When I got my job at Automattic one of the added perks that I was looking forward to was decreased insurance for both my home and car.

Well, as you can probably already guess, it didn’t work out that way and, even now, I have no idea why.

So, home insurance. I’m now at home all day, meaning that it’s not left empty for 8+ hours a day (a key time for burglars to strike, when they know people are at work).

My insurance didn’t change.

Car insurance, that’s got to be better, right? I no longer need to commute, my mileage is less (in fact my mileage has halved, as I’ve also stopped picking up my daughter every-other-weekend now that she’s at university) and my car is sat on the drive most of the time now and not in a narrow, busy, company car park.

That went up.

And I still have no idea why. My insurer couldn’t tell me either – they just punched in the new details and my premiums went up. Not by a huge amount but, still, that’s not the point. In my mind insurance is pretty broken generally and I, where possible, do shy away from it. Home insurance, though, although not obligatory, is pretty necessary. And cars, well, you can’t (legally) drive without insurance, so there’s not much you can do there. I just wished it was all most transparent and made a lot more sense.