How Do I Choose Car Insurance?
The old question of how do I choose car insurance
It’s an annual thing, and to some it’s a thing they’ve never done before (new drivers and kids moving to the big city come to mind). ‘How do I choose car insurance?’ is a question asked countless times each year in the United States of America.
Old dogs, new tricks
Choosing car insurance is, well, a lot more ‘techie’ than it used to be. So when you’re asking how you’re going to choose car insurance, there are some old ways we can rule out straight off the bat. For example, don’t choose car insurance based only on what you learn from advertisements on television. It’ll take more effort from you (though not all that much more) than basing your choice of car insurance on what you’ve discovered from watching baseball while gobbling nachos on your sofa.
Another way not to choose car insurance is by opening an attachment on an email from an unknown source which has been diverted to your ‘spam’ folder. The email says ‘open this attachment to save hundreds on your car insurance’. Don’t do that. Don’t even consider doing that. When it comes to the internet, if you weren’t looking for it, it’s probably dodgy.
Better by far to do your own auto insurance research.
OMG! Research?Actually, calling it ‘research’ is being a bit grandiose, as it doesn’t really involve enough effort on your part to warrant the moniker. In fact, all you’ve got to do is get online and have a little dig around. Expect to see a whole lot of garbage, too. Why? It’s for the simple reason that this is a hotly contested, dog-eat-dog, rats-in-a-sack-competitive industry. To paraphrase J.K. Galbraith, there is no skullduggery, no thievery, no chicanery to which insurance agents out there will not stoop in their slavering desperation to part you from your hard-earned Benjamins.
If you Google ‘how do I choose car insurance’ you’ll get some big players in the top four search positions who’ve outbid every other advertiser for that spot. Progressive and EverQuote are numbers one and two respectively. However, below you’ll see a useful little bulleted list of things to take into account when buying car insurance.
These are from Consumer Reports, which as a non-profit has less of an ax to grind than virtually anyone else. They include things that range from choosing the right car to doing a rate check each year, and taking advantage of discounts.
Anyhow, it’s worth looking below these results and getting some comparator sites to crunch your numbers. It’ll give you a baseline that could come in handy when talking to a real live agent. It’ll also help when you then proceed to individual providers’ websites and try and find out if you can get your premiums down a little.
Take a good look around
This is definitely good advice, as you may find that for the same cover you can find sizeable differentials. You could save a couple hundred bucks by not going with the provider that tempted you first.
Look for recommendations by trusted domain authorities such as motoring organizations or non-profits, or industry observers in the reputable press (rather than any old blog you find on a site with thin content). You’ll find comparators of the major and minor players, and you should also find general information about any discounts you’re entitled to (for example, because of your age).
Ironically, if you think you can’t be bothered to answer the question ‘how do I choose car insurance?’, think of this. You can do all of the above on your phone, while splashed out across your sofa eating nachos watching the ball game. Well, keeping half an eye on the ball game, at least.