Finance Tips

If you think that you have enough protection for your car with many kinds of the best accessories and qualified drivers who can drive your cars to anywhere without the problems like the accident, bring it on! You do not have to be pride first because you will have many kinds of the problems which can be happened at anytime, anywhere, and without your awareness, to your cars. But, with the services of the car insurance quotes, you may make your cars protected well. Why? Can it give you the best accessories and the exclusive shape of your cars? No, it does not work like that. The car insurance will give you guarantee of your cars when it is getting the problems.

With the car insurance, when you have the problems in the middle of the ways when you are wearing your cars, you will be helped soon to have the reparation of the cars. You will be able to have the effective protection and you may continue your ways to your work. You only have to give the faith in your car insurances because your car will be handled. It is your time to have the best services of your cars to have the best cars.

The insurance companies will always reward you for driving less. If you rarely put wheels on the road, the chances of a claim are small and all your premium will be “profit to the insurer. So how does this work? In theory, it could not be more simple. The insurance company looks at who you are, when you drive and where you drive in deciding how much of a risk you represent. If you live 50 miles from your work and have a daily commute along a busy Interstate, the chances of an accident are high. But if you live on a bus route to work and only use your vehicle for odd journeys at off-peak times, the chances of an accident are small. When you answer the questionnaire, you will see questions covering these possibilities. Remember, if you get caught out in dishonest answers, the insurer will cancel your policy and leave you without any coverage.

The first question is where you live. Although some states like California have outlawed setting rates according to your zip code, the majority of companies focus on your home address. If there’s a high accident or theft rate among people living in your area, you will all pay a higher premium. The only choice, if you can afford it, is to live some place where the crime and accidents rates are lower. You look for the middle ground between the worst inner city crime hot spot and a house on the prairie where you never see another vehicle from one day’s end to the next. All the discounts favor drivers who only drive off-peak during the day, and restrict their annual mileage. No more late night and early morning driving when the majority of other drivers may be tired or affected by alcohol and/or drugs. This raises the question of monitoring. It’s easy to answer the questionnaire and claim the maximum discounts. But the trend among insurers is to ask people to drop their vehicle in for a regular inspection of the recorded mileage. The maximum discounts are given to the drivers who agree to devices being installed which collect all the data on driving and transmit it to the insurers. These devices have a GPS element that records where you drive, the time and, in some cases, some measurement of the quality of your driving, e.g. how often you brake. The reward for accepting this invasion of your privacy can be discounts of up to 25% on top of the usual discounts. Obviously, it’s not a good idea to use your own vehicle to rob a bank since the insurance company will know you were there.

This set of discounts is somewhat frustrating. In the larger cities with well-developed public transport, it’s usually not too much trouble to get where you want on time without using your own vehicle. Assuming your vehicle is safely in a garage to reduce the risk of theft, you should break even or better, i.e. what you save on the insurance pays for your use of buses and trains. But the most of the US has poor public transport, so there’s little choice. Remember the car insurance quotes are not the final word. Call the company, explain your circumstances and discuss how you might qualify for discounts. In discussion, you often discover options not included in the website. So, treat the car insurance quotes as the opening offer and start negotiating. Investing a little time often saves you money.

With Alice back in Wonderland thanks to Tim Burton, we continue this series of articles on how to earn discounts when insuring your vehicle. This time, the trip down the rabbit hole (or through the looking glass as you prefer), deals with the practicality of your use of private transport. Remember the insurance companies want as little risk as possible so they prefer you to have the vehicle parked on your front yard where you admire it from a distance and, when it gets dusty, wash and polish it. In short, the less you drive, the more you save. So lets see how it works. There are three times during the day when accidents are more likely. These are the two main periods for commuting to and from work, and the late night and early morning when driving is often associated with alcohol and other “substances”. The statistics show the more vehicles there are on the road around you, the greater the chance one will collide with another. At peak times for commuters, the roads are suddenly full and the risks of accidents are high. Now change the weather from sunshine and gentle breezes to the first ice and snow of the winter. The majority of drivers have forgotten the risks, made no advance preparations and find themselves on a skating rink without any way of stopping in a hurry. The accident rate goes sky high until people relearn their winter driving skills. At night, its the reverse problem. From 11 p.m. through to the early hours, there are fewer vehicles on the road, but the majority of drivers may be less alert. At best, this is simple tiredness. At worst, its substance abuse and you are in the way.

So, if you agree not to drive at the most dangerous times, you get a discount. For the same reason, agreeing to restrict your mileage also earns a discount. If you only drive a few miles every now and again, the chances of you being involved in an accident are small. The lower the mileage you accept, the better the discount. For the same reasoning, where you drive affects the premium. Although the practice is outlawed in some states, your zip code sets the tone for the premium rate. Some areas of the cities and larger towns are statistically more accident-prone. Equally, if you live in a wilderness area or in a remote part of the prairies, you can go miles without ever seeing another vehicle. Collisions are therefore rare, although some trees are known to throw caution to the wind when crossing the road. Be honest with yourself. Do you have to use the vehicle? Yes, it may be slightly inconvenient to use public transport but, if you are saving money on your insurance, you can be safer and better off financially.

