Hey! Thanks very much for coming back to view another blog post. I hope you and your family are having a great day!

Starting about the time I switched jobs to one that involved a ton of travel, my wife has been handling the bills. While I was gone during the week, she took care of just about everything with the kids and their weekly activities, the food shopping and the house finances. On weekends, I took over on kid transportation to my son’s hockey practices or both daughter’s soccer or dance classes and fixed the stuff around the house needing fixing. I did the “outside of the house stuff” as my wife liked to call it, and she took care of everything else. She was Supermom, but never got to wear the cape or get serenaded by a crowd’s applause. It was kind of funny when I came home from the airport on Friday evenings, some of the neighbors down the block looked at me funny as if I was the weekend boyfriend. I picture them mumbling to themselves; “Who is that guy?”

After 10 years of that circus, I took a local job to get off the road. While my role in the family unit changed for the better, my lovely bride kept handling the finances. It turns out that she was good at it, following up with utilities if they overcharged us on a meter reading or to make sure a credit card refund was applied to our account. It makes sense because this was one of her jobs at work, running the front desk of a doctor’s office and organizing all the billing associated with the office. Don’t get in her way if Blue Cross got medical billing codes wrong or didn’t credit the doctors office on services performed. A pit bull, that one. In a good way, of course. “Sorry dear”.

But, certain things like mortgage and car insurance payments were always pretty steady and consistent each month. You might not ever notice small increases from month to month or year to year. You assume that your trusty agent is looking out for your best interests. Much like every other customer service oriented product, trust with your agent or agency is pretty important to keeping a good relationship.

Are you laughing yet?

When faced with my recent unintentional retirement we thought we would review some of our expenses and do what we could to reduce our monthly pay out. I mean, you can’t cut the wood shop budget so everything else in on the table! (I just got the evil eye. She can apparently read my thoughts too)

We found a pretty competitive home insurance policy and swapped out all our interior and exterior lighting to LED bulbs. We closed off some heating duct vents in parts of the house not used too often. We quite naturally were driving less, so lower fuel expenses followed. We looked at our car insurance policy compared it to some other providers and WTF?

For years now we’ve been paying about $6,000 a year to our friends at, let’s call them Flibberty Usual (FU), to cover two modestly priced vehicles. We assumed or thought or ignored the issue that this amount of money was common or standard for people in our position. That was until I checked with other insurance providers.

There had been a couple claims during the 10 years we were with Flibberty Usual but the amount of those claims came nowhere close or more precisely a small fraction to what was paid to them over that 10 year period. Other well known insurance brands were contacted to see what we might be able to save by switching, and I fully expected the difference to me modest. I mean, when you go price shopping, a competitor will do their best to offer you a better deal but it only needs to be a little less than you pay now in order to get most folks to switch. Kind of like cable or cellular providers, rates go up over time and a new carrier will only need to offer you a slightly better deal to get your business.

How about saving $4,000 a year? That is what we would save after two other nationally known competitors had priced our policy. These were large companies as well, not Joe’s Plumbing and Car Insurance.

To be fair to Flibberty, we offered them a chance to reprice our policy or look for savings options when we moved to our current home about a year ago. We tried to bundle our car and home insurance to take advantage of that offered discount. The car insurance rates stayed the same and the home insurance price was significantly higher that other quotes we received. Why?

About 20 years of my non wood shop career was spent in the insurance industry. I know why. Policy pricing is most often set by your agent and much of the pricing criteria is up to them. Their annual commission off that policy depends on the profitability of the rate. Once the rate is set, it can only go up and it will go up year over year. Sometimes they will tell you that the deer running into the side of your car was a claim that ultimately impacted your rate increase. Sometimes it will be turning right on red ticket you got in a “No turn on red” intersection. But an additional $4,000 a year?

The other insurance providers we contacted were well aware of our claim and traffic ticket history (nothing in the last 3 years) and it was reported back to us when they sent us a final quote, including that deer incident from 5 years ago. To be clear, we aren’t law breakers or demolition derby drivers at all. Everything was out in the open. All of the coverage details were exactly the same. The quoted price from both these two carriers was about $2,000 a year on the same vehicles with the same coverage we currently had. I felt stupid for waiting so long to verify we were being gouged. Not like other commercials might claim you could save up to 15% by switching, but really gouged on the rates like we were being mugged on the streets.

“So honey, I just helped save us $4,000 a year. Sounds like I could do quite a bit more down in the wood shop with four grand worth of tools, right? Maybe even $4,000 worth of tools every year because of that annual savings!”

Kidding. I would never say that. To her face.

Not that the $4K annual savings means a direct boost to the wood shop budget but I like the additional expense breathing room the insurance switch has offered us. I’m in the process of finishing up a new guest bedroom set of furniture that started with some 5/4 rough sawn Oak. With the insurance savings, I could buy enough of the same lumber for 20 additional sets. I don’t want to build 20 sets of bedroom furniture, I’m just saying that I could. Now about that open ended drum sander? Hmm. I can afford that now!

As for Flibberty Usual, I’m confident that other people’s experience with this carrier may have been positive and that their rates might even be competitive. It could be that our original agent and agency just chose to set a ridiculous rate and let the rate increase train roll on year over year, hoping we wouldn’t notice. Who knows.

My life lesson? Don’t allow yourself to get comfortable with any service where you are forced to make periodic payments. Eventually your initial rates will rise and at some point become outrageous when compared to similar services available elsewhere. It’s just easier to pay it than to research if the payment is fair. I’m also being more careful and doing more leg work to validate things like the price of lumber and specialty hardwoods too. I kick myself for waiting this long to validate that we were being taken for a ride on car insurance. Pun intended.

So no, I probably won’t be rushing out to buy a wood shop tool with the money we just saved. I’m still absorbing the cost of having to replace my broken Delta contractor saw with the Grizzly table saw we got a couple months ago. That was a fun story. Check that out on the YouTube channel.

Following my own life lesson above led me to another savings opportunity. I’ve always had trouble finding local or lower cost suppliers for hardwoods leaving me no choice but to buy from big box home centers or other larger hardwood suppliers. The cost always seems ridiculous to me and the price fluctuates with the market, almost like speculation on the price of oil regardless of the cost of pulling it out of the ground.

Now in a new town, I made a bigger effort to ask around and find a local source for common North American hardwoods. There is an Amish community about 15 miles away with their own sawmill. Their prices are pretty good, though the stock always varies depending on where they can get trees. Luckily, I found another guy within 10 miles who carries everything from Pine of course, to Maple, Red Oak, Aspen, Cedar and even a little Walnut. His prices are beyond reasonable for rough milled, kiln dried lumber and I’m glad I took the time to find this guy. It’s another story supporting the need to do your homework, make the effort, shop local and find the best deal. Though I had to do all the finish plane work, ripping and sanding, all the 5/4 Red Oak stock in the picture below was less than $200. If you know anything about Oak lumber pricing, your jaw just hit the floor.

So yes, car insurance in a way is helping to fund my wood shop. Doing a little bit more due diligence and research also helped me to find a local supplier for hardwoods where the prices are far better than what I pay at LowNards Depot.

Who says doing your homework isn’t fun?