What is the best way to buy car insurance? It can be complex and frustrating shopping for something that the government forces you to buy. Car insurance is a requirement to own a car that you want to drive around. There are a lot of options out there for car insurance.
You have to maintain full coverage if you’re financing your car and you can simply do liability if your car is paid off.
Determine Your State’s Minimum Insurance Requirements
To start buying car insurance you must know what coverage you have to maintain to stay in accordance with your state law. Let’s look at a couple of examples. North Carolina has a minimum requirement of $30,000/$60,000/$25,000. That is $30,000 for bodily damage to one person in an accident. Then it’s $60,000 per two people injured and $25,000 for property damage. Another state is Illinois, $25,000/$50,000/$20,000. The reduced requirements in the state of Illinois contribute to some lower car insurance rates. It’s not a huge difference, but it is a difference.
Get Quotes From Numerous Insurers
Obviously, when you’re shopping, you need to compare prices and coverages. You don’t always want to go for the cheapest option. The best way to buy car insurance is to look for a nice even split when it comes to costs and coverage. There are things like roadside assistance and rental car funding. Some insurance companies offer these in basic coverage and it makes these options more affordable. Some companies offer reduced deductible for similar costs and coverage. This is a huge money saver in case of an incident.
Reliability Is Key
Reliability is essential when shopping for car insurance. Car insurance does you no good if your insurance provider frequently fails to do their job. Check out the review on Yelp and Google. Smaller insurance companies don’t have the resources of a large chain so they can fail to get to the job done for their clients which leads to customers stuck on the side of the road and paying for everything.
Compare Your Current Coverage
See what you’re paying now. A lot of people shop better for insurance once they have had a bad experience or they decide they’re paying far too much. Your current coverage cost and coverage is a nice baseline to determine what next steps to take and what you need to upgrade or downgrade to.
Phone Calls Can Truly Help
In this day and age, everyone wants to do as much as impossible online. The way of technology, it makes things much easier and faster to do online, but many businesses reward people who actually call and take time out of their day to talk to their employees and find out more about the services and products they offer. Also, there is more information than what is displayed online. With the simplicity of online purchases, companies don’t always show all of their deals and cost-cutting options because people will purchase online regardless of the other options. Make sure you give the companies a call.
Your Driving Record Matters
When you’re shopping for car insurance you have to see what insurance providers can do for you. Some companies are willing to cut you slack especially if you have very few incidents. Accidents and tickets drive up your insurance cost, but some insurance companies will cut you a deal in order to build their customer base. Make sure you review your driving record before shopping. Being caught off guard is embarrassing and lack of preparation.
How To Cut Costs
Eliminate Old Cars From Coverage
A lot of people accumulate cars on their insurance plans. As cars age, they lose a lot of value. Mileage and stress on the engine really derails the investment into your car. Once the car is valued under what you’re paying in insurance coverage, you should consider getting rid of the car. If you have it on full coverage, you can move it to liability. Now a lot of people like purchasing old cars and fixing them up. This is where the value of cars increase and become more valuable than the car insurance policy. These are the cases where it’s not required to consider selling that car.
Raise The Deductible
This one can seem to counter intuitive and can truly stress people out if they worry about what happens in the event of an at-fault accident. A lot of people can’t afford much above a $500 deductible. This is where you have to rely on your common sense and your awareness to prevent yourself from being at fault. Things do happen so if you want to cut costs and you think you can pay any deductible to raise your deductible. If you go from $500 to $2000 on your deductible, you can save nearly 40% on your car insurance costs.
Grab Discounts
A lot of companies reward loyalty because new customer discounts at other companies can be very enticing. The only way to keep customers is to make sure you offer discounts and other rewards for staying on. Loyalty rewards are just one of the things you can grab. There are discounts for employees of certain industries, multi-car discounts, multi-policy discounts, etc. These discounts can cut costs tremendously and will help you maintain your low deductible in order to save you from one extremely large bill in case of an at-fault accident.
Synopsis
Remember, car insurance is required and you can’t go without it. If you go without it, you will cost yourself more in tickets and legal fees and possible a very large litigation bill.
Cutting costs on essentials can be motivating and empowering for people who want to step up their budgeting prowess and boost their savings. If you can cuts car insurance costs use that money that you save, regardless of the amount, and then put that into savings. If you still budget for your higher costs insurance you can save more without even trying.
Don’t forget to check your state’s laws and consult with insurance professionals.