Cars & Work

We just had a poll on car usage. There were 7 people who responded. Here are the results:

What kinda of car situation are you in?

own your car, don't use for work 1 (14%)

own your car, use for work 4 (57%)

don't own a car/don't drive 0 (0%)

don't own a car/car provided by work for work/personal use 2 (28%)

lease a car for personal use 0 (0%)

lease a car for personal/work use 0 (0%)


Using your car for work purposes can be very tricky. If you transport children daily in your personal vehicle, you need to make sure that you have the highest level of insurance coverage of 500/500/500 and a possible umbrella policy of a million dollars. Why you ask? Think if you were in the unfortunate event to be involved in a car accident with you and two of your charges. You each are taken to the hospital, ER visits, xrays, possible overnight stays. This can run into $100,000 in medical bills before the day is over. We normally never think that something can happen. My previous insurance agent shared with me the potential costs of an accident involving 3 people. This doesn't even include the property damage, other car/driver involved or your car damage.

You need to make sure that your insurance agent understands that you are carrying children in your personal vehicle for "work" purposes. You will need to make sure a rider is attached to your insurance for this. This bump in insurance coverage does cost more, but in the long run will pay off if you are ever involved in an accident.

If you are using your car to drive the kids around you should be getting reimbursed the IRS's mileage rate of 55 cents a mile. What you should do is track your mileage and turn it in at the end of week for reimbursement or whatever time frame you and your employers agree to. From what I understand, but I could be wrong, you can use google to figure out the mileage to/from preschool, grocery store, doctors etc and the IRS accepts those rates. If you take little "Billy" to preschool 3 days a week and it is 9 miles round trip, you submit 27 miles for reimbursement. That is 14.85 a week for driving little "Billy" to preschool.

This money is to be used for car repairs and gas. You should open up a savings account at your bank or online like at ING and put that money in there. That way if you need to replace your brakes or tires you will have the money waiting there.