Give up your car, save money
I'll start by airing some dirty laundry: Over a three-year period, I collected four speeding tickets. The infractions were considered minor (no more than 15 kilometres above the speed limit) and didn't deliver any demerit points. What they did deliver is a letter from my auto insurance company, stating it would no longer cover me. My broker shopped around for another insurer, finally landing a company willing to cover my husband and me for $5,500 a year—a $3,300 increase from our previous rate.
While I take full responsibility for my lead foot and intend to put the habit behind me, it would have been nice to get a warning or a second chance (okay, fifth chance). As an official "high-risk driver," however, I didn't have much clout in the matter.
To drive or not to drive
My husband and I took stock. While we could come up with the extra $3,300, it dawned on us that we didn't have to. I work from home, and we've been sharing a single car for 12 years. We decided I wouldn't drive the car for a year, allowing us to retain our old insurance rate. By the end of the year, three of my infractions would come off my record, so we could start fresh.
"Good luck with that," a friend told me wryly, the subtext all too clear: Driving is a necessity, and your life will fall apart without it. As it's turning out, she couldn't have been more wrong. The decision to stop driving has sent ripples of benefits through my life.
The biggest, of course, is financial. When I looked at our first credit card bill, I was shocked: It was $700 lower than our monthly average. I figured it was a statistical outlier, a fluke—until the second bill arrived $600 lower than our average. The next one, a full $1,000 lower. How could this be?
