My car was T-boned in downtown Minneapolis after a Twins game by a distracted driver who ran through a long red light. While no one was hurt, my car had thousands of dollars of damage and his car was totaled.
The police came, handled the situation expertly, gave him a ticket since he accepted full responsibility for his actions, and cleared the scene. My tow truck was dispatched to the wrong address, but it eventually came and towed my no-longer-drivable car to the dealership as my wife picked me up downtown.
The distracted driver was exceptionally nice, even though I was angry about being hit. Because of how he handled himself, it took me only moments to calm down and move to solving the issues that were in front of us — such as how to get the police to come and assess responsibility (important because his negligence would excuse me from paying my deductible) and how to get my car towed. The fact that he owned his role in the crash made me want to work with him rather than against him.
This was in sharp contrast to the claims adjuster from his insurance company. She viewed her role as trying to not pay 100 percent of the claim, despite her client's acknowledgment and the police concurrence. Her position brought out my lower animal self and made me want to punish her. I knew that I wasn't responsible, so I started to think about different ways that I could increase the claim — car rental, physical therapy, etc.
Once I stepped back, I realized that I should not have her behavior affect my behavior, and let my company's claims person deal with the issue in his professional way, leading to the appropriate outcome.
There were many lessons from this experience (besides the obvious problems with distracted driving) and I want to share with you how they affect your financial planning.
You rarely make good decisions when you are angry, so don't hold yourself to them. The damage from me trying to punish their claims adjuster would have been psychological for me. I would have known that I was not doing the right thing and I would have had to figure out a way to justify it to myself.
When we feel wronged, we often develop a theory for our less-than-stellar follow-up actions. I see upset clients try to "punish" their kids who are seemingly unappreciative or underperforming by withholding money. This is fine if there was an agreement beforehand — for example, we will pay for school as long as you are making progress toward a degree — but if expectations were never expressed the frustration should be toward themselves for not articulating them.
