Don’t Forget To Compare Auto Insurance Prices!

Many people, myself included, will tell you to take advantage of multi-line discounts when it comes to shopping for homeowners and auto insurance.  And for many people, that works great. Most insurance companies offer significant discounts for buying multiple policies at the same time.

Is The Multi-Line Discount Over-rated?

I personally buy my homeowners and auto insurance from the same company, but is that really the best way to go?  I admit I didn’t really do a lot of outside research.  I simply assumed the 10% multi-line discount from my current insurance company, Allstate, worked out to a lower overall cost than buying from two separate companies.  Needless to say, making blind assumptions isn’t likely to be the most cost-effective insurance-shopping strategy.  Hence, I set out to determine whether or not my current combined insurance cost with 10% multi-line discount (homeowners and auto) is as low as it could be and if not, how easy it would be to find a better deal.  As a baseline, I would take the cost of my homeowners insurance (sans 10% discount) and shop around for auto insurance.  If the total cost was less than my current combined bill, I’d know I’ve been paying too much.

Boy was I surprised.  It took a grand total of one (just one!) auto insurance quote to come out ahead.  Since I enjoy the commercials, I decided I’d start with Esurance.  Right off the bat, my combined Allstate + Esurance cost was almost 9% lower than what I’m currently paying.  As it turns out, I didn’t even have to look around to beat the rates I’m currently paying; rates I actually thought were a pretty good deal.

It may have been true in the past that multi-line discounts were the way to go and were rarely beat, but I think the emergence of internet-only (and hence low-overhead) specialty insurance companies like Esurance is changing that.  My point is, don’t assume what was usually true for your parents will also be true for you.  At the very least, get an Esurance quote and use an insurance quote aggregator like NetQuote (think Lending Tree for insurance, where you can get quotes from many companies at once to compare) to get a feel for what you should be paying.  It only takes a few minutes and it could save you a significant amount of money.  Whatever you do, don’t just assume the multi-line discount is the cheapest option.  As I found out, it definitely pays to compare auto insurance prices.

As for me, I haven’t made the switch to Esurance yet.  I’m going to shop around a bit more, but I am definitely going to ditch Allstate at some point if they can’t remain competitive.