Deer Damage - Part 2
I went to Proline Auto Body in Elmwood Park this morning to get a repair estimate. This body shop is affiliated with GEICO, so much so that they're practically neighbors. The insurance adjuster's office is in a one-room building next door to the body shop. The car rental representative is also in the same office as the insurance adjuster, so I suppose you could make all your arrangements in one place.
Anyway, it was a pretty simple process. I showed the insurance adjuster the part that the deer knocked off. He took a couple of pictures and asked a mechanic from the body shop to check if there were any other problems. Then we went back to the office and he looked up the part in his database and prepared the estimate. It's the front shield that broke off. Fortunately, that's an inexpensive part. The repair estimate, including labor, is only about $75. I didn't think it would be that much cheaper to do elsewhere, so I decided to just go ahead and order the part.
I started doing my year-end tax planning this evening. While I was going down the list of securities, I noticed that a short duration bond fund I have was over 67% in mortgage-backed securities. Funny, it wasn't like that in previous quarters/years. I drilled down into its list of bond holdings and saw some dubious mortgage securities of the Alt-A variety. (Those are often no-doc or low-doc loans.) Even though that bond fund is not a significant part of my portfolio (last I checked, it was under 1%), I don't think there's any point in keeping it around if I have doubts. So I'll take care of that problem soon. Do take some time to check your bond funds if you own any. If there are any surprises, better to find out now before the sh*t really hits the fan!