Finance Tips

You’ve definitely seen many of those cars that the TV show “Pimp My Ride” and many other love to highlight. It has become a real fad among car owners, especially the younger ones, to customize their vehicles for the purpose of reflecting their individuality through the car they drive. Sure, in such an individualistic society as we all are there’s nothing wrong or bad about such a fad. However, quite often when it comes to insuring such vehicles their owners tend to overlook the changes their car has be subjected to, believing that their policy will cover it in case of an accident. And it’s such a bitter feeling when they actually file a claim and get covered partially or denied coverage in general. What’s wrong with custom cars that insurance companies are so picky about them? First of all let’s take a look at what the insurance company covers in the first place.

When you purchase a policy the company is obliged to cover the losses to your car in its form as the policy was signed according to its market value or independent evaluation. What happens when you decide to customize it? You change certain parts of the car from original to custom and effectively alter the market value of your vehicle. Let’s agree that installing a stereo system worth of 6k to your 3k Honda Civic is actually altering its price in a drastic manner. And in case you end up filing a claim for the altered value and configuration of your vehicle the insurance company has the right to deny you with coverage simply because you’ve altered the value of the insurance object without informing the insurer. It’s like buying a cheap computer, upgrading it with the most advanced parts, and then trying to get a refund for the final value of your PC because there was a short circuit in your flat. If you want to have adequate car insurance for your custom shop ride, you’ll have to inform your insurance companies about all the changes you’ve made to the basic configuration, preferably even before it goes out of the body shop. Make sure that your auto insurance provider knows what has been changed and customized in every detail, with the make and model of each custom part installed. You’ll typically be required to purchase a weaver to cover all the additional value you’ve put into your vehicle after customization. It’s evident that by slightly improving the performance or visuals of your car you alter its coverage value, and your policy should meet all these changes in order to keep it covered to the full extent. So now you know how to keep your car equipped with the right auto insurance even if you decide to perform radical customization. You are free to do whatever you want with your car, since it’s your property, for as long as it doesn’t pose any threat to other drivers while on the road. Just make sure to adjust your coverage according to your shifting insurance needs.

Extra safety features are often very inexpensive upfront and mean long-term savings on insurance premiums.
Before getting these features, talk to your insurer to make sure you will get a discount.
We have provided a price efficiency rating to let you know the ratio of upfront cost to insurance savings. The higher the price efficiency rating, the sooner you will make up the cost with insurance savings.

Add On Headrest

Protects against whiplash, head, neck, and back injuries. This is essentially a foam pad that attaches to the front of your headrest. It will allow you to rest your head while driving, rather than having to keep in hovering 6-inches from the rest.

Right now, your options are either to hold your head hovering without rest or to sit completely erect at a 90-degree, L-shape.
The add on headrest is an elegant solution to that problem that will really save your neck in a crash. Independent studies have proved it!
Plus, driving is just more comfortable.

Price Efficiency Rating: 7 – Will become higher as more insurance companies do their own studies on its effectiveness in reducing injury.

Signal Mirrors

These side mirrors flash LED turn signals so that it is clearer to other drivers that you are turning. There will be fewer collisions this way. Plus, the LEDs are very energy efficient, long-lasting, and cute!

Price Efficiency Rating: 5 – Installation can be pretty costly.

Child Car-seats

Getting the right child safety devices in your vehicle can save you big insurance money. If you ask your agent to recommend a car-seat, they may actually be able to offer you a discount because they know your child will have a much smaller chance of injury and death.
If your child’s improved safety isn’t a big enough reward, the savings will be!

• Rear-facing seats are best, but never put them in front of an active frontal airbag
• Do not incline seats more than 45 degrees
• Connect all the straps and harnesses correctly
• Pay attention to the expiration date on the car-seat

Price Efficiency Rating: 5-9 – Getting the best seat money can buy is better protection for your child and saves you more in the long run.

Sensors and Cameras

While these futuristic features are commonly thought of as expensive add-ons for luxury vehicles, they are becoming quite inexpensive as people and insurers realize they have huge safety and savings bonuses. As more statistics become available, insurers are seeing the proof that these features really do prevent many crashes and collisions, which means bigger discounts and lower rates as you get into fewer incidents.

• Lane-departure warning
• Front-collision warning
• Blind-spot detection
• Electronic stability control

Price Efficiency Rating: 5 – Once costs come down, this efficiency rating may well soar to a 10! For now though, it may take a year to recoup costs. However, if it saves you from a collision, which it very well might, you’ve instantly got your money’s worth.

Car Insurance Quotes

If your current insurance provider doesn’t give you significant discounts for extra safety options, consider switching. Car insurance quotes will help you find a more affordable provider. You can even compare policy details and rates from the best insurance companies in minutes using online car insurance quotes.

