How Do You Get Your Car Insurance Down?
The perennial question of how to get your car insurance down
If you’re asking this question, here’s one straight back at you: when you say ‘car insurance down’, do you mean...
- Pay less money for your car insurance per year, or
- Get your car insurance in an impressively cool fashion?
Try this trick that others did to get their car insurance down
Say out loud ‘get my CAR insurance down’, stressing ‘car’. Okay, now say aloud ‘get my car insurance DOWN’, with the stress on ‘down’. If you sound like a refugee from the set of Shaft when speaking the second version, you’ll get it.
We’re hoping here that you might actually want to do both, so we’re going to give you some tips on how to save hard, green dollars on your car insurance, and hopefully give you some style counsel at the same time.
It’s never a bad time to reflect on some of the totally blindingly obvious tips to get your car insurance down. After all, lack on instructions or unclear instructions have led to some big legal payouts in the U.S. One pimp sued Nike in 2014 for not warning about the dangers their ‘air’ trainers can present to flesh and bone when stomping on someone’s face.
Let’s start with the obvious, then.
Shop around
Even if you’re someone whose largesse is on the scale of the Borgias, it’s a good idea to shop around. Many people don’t want the hassle, and stick with their current insurers. Insurers know that there is a psychological tendency to do this, so they may penalize ‘renewers’ over people who phone them to requote their existing insurance.
So even when shopping around means phoning your own insurer, it’s a good idea. Leaving the situation untouched can mean you default to less-beneficial terms than you might have gotten. Try telling your broker you're going to take your business elsewhere, and see if there isn’t room for maneuver. You’ll enter a whole new set of protocols. Rather than being one of the ‘let’s charge them what we can because they’re rolling over’ crowd, you’ll be one of the ‘do whatever it takes to keep their business’ crowd. A much better place for the consumer to be, don’t you think?
Generate add-ons
Let’s say you’re a good driver with a late-model vehicle. You’re holding ten-plus years of unblemished car insurance, and your premiums have come down about as far as they can go. How do you get your car insurance down in this situation? Here’s a great tip: you generate add-ons, little things that you can do which might have an outsized effect on your car insurance costs.
For example, taking an ‘expert driver’s’ course, or committing to ‘time-limited’ vehicle usage can bring your car insurance down by good margins. The reasons for these will all be actuarial and statistical. They’re not because your insurance company likes you and thinks you’re a good guy or gal for becoming a qualified expert driver. It’s because they have figures showing that those with particular ‘expert’ or ‘advanced’ driver qualifications have a statistically lower probability of being involved in an accident. They also have figures proving that most accidents (or, say, thefts of vehicles) occur at statistically nodal points during the day. For example, there may be more road traffic accidents in crepuscular conditions than at midday.
Once you start thinking in these terms, you’re doing something we should all be doing, but many don’t. You’ll be managing the family finances more effectively and not shelling out where it’s not needed. You’ll begin thinking of your own ways to get the better deals that are out there if you look for them.