Welcome to Money As If, the Caesar salad, truffle fries, and vodka martini of personal finance newsletters if personal finance newsletters were your favorite food.

On today’s menu:

• Car insurance and the art of bill creep

• Inside Le Louis Vuitton Café 

• They should see you in this … necklace?

— Jeanine

Plus, we’re launching a rewards-based referral program. Details below!

IN THESE, OUR (POSSIBLE) END TIMES

Check in on your car insurance bill

Consider this story less of a hot take and more as a PSA. If your car insurance bill is on auto-pay and you have a vague memory of multiple emails announcing rate increases (or not), really, really take a look at what you owe.

We’re in the middle of a long overdue financial audit in our house and realized that — OMFG — our monthly auto insurance bill was higher than our actual car payment.

In fact, the cost to insure our Mazda CX-5 has gone up 65% — from $169 to $279 — since we bought the SUV in 2021, despite no negative changes to our profile. If anything, we're less risky to insure, given that our car and we are four years older.

Why is car insurance so expensive?

“Insurance is a shared risk pool,” explains Mandy Sleight, licensed insurance agent and fellow personal finance writer, “so even though your personal profile hasn't changed, that doesn't mean other factors haven't.”

These days, other “factors” are plentiful and include the usual suspects:

• Increased climate-related risks

• Population increases putting more cars (re: more accidents) on the road

• Inflation driving up the cost of car parts, labor, and health care

We have the added deficit of living in New Jersey, which has steadily increased its minimum insurance limits since 2023. In fact, that’s what the State Farm customer service representative cited when I called to ask about the reason for our escalating charges: “New Jersey.”

(The company itself did not respond when I requested official comment.)

Wanna see a cool trick?

Chances are, even if you don't live in the Garden State, your car insurance bill went up recently. A recurring study from Value Penguin found auto policy rates have risen seven years in a row, with another 7.5% increase expected in 2025. (This percentage could actually rise as well, depending on how the ongoing trade war plays out.)

Here's the nifty thing about car insurance, though. You can often net a lower bill simply by shopping around.

While State Farm wasn't willing to do much beyond offering us a $35 low-mileage discount (taking our bill to about $244), Geico and Progressive quoted us notably lower rates for comparable coverage.

We bought a six-month policy from Geico that cost just over $123 a month, saving ourselves at least $936 over the next half-year.

Rinse and repeat

Sleight confirmed there are no inherent negatives in shopping around other than the time commitment. However, she noted that we should expect our rates to rise upon policy renewal and to shop around again.

“It's rarely cost effective to stay with a company these days,” Sleight says. “I recommend shopping every time you get a renewal notice (usually 30 [to] 60 days before your policy renews) just to see if you can get coverage cheaper elsewhere.”

Other ways to save include taking advantage of discounts, bundling home and auto policies, eliminating coverage redundancies (like paying for roadside assistance if you already have AAA), and, I suppose, moving to Maine, the state found to have, on average, the cheapest car insurance.

RECEIPTS

Inside New York City’s Louis Vuitton Café

I cosplayed as a rich person this week and ate at New York City’s Le Café Louis Vuitton, the only stateside version of the luxury brand’s foray into equally ostentatious eating.

I figured I had just saved so much money on my car insurance that I could afford to splurge. I initially called this "Jeanine Math," but later recognized it as an amped up version of "little treat culture," a resurgent trend in which you acknowledge doing something difficult or mundane by buying yourself a (usually Instagram-able) reward.

Little treat culture isn't new. It's a variant of the Lipstick Index or Nail Polish Effect — twin theories that say people buy small luxuries during economic downturns to improve their moods.

These days, it's tied less to recessions and more to general malaise. Gen Z, in particular, is said to be fond of little treats as a means to reclaim freedom and stability after the pandemic, which deprived them of big treats and experiences in important, formative years.

What’s this got to do with Louis Vuitton?

I’m actually a big proponent of little treat culture. (You might have guessed that based on all the direct and indirect avocado toast references around here.)

Why? Well, on some level, it's a trauma response. Also, to quote personal finance expert Ramit Sethi, "Money should be fun … The point of money is to use it to live a rich life." Also, also, in these, our possible end times, that $7 morning latte is not what's keeping you from owning a home, so if it makes you happy, go ahead and drink it. Who am I to judge?

