Insurance, or Pay Out-Of-Pocket? (pics)

Spot-on analysis. Having a degree in Finance, I like it, too.

 

Trade in time

 

Non-government-run insurance doesn't work that way, because you have a choice of companies. When I ask for insurance quotes, they ask me how many at-fault accidents and how many claims I've had over the past xx years, but never the claim amount. Your risk level is independent of the past claim $ amount... they'll tend to rape you the same whether your repair is $500 or $5000.

 

Wait... you got towed out by a Ridgeline and you fessed up about it here?

 

The insurance companies, government or not, don't have to ask you about any of your history. We mostly do it to see if (1) you're going to lie about it, and (2) if any of the data we can might be incorrect in some way. Your risk level is every bit looked upon by the type of claim and payout, because that plays a role in the risk you represent to the company. The typical threshhold for at fault insurance claims is usually around 1000 in most states, which means if the damage is less than that, you're not going to get surcharged for it. However, since you're overall history is different now (there's an occurrence) they won't be able to rate your base premium the same as someone with zero occurrences.

As far as the OP goes...my recommendation is to use insurance as it's designed...for when the damage/repair costs exceed your ability to take care of it without considerable financial strain on your household. If there's accident forgiveness on your policy you could leverage that and take it into consideration for when your base rate changes (taking advantage of the lack of surcharge), but there's no telling what the future rates will be until an underwriting analysis is done just before each of your renewals.

 

The other way to look at it: if the trail is traversible by a Ridgeline, is it considered off-roading?