I’m trying to cut costs. I was able to decrease my cable bill by 30% by telling em I was going to go with another provider. Curious to know if the same thing works with car insurance. Or if there are other hacks you suggest to save a few bucks on insurance. I saw some online drivers ed courses that said you could save on insurance if you took em. Not sure if that is legit though. Anyone here had success decreasing car bills?
Thanks all
Give it a try. Often, with car insurance, just shopping around can get you a better price. Be sure that you still have the quality and coverage that you desire, though.
As for the drivers ed courses- ask your insurance agent what discounts they offer, and that you may qualify for. Some do offer good discounts for a safety driving course. Or discounts if you are a full time student. or over 65 years of age. or clean driving. or, or, or.
Ask your insurance agent, or other companies agents and see what they can do for you.
If you can afford to cover a higher deductible, raising it should cut the rate.
Do you happen to drive an unusually low number of miles per year? If so, that might qualify you for a better rate.
I do suggest that you make sure you keep sufficient liability coverage. Insufficient collision coverage might cost you a car, but insufficient liability coverage can cost you your savings and even your future earnings.
Start by giving your agent the opportunity to lower your costs. Check your policy for features you might not need. Towing, for example. If your car is in good shape and you’ve had limited needs for towing, drop it. It is always a good idea to shop around for insurance on a regular basis. Some will offer rate cuts if you plug a device into your car’s OBD II post that rats out your bad driving habits IF you have any but offers a discount if you don’t. Pretty much throws privacy out the window but at least the offer you something in return.
Deceasing your cable bill is always good. How about dropping it by half or more? If you have high speed internet, try free trials of streaming services like Hulu, DirecTv Go, Vudu or Playstation Vue. Live TV (including local channels) and a selection of cable channels and movies. Free to try it out. If it works for you, it costs start around $35 a month.
Do you have an e-gent (online insurance) or an agent, in a brick and mortar office? How long a period have you been with that company? Longevity can lead to discounts.
Care to say which company you are insured with currently?
Do you have valuable assets to protect?
Multi-line discounts can save, too. Have you other items that are insured… house, condo, apartment (renter’s insurance), boat, etcetera? Having one insurance company to cover multiple policies can save you.
I’m a saver and look for ways to save, but I have very adequate insurance and consider it to be extremely important. Watch out when trying to save too much or skimp on insurance, though.
Since you pay for (cable) TV, which I have never done in my life, tells me that chance are you’re wasting good money on other things, too.
(Disclaimer… I do have cable and high-speed internet included in my second home condo, but it’s not negotiable, included with a very reasonable HOA fee, lower than most without these amenities.)
I’d take a good hard look at other wastes and cut them, first. Sometimes those little leaks of money add up to big wasteful spending.
CSA
We are using Geico right now. And probably have had them going on 10 years now. We purchased it online not through a brick and mortar store.
Dropping things like towing is a good suggestion. Or combining with my home insurance. Never thought of those.
@ Mustangman do you know what provider has the device to monitor your driving. that sounds interesting. I’m not going anywhere that I want to hide… and I think im a pretty safe driver. Certainly would do that for a few bucks.
Thanks all. I feel like I have a few things I can bring up on the phone
I have seen adds for the device from Geico, Progressive and Allstate. I am sure there are more.
I don’t agree that dropping towing is a good idea . That is 11.00 a year for our two vehicles. One tow can be a lot more than that .
I have no idea if changing carriers would save us much money. We have a real agent office that has been a great help several times . They also offer Notary service and faxing for free.
Progressive has that device, and their prices are usually competitive
My insurance company asks me “is the vehicle used for work or pleasure?” Since I’m retired I get a better rate than working,. regardless of miles driven. Retirees don’t spend much time in rush hour traffic!
We found Geico gave us the best price about 2/3 the cost, but did not offer gap insurance for our leased car, so we passed. Checked a few places including two of the we search multiple companies but did not really find a significant difference in price from our current policy.
How long has it been since you had a car towed? And how much did it cost?
I have had 4 cars towed in 40 years. All were less than $100.
GEICOs towing insurance is so inexpensive that it doesn’t make sense to drop it. Increasing the deductible is probably the best way to do it. Calling them and asking for an evaluation to save money is a good first step, as suggested above. Annual mileage and intended use is another good way. If the car is not used for commuting, the price can be cut a lot.
My experience with GEICO is that the actual price ended up being way higher than the online quote, and the reason was because they use credit score based pricing, and my credit was poor at the time. They even sent a letter admitting that fact. I had GEICO for a couple years, paying way more than I should have for way less coverage than I wanted. After I got a renewal bill with an increase beyond what I was willing to pay, I contacted a local insurance agency, and switched to a no-name insurance company which was much cheaper.
That being said, the only reason I was willing to use a no-name insurance company was because I was poor, had minimal assets, and was planning to file for bankruptcy once I got sued for any of my debts, anyways. So it’s not like I would have actually paid for any accident which might have occurred and exceeded the policy limits. Of course, if you have a good job and/or property to protect, then it’s worth having good insurance. If you don’t, then it’s a waste of money, and you should get the cheapest insurance that will let you be legal.
After all, someone who has minimal savings, owns an old car, no real estate, and has an average (or less) income isn’t going to pay for any damage/injury they cause regardless of fault. The reason is because the money to pay for it simply doesn’t exist. So it would be foolish for such a person to spend more of their limited funds to insure against a high-dollar accident which probably won’t happen anyways. It would be smarter to just have the state minimum. In the unlikely event that a high-dollar accident does occur, and that the other driver or their insurance company attempts to collect through a lawsuit, bankruptcy is always an option.