Given this baseline philosophy, I expected to visit the Louis Vuitton cafe, enjoy myself, and write a puff piece where we mostly got to look at pretty pictures. And, in some ways, the experience delivered.

The espresso martini was delicious. The stuffed avocado was delicious. The steak was delicious. The chocolate cake was … fine. The service was good. Everything was beautiful. Nothing exactly hurt.

But I spent more than I anticipated — oh boy, I don't even want to tell you how much I spent; I will, but I don't want to — trying to have the full experience (when in Rome, you know?). And, quite frankly, I was put off by the pre-show.

The ‘public exclusivity’ experience

The Louis Vuitton cafe is on the fourth floor of the brand’s Madison Avenue location, meaning I had to walk through three floors of stuff I absolutely could not afford to get there.

I enjoy luxury-gawking — again, something you probably picked up on — but this place was brimming with sales agents and security guards and I mostly spent my time dodging them, increasingly overwhelmed by this strange desire to be taken for a legitimate shopper and the conflicting fear I might get mistaken for one.

It didn't help that I was juking around the store in an impossibly heavy faux fur coat, which I borrowed from my mother after the restaurant sent a text reminding me to dress appropriately — "elegant for a NYC day or night out" — lest I get refused entry.

It also didn't help that the very first thing I noticed when I got to the fourth floor was that I couldn't go to the fifth. The escalator to that level was blocked off since that's where Louis Vuitton keeps its high jewelry — and you can only see those pieces with approval from the floor manager.

("So it's like public exclusivity," my husband, who knew enough to avoid this outing, aptly remarked when I reported this factoid back home.)

With a side imposter syndrome

All this is to say that I was no longer thinking about little or big treats by the time I sat down to eat. I was thinking rightly or wrongly of Terry Pratchett's Boots Theory and whether I had stepped into a modern day (and, of course, privileged) version of it.

And I left with the prevailing feeling that I had spent close to $200 — yup, the total bill was $196.32 with the tip — to spend time somewhere I didn't actually belong.

Anyway, I had a lot of thoughts and little time to process them, so expect a deep dive into splurging in the coming weeks. In the mean time, here, as promised, is my receipt.

Feel free to yell at me about any or all of this by emailing [email protected].

PRICE TAGS

‘Little Treat’ edition

Elsewhere, in the world of luxury eats and tiny treats …

🍕 $12.50

for a slice of sweet chili oxtail pizza from Cuts and Slices, a New York-based specialty pizzeria. A whole oxtail pie costs $75.

🥩 $17.45

for a cheesesteak from Danny and Coop’s, Bradley Cooper’s only sometimes-open eatery in New York City’s East Village. (Hours are announced on Instagram.)

🍓 $19.99

for a single strawberry imported from “strawberry kingdom” Tochigi, Japan, and sold at Los Angeles-based luxury grocer Erewhon.

🥤$29.99

for a 12-pack of Poppi, a prebiotic soda so popular Pepsi just purchased it (try saying that three times fast) for nearly $2 billion.

 🎂 $48.95

for a 7.4-ounce Floof Cotton Candy Cake ordered through gourmet food marketplace Goldbelly. You can add edible glitter to it for an extra $5.

FRESH GREEN

Nowadays, most financial takes are boilerplate. These aren't.

• Owf. New research from The Wall Street Journal suggests job-hoppers are no longer receiving higher incomes in their new roles, thanks to “salary deflation,” yet another sign that the labor market is cooling.

• This interview with a luxury party planner is either a palette cleanser or a sweet hate read, depending on how you feel about the ultra-rich these days.

• Speaking of the ultra-rich, here’s a new way to contextualize income inequality, courtesy of online real estate brokerage Redfin: The top 1% of Americans have enough money to buy 99% of U.S. homes.

THIRST TRAP

And, finally, today, in things I would buy if, you know, I could just buy things …

Queen Louis’ diamonds

I hoped to get a photograph of Louis Vuitton's absolutely outrageous tiaras while visiting its flagship location.

But, as I mentioned earlier, you can't visit the store's high jewelry floor without approval from a floor manager, so this snap of a diamond necklace ($28,000), earrings ($35,000), and bracelet ($63,500) will have to do.

Imagine what the high jewelry costs.

Got questions, comments, receipts, tips, thirst traps, etc. you’d like to share? Send them to [email protected].