5 Ways To Lower Your Car Insurance Premiums
2008 February 19
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Take a defensive-driving course - A defensive-driving course costs as little as $50 and a weekend of your time yet can save you as much as 10% on your premium year in and year out. Other worth-while discounts to ask about are good-student discounts, association discounts such as AARP or AAA, and home-office discounts.
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Buy auto and homeowners insurance through the same company - Most insurance companies offer multi-line discounts for customers who buy more than one policy through them. My multi-line discont at Allstate, for instance, is 10% off the cost of both policies.
- Skip the middle-man - It’s usually cheaper to buy directly from the source rather than through an insurance broker. Fewer middle-men means fewer mark-ups between your policy and your wallet. Allstate, Progressive, Geico, E-Surance, and Safe Auto will all let you by a policy directly from them on the internet.
- Raise your deductible - Let’s face it: insurance is a loser’s game for the consumer. The law of probability is against you getting your money’s worth out of your insurance policy. If it wasn’t, the insurance companies would go out of business. Insurance should only be used to cover losses you couldn’t afford to cover yourself. To that end, raising your deductible to the highest allowed (often $1000) could lower your premium up to 40%. In all likelihood, you will save far more on the reduced premiums over the years than you will pay out in higher deductibles.
- Drop coverage on older cars - As a general rule, you should drop comprehensive coverage if your annual comprehensive premiums are greater than 10% of the value of your car. For example, if your annual premium for comprehensive coverage is $500 but your car is only worth $4,500 you should drop your coverage to liability-only.
Using the same company for car and homeowner’s isn’t always the cheapest. Geico is the absolute cheapest car insurance I can find, however they do their homeowner’s through Traveler’s. I found better rates on homeowner’s at pretty much every other company I checked, however none of them could beat my car insurance (even when considering the multiple policy discount).
Yes, that’s true but it never hurts to ask. Geico was one of the more expensive auto insurance quotes for me, so I went with Allstate instead. They all cater to different kinds of drivers, it seems.