Way back in May we had a bad hail storm in my area. My old home insurance company sent me a letter about 1 1/2 months prior to my insurance renewal for this year saying that they were dropping my home insurance because they weren't going to carry that line of business anymore. No big deal, I just found another insurance company.

However, I figured that perhaps as a nice parting gift, perhaps I could get a new roof out of the deal because of that hail storm. Thought it might be a long-shot because the roof is original (27 years old) and in bad shape and in dire need of replacement. Had a contractor and the insurance adjuster come out the week before my old insurance was going to lapse. They looked it over and decided they would pay for a new roof (minus my $500 deductible, of course).

Point of the story, I paid for the deductible with my poker earnings so I essentially got a badly needed brand new roof for FREE!

Thank God for online poker because it wasn't like I had $500 laying around for just such an occasion. Sorry for the long post but I wanted to share my story of what I did with some of my poker earnings.