Setting aside its oft quoted status as even more stressful than divorce, moving house fairly puts the pressure on the procrastinators.
Me? Never…Wait a minute, let me have a think about that.
If it’s not packing boxes then it’s ticking them – the litany of form-filling online and in print to get your address on to all of the important stuff, as well as by some miraculous leap, the databases that will ensure the continuing flood of junk mail through your new letterbox.
At least a move just a couple of hundred yards within the same postcode — and to a stone’s throw from the polis station — wouldn’t have an impact on the car insurance premium, would it?
How wrong can one be.
Insurance premiums are a murky world, but there are a couple of certainties.
One. The marketing people who dreamt up stuff-strutting denim hot pants dancing to get your cash deserve to be sacked.
Two. Prepare to pay.
Newly qualified teenagers face premiums which would have bought their grandparent a pretty nice hoose and careful drivers can forget any notion that they’ll be adequately rewarded for a claim-free existence.
So I’ll wager that as often you’ve heard someone say that moving house is the most stressful thing you can do, you’ll also be familiar with the notion that an insurance document isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
And it seems Angus Council’s bean counters have adopted a new policy of putting a premium on insurance payments.
After a, ahem, fully comprehensive review of their annual insurance bill the council has come up with a plan to slash its insurance bill by £350,000 a year.
Within a financial straight jacket requiring savings of £50 million in the next four years that may seem pretty small beer, but it’s an indicator of how far the bone has already been pared.
The upshot is that the excess for buildings such as leisure centres and offices is going up from £5,000 to an astronomical £500,000.
That’s quite some roll of the dice.
