Buying car insurance is like betting against your favorite sports team. If they win, you're happy but you lose your money, if they lose, you're sad but you make money. Auto insurance is the same way, since unless you get in an auto accident you're basically throwing your money away. Car insurance is also a lot like gambling, because the house (i.e. the insurance company) always wins.

They ensure this by using past statistics to come up with a wacky formula to decide how much to charge you for a premium, and they apparently have not discovered the meaning of the words "meaningful variables". For instance, in order to determine how much to charge, a rational person might look at the number of past moving violations, the amount of time someone has had a license, and what city they're driving in. Insurance companies look at these things, but they also look at color of your car. Apparently people who drive red cars are more likely to drive fast than people in cars of other colors. Even if said red car is a 1985 Volvo or something of that ilk.

The companies also have arbitrarily decided that at exactly age 25 you go from a reckless speed demon with a death wish on the road to a responsible adult capable of making responsible decisions. Therefore premiums for 24-year-olds are much much higher than 25-year-olds.

Also, and girls you're going to love this, males are reckless drivers. That's right, all of them. Therefore even though a certain female whose name I will not mention was stopped for going 97 in a 65 zone while I have never been stopped for anything, I am forced to pay higher insurance rates just because I was born a guy and decided to stay that way.

All of these rules ensure that there is no way the insurance company can lose money and that the worse driver you are, the better a chance you'll actually see some return on your investment. And then, if by some chance I ever did get in an accident, even if it was the other person running a red light and slamming into my car, I would get hassled and nickled-and-dimed, and then my rates would go up. Because before they just thought I was a bad driver (since I'm a 22-year-old male in a small car), but now they know for sure! Only a reckless teenage thug with no respect for traffic laws would let someone else hit their car, you see.

Meanwhile Mr. and Mrs. State Farm Insurance can buy mansions in Florida and boats with names like "Peg Leg Scurvy Sea Dog" and roll around in a pile of my reckless teenage thug money. But wait, you say, I don't have to buy caviar for Mr. and Mrs. Insurance. There's no law that says I can't drive without it. Yes there is! There is a federal law that all drivers on the road must be covered by collision insurance. So keep smoking your stogies State Farm, the money train won't end for a looooong time.