I had really good results with an independent insurance agent that writes policies for several companies. Many years ago, when I was under 25, I had Farm Bureau insurance. I never had a claim or a traffic ticket of any kind. However, my rates kept going up. I went to an independent insurance agent that I knew. He said he could do better than Farm Bureau, but recommended that I try Horace Mann insurance since I was teaching. Horace Mann insured teachers and had part time agents that were also teachers. I got the rates from a colleague that represented Horace Mann. I took the rates back to my independent agent and he said to go with Horace Mann because he couldn’t beat their rates. A couple of years later I was enrolled in graduate school where I needed to watch my pennies. I did some mathematics and figured out that my car was old enough that I didn’t need collision coverage. If I totaled the car, the salvage value plus the loss I could take off my income tax made it worth the risk.
Some years later, Horace Mann went to full time agents and the rates went up. I had a neighbor that was an independent insurance agent. He wrote me a policy with Commercial Union that had even better rates. I wondered about that company, but a week after I was insured with Commercial Union, I read in the newspaper that Commercial Union was the low bidder to insure the ships that were dredging the Suez Canal.
Commercial Union no longer does anything but commercial insurance. I had to find another agency. We were able to bundle our auto insurance with our homeowners insurance and got the best rates from Nationwise Insurance.
It pays to shop around for any insurance that you need. I am president of a chamber orchestra. We need to carry one million dollars worth of liability insurance. We were paying $501 dollars a year. The extra dollar was for terrorism insurance. We had a really nice woman who played oboe with the orchestra. I told her that I suspected that she was an undercover terrorist, so she coughed up the extra dollar–gave us 100 pennies. I shopped around and we got the same coverage for $266. It pays to shop for the best rates.
Good ideas above. On an older car with not much in the way of re-sale value, although it might well be very valuable to you, you might be willing to drop collision coverage entirely. I get discounts for seldom if ever filing claims, for not having any traffic ticket convictions, for the car’s seat belt configuration, for insuring multiple vehicles, for having other stuff besides by cars insured by the same company, for being a long term customer, etc. My insurance company mails a list of all the discounts available every once in a while. Ask your insurance company for that list. And good old capitalism is effective too; i.e. shopping around.
I have an independent insurance agent who places my coverage. He represents about 15 different carriers and “shops” my policy between them every two years. Whoever is the cheapest gets the business. My cars are always financed or leased, so I need to carry full coverage, albeit with a $1,000 deductible. Towing is about $24 per year, so I don’t bother cancelling it.
I was with State farm for 40 years when two of mu granddaughters got jobs with Geico. I called for a price quote just to get one of them a referral fee and the price was almost 40% less than State Farm for the same coverage.
I changed immediatly and have been very happy with the service. I found out later the State Farn had a policy of not telling “Legacy” customers about lower prices if they did not ask or shop their policies.
Your first problem, you are with the same insurance company for a decade. You have been taken for a ride. I have been there. What I used to pay for one 6 year old car, now I pay less than that for 2 cars, including that old car and a newer car.
https://www.thezebra.com/ is the place where you should go to compare very rough quotes. They will sell you insurance too but I use it just to get a rough idea of what companies may charge for my cars and with my demographic.
Defensive driving course. This is legit. Both of us take this course every 3 years, costs $45 and one evening, you get 10% off on your insurance. Find a local driving school and ask about such course.
Increase your deductible. In my case, whether my deductible is 500 or 1000 doesn’t make much difference (about $150 over the year) So I have kept it $500 only.
If your cars are older, I would not remove towing/roadside assistance. It usually adds less than $10 a year but if you actually have to tow it, it can get into 100s (at least in my neighborhood).
Try to bundle auto with homeowners or renters insurance. It helps to combine.
Last but not the least, it also matters what you drive. My older car costs more to insure than the newer car because of the lack of ‘safety equipment’. But this car is paid off and I do not want to have monthly payments for a few more years so I spend about $1200/year on a car that is worth less than $3000. Not the ideal situation but better than paying $5K per year on the car payments.
I do not skimp on the insurance. My feeling, what good is an insurance if it doesn’t help when you really need it. When I had to take the car to a body shop for a fender bender (still the bill was 3K), I had a long discussion with the body shop guy about this. His advice was, think twice before going to ‘cheap’ insurance. They are cheap for a reason. I am sure there will be someone who will come along to tell how good XYZ insurance company was and how cheap they are. Well, good for you. If you want to gamble, go ahead. I will happily pay more for a little peace of mind.
Plus, we live in a litigation society. So many want to make money off others for literally no reason. My wife is a PT. She comes across such mindset quite often. I don’t want to face with a lawsuit for a simple tap on a bumper. In such events, the insurance company should stand behind you. Of course, there are no guarantees, but I hope many good companies will stand behind their customer.
I am using Erie, not the cheapest but when I needed, I didn’t hear a peep and they didn’t jack my rates up. So as long as they offer competitive (not cheap) rates, I will stay with them.
Edit: I just checked thezebra and it has changed a lot (negatively) since I used last time but it is the only website that didn’t spam with emails and calls so still worth it if you can get anything out of it.
I take AARP’s Defensive Driving Course every 3 years, for $15–because I am an AARP member.
I think that non-members pay $20.
AARP’s courses are usually given at local community centers, but when I last took their course, I used the “online” option–which worked pretty well. With that option, you can essentially take the course at your own pace, on your own schedule. That $15 expense every 3 years saves me $45 per year on my car insurance, which is a pretty good value, IMHO.
A few years ago, I raised my deductible to $1,500, and I saved ~20 bucks per year.
My policy renews in June, and I think that I am going to raise the deductible to $2k. If I had to pay that deductible, it wouldn’t take food off of my table, and since I haven’t been involved in a collision since 1970, I think that this is a decent “gamble” on my part.