In an earlier article, we mentioned the problem of fraud. The biggest discounts are given to those prepared to prove their honesty. Check the auto insurance quotes for those companies offering monitoring, whether face-to-face or through technology. Some companies ask you to call in once a month to prove your mileage is within limits. Others have devices to fit into your vehicles that monitor when, where and how you drive. This information is then routinely transmitted to the insurer. Sure Big Brother is watching but, if this saves you big dollars, its worth searching through the auto insurance quotes to find these offers.

The main thing to understand about discounts is the thinking behind them. The insurance companies want to encourage you to act in ways that favor them. If you are contrary and do the opposite, you will probably cost them money so your premium rates will be higher. Let’s take a few examples and see how it works. Obviously the point of insurance is that, if you have one of those unfortunate accidents or someone steals your vehicle, you get to claim money from the insurance company. From the insurer’s point of view, this is bad news. It wants to be able to treat all your cash as profit. The more it has to pay out, the more it should raise premiums. Except, at some point, you throw up your hands and say, “We’re not going to pay that.” So a balance has to be struck. The insurer wants all the safe drivers like you, and aims to discourage all the drivers with bad records – they are the ones who get the really big premium hikes. Although loyalty bonuses go some way in the right direction, there are more ways in which the insurer can save money. It all starts with the make and model of vehicle you are driving.

Risk assessment is done by the actuaries. These are the math wonks who collect details of every accident reported in the US. This is not just the data from claims on vehicle insurance. This is every incident reported to the police, attended by the firefighters or ambulance crews, or dealt with through claims on health insurance. Put all this together and the actuaries can tell you the probability of an accident in any make and model of vehicle, given its color, whether it was fitted with any additional features, who it was driven by, the time of day or night, whether the driver and passengers were badly injured, so on. Yes, it’s that detailed. Turning this around, if you drive a vehicle that’s statistically unlikely to be involved in an accident or stolen, your premium will be lower than average. Put a safe driver in a safe car and the chances of the insurer having to pay out are small and the profit is higher. Everyone is happy. So how do you find out which are the safest vehicles with the lowest premium rates? Well, you start with http://www.safercar.gov/, a site run by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. This allows you to get the safety ratings from all the tests carried out by the NHTSA. There’s a guide published at http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/staticfiles/DOT/NHTSA/Vehicle%20Safety/Articles/Associated%20Files/2009_Insurance_Costs_Comparison.pdf which is also helpful. Finally, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety publishes its own list of safe vehicles at http://www.iihs.org/ratings/

The safer the vehicle you drive, the greater the discount on the premium rate. So when you are filling out the questionnaire for those auto insurance quotes, aim to have a safe vehicle. If you vehicle is not safe and you cannot afford to change it, try to upgrade it by fitting safety features. Look at the questions asked in the questionnaire and talk to insurance agents to find out what features save the most money. Similarly, fit better locks and any systems making your vehicle more difficult to steal. Anything you can do to reduce the risk of a claim will be reflected in low rates in the auto insurance quotes you receive.

Most of you are probably well aware of the fact that different age groups of drivers get different insurance rates, and the difference can be quite significant. Why the discrimination, you might ask? Well, don’t haste with accusing insurance company with unfair pricing, as there is a set of reasons behind such practices. When speaking about age groups and pricing, you have to understand how the insurance companies assess risk and set the rates you get when quoting.

The primary factors determining the price you will pay for insurance are risk and claim history within your demographic group. Insurance companies analyze the costs of insuring each age group and set their rates respectively. And due to a set of reasons, young adults are considered to be the most risky car owners, thus the high rates a young driver will receive when getting insurance quotes. That’s because young drivers have a larger claims history as a group, and the accidents they end up in tend to be more devastating and costly. Of course, it doesn’t mean that all teenagers and young adults get crazy on the road and have serious accidents. But that’s the situation when one has to pay for other’s mistakes, and unfortunately there’s little you can do about it.

But little doesn’t mean nothing. If you are a young driver looking for good auto insurance, you still have chances of getting better rates if your follow some of the following advices. Of course, they won’t drop your rates instantly and dramatically but by combining them you will be able to get quite reasonable car insurance rates.

Be a good driver

Being a good driver with a clean driving record with no accidents or traffic violations always pays of no matter how old are you. But you can go beyond that. Enroll in special driving schools and employ a defensive driving style – having proof of your good safe driving abilities will definitely give your significant discounts from the insurance company.

Buy a safe car

When you are young, you want to be fast and furious. That’s your right, but if you buy a fast sports car don’t expect to get advantageous auto insurance quotes for it. Sports and muscle cars are considered to be risky and have high insurance costs, so insurance companies will always charge more for owning a Mitsubishi Lancer Evo than for a VW Golf. That’s why you should think about the car you want to drive before actually buying it.

Do some comparison shopping

Shopping around has never hurt anyone. In fact, getting more auto insurance quotes from different companies will help you find a really competitive policy. Some companies give young drivers lower rates than others, so why not spending a bit of your time on comparing auto insurance quotes if you can save quite well on it? Besides there are so many free quote sites out there that it would be simply a crime to leave such a great opportunity for saving some money on car insurance unnoticed.