The game played by politicians is to take an idea from their own agenda and then frame it in a way that sells it to the other side. When the politicians meet in the middle, bipartisan solutions to problems emerge. This reflects the fact there is no monopoly on good ideas, only simple good solutions to difficult problems. In the healthcare debate, one of the solutions proposed by the GOP was to allow people to buy their insurance across state lines. This sounds a good idea. As the law stands, every state regulates the sale of insurance within its own borders. This limits the size of the market. If insurers had to compete with each other on a regional or national level, the premium rates would fall and every citizen would get a better deal. Well, let’s look a little more closely at how it would actually work.

At present, every state has a Department of Insurance to regulate the insurance companies licensed to sell policies. This is a reasonably effective system for consumer protection. But if regional or national insurers could sell policies into many states, it would break the regulatory system. It would no longer be local supervision of local companies. Insurers would decide where to establish and would, of course, choose the states which had the weakest consumer protection regulations, i.e. where they could make the most profit. Think banks and finance companies. These companies broke the US economy and produced the recession because their sales of subprime mortgages and associated derivatives were unregulated. Now apply the same thing to interstate insurance. As a final thought on this issue, remember all US states have different laws and one state cannot enforce another’s laws. That is sovereignty for you. So the state where an insurer is based cannot protect consumers under another state’s laws.

Secondly, opening the market across state lines allows insurers to cherry pick the best people to insure. Without regulations to limit the right to discriminate against people for pre-existing conditions and to increase premiums as people get older and fall ill more often, insurers will just take their profit from all the healthy people and forget about the rest. Thus, instead of increasing consumer choice, it would have the reverse effect. Most insurance companies would close their branches in individual states. Those that remained would keep all the aging and less healthy people. As their claims rise, the companies will make a loss and close. Without a law to mandate regional or national companies to offer some health coverage, it is likely the number of uninsured people would rise.

When you add all this up, it is a good thing the GOP’s proposal was rejected. Health insurance plans are complicated enough without having to change a whole mass of federal and state laws to allow interstate sales. This is not to say that consumers might benefit if there was more competition in the insurance market generally. With a real free market, properly regulated, consumers would get a better deal both in the terms of coverage and in the premium rates they pay. As it is, you must get multiple quotes to find cheap health insurance. Anticipating their profits will take a hit following this reform, insurers have been raising their premium rates. You must shop around to find the most affordable policy.

There’s a strange contradiction about insurance. It’s an annoying burden every month when the time to pay the premium comes around but, if the worst should happen, it’s a wonderful thing to have had that insurance policy in place. With the family budgets really tight as the recession shows little sign of going away, the monthly bank statement shows the insurance instalments disappearing. You look at your own health. That’s great. You have never had a day of serious illness in your life. It’s the same for your partner. You cannot avoid feeling a little resentful. All those dollars, every month. And then there’s an accident or one of you does unexpectedly fall ill. It’s then you discover whether that plan you have been paying into is actually worth the money.

The market for health plans is divided in a slightly complicated way. It’s really to ensure the insurance companies make a profit as the cost of treatment keeps on rising way faster than inflation. So it reflects a balancing act between allowing the patients some say, and denying them any real control, over access to treatment. The plan most popular with the insurance industry is Managed Care. This requires you to get the insurer’s permission before you attempt to access treatment. The first contact doctor must be from an approved list, and he or she must refer you on for further diagnostic tests or treatment. Failure to get this referral usually means the insurer will refuse to pay. The second option is a Fee For Service Plan where you pay a lump sum at the beginning of each year, followed by monthly instalments. This covers you for the medical services listed in your policy. Basic plans only cover consults with your doctor and a simple set of tests. More expensive plans have a better range of coverage but there are usually co-payments.

Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) are networks of healthcare professions. If you stay within the network, your medical needs are covered although, in most plans, co-payments will be required. The next step up is a Point of Service Plan (POS). This is a variation on the HMO and allows a networked doctor to refer you to an outside expert. Finally, there are Preferred Provider Organizations (PPOs) which offer more choice than an HMO or POS both in the doctors you can access and the treatments you can have, e.g. usually include preventative medicine.

Because the service offered by this site is free, you can get as many health insurance quotes as you like for each of the main types of plan. This gives you more information on which to make your decision. But it’s fair to say the decision is not an easy one unless you read the detail of each plan with some care. With all the health insurance quotes available, you are often forced to balance coverage against cost, i.e. you buy the amount of coverage you can afford. This makes the choices something of a gamble. Do you pick emergency care in the event of an accident or focus on a list of the most common diseases or disorders? Do you include long-term care against the possibility you might be more permanently disabled by whatever happens? There is no right or wrong answer to these questions. In the end, it all comes down to what you can afford and what helps you to sleep best at night.

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.