A mere 20 months after the car crash I was involved in, I have finally received and offer to settle from the third party insurers. After enduring 19 months of back discomfort, I have been offered the sum of �3,050. Needless to say, this cheered me up first thing Saturday morning when I read the letter confirming this. However, it should be noted that I have a new-found respect for my solicitor, who labelled the offer "a little low" and stated that I should reject it and demand �4,250 instead, "to be reasonable". Hopefully this will all be resolved before Christmas, so I don;t have too much time to think about what to spend it on. Ideally, I'd like to dump most of it into my savings, and accrue interest on it. But interest rates are so incredibly low these days, unless you're going for a long term investment, it's hardly worth it. Anyway, I think I'll be re-fitting my wardrobe and raising a few glasses to Shoosmiths solicitors. And, I'm told, learning to drive. Speaking of which, I'm still unsire about learning to drive. Current list of benefits:
And that's it. However, these come at SUCH a cost:
Now, firstly, that comes to an initial outlay of anywhere between �4,000 and �7,000 for the first year of driving. Maybe it's just me, but I can think of better things to spend that money on, like 3 months in the Maldives. But then the maintenance costs (as in fixed costs for car retention) come to a staggering �2,000 per annum, just for a little "freedom". Personally, if someone came to me on the first day of every year and said, hey, you can either have �2,000 or this car to drive about for the rest of the year, I'd take the cash. All this before you've fixed all the things that can go wrong, replaced any worn tires, topped up the oil, bought your emergency puncture repair kits and jump leads and anti-freeze and WD40 and furry dice and yadda yadda yadda. End of rant. IB |
Copyright Insane Bartender 2003-11-03 1:17 p.m.