Hello, I'll just get right into it. This may be way too much backstory but I feel its kinda necessary. We are in Alberta Canada
My wife was driving home from pm hobby craft when we went though a 3-lane intersection both ways (The light was green). When an SUV from the oncoming lane turned left in front of us. my wife slammed on the breaks, the SUV didn't even slow down and we clipped the back right side of their vehicle with ours. The SUV continued on the road it turned onto as we came to a stop because our front end was scraping the pavement. It looked as if he was going to stop for a moment, but he quickly bolted off.
A witness come up too us after a bit and said he saw what happened and had followed the SUV to a place where it parked. He took me there so I could take a picture his license plate. He had hidden his car in a warehouse parking lot behind some wooden spools, he backed up all the way against a wall so that the damage was hidden as possible. The diver was not present, I had to basically squeeze into a small area and reach around to even take a picture of the plate. And quickly left to avoid confrontation. (I didn't know how desperate this guy might be).
I returned to our vehicle and waited for police, we gave them our statements and told them what happened, and gave them the picture of the license plate number. And also told them where the parked car was, but by the time they got around to taking a look, the SUV was gone unfortunately.
In another stroke a bad luck, our Dashcam failed to commit the clip of the impact to memory, and in my adrenaline rush I forgot to ask our witness for his contact information.
So, It's really not looking good for insurance. They refuse to do any coverage without the SUVs contact information, and honestly someone who commits a hit and run probably has a reason to. (No license, no insurance, ect.)
I understand this falls slightly under /r/legaladvice Territory, but the real question we have for you guys is how on earth do we stay afloat while we're waiting for the insurance/police investigation? or in the worst case scenario what to do if they simply can't cover the damages.
We are currently living on a single income, my wife works as a supervisor at shoppers drug-mart and brings in around $1080 a month with her current hours. We also have a renter who provides an additional $450 a month which brings our income up to around $1530 a month (but she's been getting less hours). Thankfully we are blessed with a fantastic living situation where we don't have to pay a dime. This is because of my Wife's wonderful parents have chosen to accommodate us while I'm undergoing immigration (I'm from the USA).
However we pay for utilities (electric, water, phone, ect). Which comes to around $500 a month and insurance is $1200 a year (which is paid off until September). Which leaves around $430 for everything else: food, gas, subscriptions, and extra expenses like household items.
Thankfully, we have a car to borrow for the next week, however after that my wife will be unable to go to work for the evening because the headlight on the right side is destroyed and part of the right bumper. Honestly its probably not street worthy at all, but we can probably get away with it during the day if we absolutely need too. Meaning that in less than 2 weeks we could be living on half of our current income.
We would really appreciate some advice on how to handle this crisis. We do not really have an emergency fund, as we used a large chunk of it recently to begin the immigration process, plus we only recently started to try and get a hold of our finances.
I know a huge expense for us is eating out, and would love to cut that out entirely, at least for now. But we really don't have a hold of meal planning and buying cheap ingredients. We tried cutting down on eating out in the past and ended up spending money on ingredients we didn't use. That, or we just ended up going hungry because we didn't know what to make.
I know this has been a long read, but thank you if you read the whole thing. I'd really appreciate any advice any of you can give and will answer any questions you have if i haven't provided enough information.
TL;DR: An asshole hit and run our car, we are looking for a way to cut expenses so we can scrape by. We're not expecting an insurance payout anytime soon. We know that eating out is a big one and would like advice to cook more food ourselves while saving as much money as possible.
EDIT: I know it's a long shot, but if you or someone you know was on the 32nd ave and 12th street intersection in Calgary Alberta at 12:40-1:00pm and saw the accident please PM me. Especially if you know or are the incredibly kind man who followed the SUV!
Submitted May 09, 2017 at 06:37PM by IceEye http://ift.tt/2qXG0QD
