Secret Option 3?

This week I have learned that insurance companies are in a constant internal conflict with their mission and their bottom line. We buy insurance and pay monthly with the promise that if the house burns down or your spouse dies unexpectedly or your car is stolen out of your driveway that they will come to the rescue. Not so. I have paid my own car insurance for half my life, each month I cut a check to a promise that they will have my back if Hell comes knocking. This week I have decided that insurance is also Hell.

I told ABC News that I am not sure how this ends but in our situation things only get worse and not better. That has always been the case. Charities lend a hand and a fundraiser might help but at the end of the day each MRI adds to a huge bill we cannot pay screwing up our debt to income ratio making

it impossible to buy a home or get a car loan. This was not a huge issue over the last few years, we have a lovely home we rent from sweet friends which suits our purposes and I took out my car loan before Emma was ill so I was "grandfathered" into it. Then my car is stolen.

See here is the issue, if the insurance decides to cut a check for what they believe is the value of the car they will chop it up before it gets to me. They take a piece for themselves for the deductible (because apparently paying every month for 15 years did not give them enough of my money) then what I owe still on my car loan comes out and the rest goes to us. I did the math...it will not be enough unless for some reason they assess my van to be of great value (I will not hold my breath). So I will be sitting here with a check that is not enough to buy another car that I would feel safe putting my kids inside and driving three hours to Stanford in Bay Area traffic.

Let's pretend the van is recovered by police. We all know that insurance will pay the bare minimum on repairs to the car. I can tell you now that I will never feel safe in that car ever again. What if it was used in a drug deal and now people recognize it as a dealer van? What if there is stuff hidden in the car from the thief that could hurt my children? What if, what if, what if...my Mommy brain goes wild. These scenarios have been keeping me awake at night.

Option 1 is not enough money to buy another car, option 2 is a recovered van that makes my anxiety go insane.

Like I said, pretty sure this doesn't end well.

After ABC News10 aired our story we had a few new donations to our Go Fund Me, that was such a blessing and those funds are being put aside to go toward a car. A huge heartfelt thank you to every donation, every little bit makes us feel like we are not in this alone. My prayer is for secret option 3, a miracle. Pray for that please.

If you missed our news segment you can see it here, ABC Story, our GoFundMe is just the one we have used for the last three years, when they cut us a check at the end of the month I will put it aside for the car, GoFundMe. If any of you are in the Bay Area or Central Valley my sweet friend is putting on a garage sale for us. Oddly enough we have been planning that for a month! It was supposed to be just extra funds to make things easier for travel to appointments and living life but now it is car fund.

A huge thank you to everyone who let us borrow car seats, is working hard to replace stolen items in the car, sending us prayer, and working hard on these fundraisers I mentioned. Right now the car seat situation is covered and it looks like the stroller might be covered as well. I will know more today. There were other items in the car not replaced; overnight bags filled with clothes and shoes, new backpacks for school, Hope's puppy kennel, Hope's puppy bed for the car, Emma's iPod (I gave her my iPod to prevent having to listen to "Let it Go" 100 times on our hospital travels!), and some of our favorite toys.

 

If you see us around town try not to talk about everything that we lost unless Emma brings it up, there were tons of tears yesterday as she recalled things that were in the car. It was heartbreaking to explain to a child so young what theft means and why bad people take things that do not belong to them. If she brings it up by all means let her talk.

 

Thank you again for all the help and support, we are so thankful!