Saving on Insurance

In my last post, I noted that I was able to knock quite a bit off of my insurance. I had a few emails about that, asking where you should even start to look. Here it is!

First of all, check out what your current policy is, and what is and is not completely necessary. Some of it is on there by law (a legal bare minimum), and some of it may be extras that either are or are not a good deal. If you have a debt against your car, then you legally have to have full coverage, and if you have an expensive car in good shape that is paid for, you still would want to have full or at least more complete coverage. This pays for your car in case something happens to it. If you only have PPLD (the bare minimum) you only get a few hundred dollars (or whatever the going rate now is). If your car is worth only a few hundred dollars, then it is worth it to only have PPLD since you can't possibly get any more, even if you are paying the extra $75 every six months for comprehensive. I'm not really an expert on what all of it means so don't take any of this as legal advice (that's my disclaimer), but do go and do some research on your own to see what each item on your policy is and why it is there, and what benefit you are getting out of it. Then weigh the benefits and costs.

Next, see if you can get a better deal elsewhere. I went to a few online places (geico.com, esurance.com, and insurance.com---I went with a quote the latter got me), and requested a free quote, and looked over the information they gave me. Some of them were way more expensive and some were less. I talked on the telephone then with someone from different companies, and to my surprise they were able to lower the price even further if I could pay the whole thing up front. Normally that is like way out of the question ;), but by God's grace, I had money in my Paypal account--the exact amount with 7 cents to spare, Praise the Lord. The savings for paying it up front was 20%, and so I am saving up for the next payment so that I again can get the huge discount--well worth it!

Usually there is a discount if you get all of your insurances through the same company (home, auto, life), and so you can also ask about that too.

Hope that helps!