People Twitter

Need a new paint job? Get in an accident. Check engine light? Get in an accident.

I am not a ~~lawyer~~ person whose advice should be listened to on anything, ever.

What op is describing is called "self insured"

Liability insurance: legally required.

Also liability insurance: costs hundreds and the price gets jacked up every few months because fuck you.

Protection racket.

If it were a socialist systemic thing, and we rephrased it to, we all contribute a little each year and it goes into a pot for anyone who needs their car fixed, who contributes? (but then you gotta erase the evil corporation that rakes in billions and pays ceos unimaginable money)

This already exists, and they are called unit linked insurance plans. Basically the insurance company provides you some units in an investment/trust fund, in addition to the policy benefit, for your premiums (obviously higher to compensate).

They are actually much scammier, because the insurance company administers the unit fund as well, and the fees are often much higher than if you just buy the policy and an exchange traded trust/fund separately. They were formulated by insurance companies basically for the sole purpose of bamboozling people who echo this meme. Back in the day, door to door insurance salespeople would say "even if you never claim, you still get a payout!".

Unit-linked insurance plan - Wikipedia - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit-linked_insurance_plan

Its like gambling, I bet 100 bucks something will happen to my car this month. Damn nothing happened, lost again.

Once you start seeing insurances as casinos where you can bet on something happening to you or not it makes a little more sense

bc “businessmen” in america think they are providing something of value and not utter bullshit

• Léon: Tony... All the money I make, that you keep for me...
• Tony: You need some money?
• Léon: No, just curious... Because, I've been working a long time... And I havent done anything with my... I thought maybe someday I could
• [uncomfortable]
• Léon: use it.
• Tony: [Figuring him out] You met a woman.

Funny enough, if somebody offers you insurance that builds cash value, even though the sound of it does make sense you should probably run.

Insurance is valid, profit from insurance is where it gets problematic cause the whole point of insurance is to have a similar average outcome, just less extremes in the worse case scenario.

Homeowner's insurance is worse, almost as bad as health insurance. Try getting them to pay out, and if they do, watch your rates go up, or your policy get cancelled. If you have a mortgage, you must have homeowner's insurance. State Farm cancelled me out of the blue after 25 years without a single claim.

I suspect they all conspire to cancel policies, knowing that we need to go somewhere, so State Farm cancels a customer, and they go to Allstate at a much higher rate, and Allstate cancels a different customer, and they go to State Farm at a much higher rate. This forces the customer to go through a new approval process, and sign a new contract that is probably worse for them than they had before, in addition to being a higher rate.

That's basically what whole life insurance is, and it's a complete scam IMO because premiums are high (to allow for investment) and the investment is too conservative. You're much better off buying term life insurance and investing the difference.

You can partly do this DIY with self insurance. Basically, you put a certain amount of capital into a bank account or something and hand that over to the state treasurer in a trust, and it needs to be about $200-400k in my area (range is because the law isn't clear to me). If you can stand to part with that much, you probably prefer to have the insurance take that risk for you so you can retain control over that money and not worry about lawsuits.

Everybody is 12

How do the 'ppl who actually know' defend this obvious scammy aspect of the whole thing? Genuinely curious

You could get the minimum insurance required by law and then dedicate a saving account for when you might need it.

The better argument would have been to say that there are life insurances that you can borrow against, so why not car insurances. I guarantee the reason is because of lack of demand and therefore not profitable. If people were wanting such a thing, someone would provide it, but the reasons for such a policy as well as what the collateral is are two different things.