I love working from home. I’m currently sitting on my bed tapping away at the laptop, watching the rain outside the window and listening to relaxing music on the Concert Programme.
The reason I’m sitting on my bed rather than at my desk is that I strained a muscle in my neck a couple of weeks ago (at the gym), and have been unable to sit and work at a desk since. The strain is from an old whiplash injury, which has never healed properly.
Whiplash is a very common injury, most often sustained from car accidents. It is probably the least severe common injury, as I’ve mentioned before, but also probably the most commonly used as a way of fraudulently getting an insurance payout. There seems to be an increase in fraudulent and exaggerated insurance claims, I guess people are having to choose where to put an increasingly limited supply of money, and perhaps succumbing to the temptation of a substantial pay-out to clear debt.
Car insurance is something I’m not overly happy about. If you have insurance, I would have thought you should be able to claim on it. Which, of course, you can. But then the insurance company penalises you by putting your premiums up. I had a car stolen five years ago. Since then, I’ve had two claims for damage to my current car. As well as paying a higher premium for a couple of years, the insurance company has now trebled my excess. They are doing their best to deter me from claiming, or in effect, covering less of my claim. I’m still thinking about what to do – reduce to third party and take care of damages myself, or stick with them.
In New Zealand motor vehicle insurance is not compulsory. But in the UK, not having it is an offense, and the authorities are seizing large numbers of uninsured vehicles. It seems the recession is leading more people to skip on their car insurance.
However, there are so many cars, trucks and other vehicles on our roads these days the chances of being in an accident are probably increasing. So I guess we’re stuck with the crocodiles in the insurance industry. Alternatively, if it’s possible in a recession, it would be best to put money aside to cover car repair. This money can be invested and insurance kept to a minimum, to cover only the most extreme expenses. Which is, I guess, what the insurance companies are encouraging us to do.