FENDERS, FINANCE, AND FINAGLING

A couple of deals went through today.

First off, I finally made an insurance claim on the dented fender on Amy's soon to be sold van. That process, which I envisioned being tedious and involving going to various shops and getting estimates, in fact took one phone call, a 5 minute drive and about a 10 minute inspection. It resolved a number of things, the most of important of which was formalizing the decision of whether to have that dent repaired before putting the van up for sale. There's about 677 dollars in damage, and our deductible is 500 dollars. The van's blue book value in good condition, i.e. no major dents is 5,335 dollars. In fair condition, i.e. with the dent, it's valued at 4, 645. That's a 690 dollar difference. By my calculations, if I pay the 500 bucks to get the van fixed, I might make 13 bucks on the deal. I'm no math major, but for me that adds up to the words "as is" on the for sale sign.

The insurance agent cut me a check for 177 bucks on the spot.

The second deal involves my on-air duties for radio stations in Corpus Christi. For two years, thanks to what my father-in-law might refer to as "Luciferian technology," I have been the morning news anchor for a news talk station in that city by the sea, even though I don't live there or anywhere near there. Today, I was formally offered and accepted the job of doing news for four other radio stations owned by my company in the same city. Much of it will be smoke and mirrors, two stations will use the newscasts I produce for the news talk station and edit them, while I will produce several additional newscasts which will be shared and aired by the other stations. The net effect is I will be doing newscasts for a news talk station, a top forty station, a rock station, a Tejano station and a country station all located in a city 150 miles away.
That's in addition to the news talk and country stations I work for in San Antonio.

In addition to a promise of free swag (radio station t-shirts, caps, etc.) I did exact a tiny amount of money out of this new arrangement. It's certainly not much, the radio stations are getting a heck of a bargain, but considering they were paying me nothing, getting any amount of real money for only a small amount of additional work seems like an improvement.

I'm sure when the dust settles a bit, our car insurance rates will go up and the new work duties will probably be a headache on occasion, but for right now...I feel like I'm walking away from the tables a winner.