Money & Miracles

This is a story about cars, intuition and money.  It’s also about saving time and energy.

 

I’m not someone who really knows much about cars or cares about them.  I pretty much completely forget about my car if I’m not in it.  When I travel and have to rent a car and afterwards someone asks me, “What kind of car did you get?”  I have to think about it a minute and usually the best answer I can give is, “I think it was blue or maybe grey.”

 

I’ve always owned used cars because I’m very practical and that’s what I could afford.  I didn’t mind.  My current car is a used one, and the one before was used also.  In 2021 I bought a used 2012 Rav 4 because living in the Green Mountains of Vermont, I really need 4 wheel drive.  

 

Well, in 2022 I was hit by a deer driving to Lisa Natoli and Bill Free’s house (yes, it hit me.)  It hit the front corner and bounced off and hit the side, denting both doors and then miraculously it went on its way.  It cost about $6,000 to get it repaired and my insurance covered all but the $500 deductible.  

 

Then in 2023, on a very stormy night coming home from a meditation retreat there was a young deer standing in the middle of the road and I was afraid to swerve right or left too much because the road has a big gully on each side and it was very stormy so I did my best to slow as much as I could, but I hit it square on, and it seemed to be able to get up and run off.  Amazing and horrible at the same time.  

 

This second accident got the whole front of the car and some damage to the engine, about $5,000 worth.  The insurance adjuster came and filed the claim.  This was mid-July and the soonest I could get the car in for the body work was mid-October.  He said the insurance company would only cover 30 days of rental car and I said, “I can just have my guy jerry rig the bumper with some zip ties and I won’t need a rental until I have to bring it in.  He seemed satisfied with that.  So, that’s what I did.

 

Two weeks later I was driving my cat, Sattva, back from the emergency room when he’d had an asthma or allergy attack, and the car completely died.  When I called the adjuster he told me, “I told you not to drive it.”  To which I said, “no, you didn’t.”  I reminded him of what I’d said I’d do, and if the car wasn’t safe to drive, why didn’t he say that to me? 

 

He said he’d put it in the report.  To which I said, I didn’t read the report because that was between the insurance company and the car repair place.  

 

I’d stood right in front of him face to face and told him I wasn’t going to need a rental because I was going to drive the car.  That was the time to tell me it wasn’t safe to drive.

 

The upshot was that by driving the car I totaled the engine and it supposedly was my fault because it was in the report that the car was unsafe to drive.  

 

Stay with me here, because this really is about intuition and following it.

 

I was very blessed to have a GREAT resource in the lady who owns the repair shop, and also my friend, Tedd.  They both helped me to figure out what was best for me to do.  I had the choice of keeping the money from the insurance company, skipping the repair and selling the car for scrap.  OR I could pay $6,400 to replace the engine.  If I had the all the repairs the car would be worth more than book, and be in great shape.  The replacement engine would have a 3 year warranty and less miles than my old engine.  

 

What to do?

 

First, I got a rental car and then I had to find a new used car within 30 days.  Which I did.  My intuition kept nudging me to get the Rav4 repaired and pay to replace the engine and then sell it – but I thought “if I do that, and can sell the car for $12,000 then it will be a net of about $5,600 about the same as keeping the $4,500 from the insurance company and getting maybe $1,500 for scrap.”

 

No one could tell me definitively what to do.  But my intuition was strong to get the car repaired and sell it.  Which is what I decided to do.

 

When I picked it up from all the repairs, more than 4 months after the accident, it was beautiful.  The woman who owns the repair shop and I had a chance to chat and I told her more about my saga and how I never would have ruined the motor if the insurance  guy had just told me not to – he’d only put it in the paperwork.  She said, “no, he didn’t.  I have the paperwork right here and it’s not in there.”

 

She showed it to me.  She asked me if I was going to hire an attorney.  I said, “do you think I should?”  She said, “absolutely!”  And then she told me that I could simply file a report with the state, and they’d handle it with the insurance company for me because they regulate the insurance companies and this kind of consumer protection is a big deal.  

 

It took me about 20 minutes online to submit everything asking that the insurance company be liable for reimbursing for the engine.

  

In 2 days, the insurance company called me to say they were reviewing it 2 days from then in a team meeting and would let me know their decision.  Then, after their review they called and asked for the paperwork on the engine.  Later that day they said they’d send the check for the full $6,400.  I had it a few days later.  The whole process took about a week.

 

If I hadn’t followed my intuition, I would have sold the car for scrap and that would have cost me at least $6,000, but I wouldn’t even have known about my loss.

 

Filing my claim online with the state was so much easier than hiring a lawyer – it cost nothing and it took 20 minutes.  That saved me time, energy and money.

 

I basically did almost nothing and got the full reimbursement no questions asked.  Easy peasy.

 

Now, at the time I was making the decision of what to do, I wondered if I was crazy to go through all of this rigamarole over the car, getting the repairs and the engine replaced, etc.  But I’m a recycler.  I’m actually fairly fanatical about recycling.  I bring things to recycle home from hotels because I don’t know if they’ll recycle them.  

 

I wondered if maybe I was just being weirdly obsessive about recycling when it came to this car, but my intuition was clear and I’ve learned to trust it.

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If I’d decided to sell the car for scrap I’d have had to do some research on that, but I didn’t need to so I saved all that time and energy.

 

Now, here’s another bonus:  After I got the car back home, I needed to get the car inspected before I could sell it.  I live next to a garage and so I know the mechanic well.  After inspection, I said, “if you know anyone who’d like to have the car I’m going to sell it.”  He said, “I was just talking to my neighbor this morning he’s looking to buy a used Rav4 and yours is perfect.”  

 

I said, “if you can sell it to him for me, I’ll give you $500.”  We had a deal later that day.  

 

I had been dreading (a little bit) figuring out how to sell a car because I’d never done that before.  

 

I had planned to get the car detailed and undercoated before selling it, but now, I didn’t have to do either of those things.  More time and energy savings and I passed the financial saving onto the buyer and that made him happy.  He got a great deal.

 

And I didn’t spend any time, or energy on figuring out how to sell the car.  NONE.  I did give my mechanic $500, but he sold the car for me, which he could do far better than me because he’s a mechanic and his neighbor has known him for years, which I knew.  

 

To boot, I actually sold the car for a full $2000 more than I paid for it 3 years earlier because used cars are at such a premium.  The new engine had the same number of miles that the car had on it when I bought it.  

 

So, the bottom line is that one of the great bonuses of doing our spiritual healing practices, and living in alignment with truth is that we save a LOT of time, energy and money.  I call it “working in the invisible” instead of “pushing density,” trying to make things happen in the world.  

 

We’ve all had experiences where our intuition told us which way to go and we didn’t trust it and it cost us time, energy and money and it’s like a punch in the gut because it feels like we’re failing at life.  

 

Trust and faith are a key component of my Masterful Living Program – without them we can’t have spiritual growth. Trusting my intuition brings me surprising and tangible benefits EVERY DAY.  The best benefit is no worry, no pain, and Peace instead.