Who is Vincent Mottola?

So it started innocently enough. Back in April, I inquired with my car insurance agent: "What exactly is my 6 month premium?"

You see, I had good reason to ask. Every month, my insurance company, Mercury, was automatically taking two payments out of my bank account: one for usually around $240, and another for usually around $85. So yes, that would make a yearly premium of about $3,800. Did I do the math at the time? No. In fact, I just did it for the first time 10 seconds ago. Even if I had done the math at the time, would that figure have surprised me as much as it surprised you? No, because I had no idea until this week that paying almost $4,000 a year for car insurance wasn't normal. Yes, I'm weird.

Now, you have to remember, money is kind of a funny thing with me. I don't really notice it much. Besides, when I bought my new car I figured my payments would go up...

So I requested that information back in April and I finally opened up the envelope containing it today. My yearly premium? $933.80.

To my credit, I did at least notice that's considerably less than $3,800.

So I did some investigating. I open Quicken where I download all my bank transactions. I look at my insurance payments. I've been paying twice every month, far more than I should. But why?

I make a "QuickReport" and sort out all the insurance payments I've ever made. In this format, I can, for the first time, see the entire "memo" section attached with each payment and a huge light bulb went on over my head and came crashing down on me. The $85 a month payments have my policy number and my name on them, and the $240 a month payments have a different policy number and the name Vincent Mottola.

So who is Vincent Mottola? He is, essentially, my mistress. I'm his sugar daddy. I've been paying his car insurance for the last 3 years, and he hasn't even slept with me yet!

Lest you think that the only bad guy here is Mercury insurance (well, they did somehow screw up the payments, but they immediately acknowledged their error) and that they've been charging both Vincent and me for *his* insurance, according to the folks at Mercury he hasn't paid a cent. I mean hey, free car insurance!

How did this happen? I don't know yet. But Vincent Mottola, you owe me $5,819.40. Mercury will pay me on your behalf, but when they send you the bill, I hope it hurts.