you or call you with a quote. Not all online insurance companies do that, and you can also take advantage of the 1-800 numbers that the companies have to get a quote. Some personal information is necessary to give you a quote, but you are the only one who can determine how much information you want to share. Remember, just because you visit a site doesn't mean you can't just click away ...

Lessons in finances

My youngest daughter's boyfriend recently entered the working world and bought his first car. He's had some quick lessons on financial survival, after getting his first check, thinking it was a large sum of money then watching how much of his check has to go to bills. He's also learned how to search for a cheap auto insurance quote or two since some of the initial quotes he got for car insurance were ridiculously high. It's a given a first time driver is going to pay more but some of the plans were more than our monthly rent payment...

At least I was prepared...

Earlier this month I had planned to start driving again. I was ready to take my exam since I had let my license lapse and was looking at buying a car. I spent hours searching for possible used car deals and even checked out car insurance costs for some of the vehicles I was looking at.

Unfortunately my dreams became dashed when something came up where the money I had put aside for this ended up needing to be used to repair our primary car. The good thing was at least I had the money saved. The depressing part was once again putting off something I wanted to do for another day. Yet, through my almost 50 years existence on this planet, I know one certain rule, "Life happens" and there is little you can do to avoid it.

Memories of VW's with Rolls Royce grills...

Whenever I think about car grills, I can't help but remember back to when converting a VW bug with the Rolls Royce conversion and grill was popular. I always wanted a VW bug, not necessarily with the idea in mind to convert one, but I always thought they looked cool. Now of course there are a huge variety of grills out there for many different cars...