Personal Finance Advice and Commentary

After kicking the tires for several years, Progressive has finally gone nationwide with its Snapshot pay-as-you-drive auto insurance program, offering discounts of up to 30 percent based on optional real-time analysis of your driving habits. You may have heard of Snapshot, a monitoring device that plugs into your vehicle’s onboard diagnostics port and wirelessly feeds

Call me geek but I’m fascinated by car insurance. Insert here your pitying eye-roll, followed in close succession by “Why?” and “Don’t get out much, huh?” But two X factors separate car insurance from life insurance, health insurance and homeowners insurance: motion and emotion. Consider the car insurance underwriters at Progressive, Geico and State Farm.

Here in Florida, if you’re nautical by nature, you can get a rush just walking the docks and checking out the clever names on the sterns of the pleasure fleet. Naturally, Jimmy Buffett references rule down here, with 5 O’Clock Somewhere, A Pirate (or Parrot) Looks at 40, Changes in Latitude, Shaker of Salt and