Saturday, September 19, 2015

This Simple Trick Could Save You Hundreds of Dollars on Car Insurance

How's that for a link bait title?  But just keep reading, because this might just save you hundreds of dollars every year on your car insurance.

Since we moved from Wisconsin to Indiana, we've been a bit frustrated with our insurance rates.  Not only are we insuring the exact same cars and the exact same drivers - at a much higher rate - but those already high rates seem to go up every year.  And when I say go up, I don't mean a little bit.  This past month when we got our auto insurance bill, it had gone up over $200 from the last time we paid it.

So Jeffrey started calling other insurance companies to see if we could save some money by switching companies.  They say you should compare rates on a regular basis, but we honestly never felt a big need to do it.  Until now.  In Wisconsin our rates were reasonable, and when they did go up, it was entirely reasonable.

While he was calling other companies, Jeffrey called our current insurance agent too, to find out why the policy had gone up so much.  The basic answer is that there has been more severe weather in recent years, and they've had to pay out more in claims - so somebody has to pay for that.  That's where all their insurance customers come in - whether or not we've filed any claims.  After all, the insurance company's stock holders expect to make a profit.

Jeffrey asked him if there was something we could do to lower our rates, and that's when our agent told him that if he rewrote our policy and we would be willing to pay annually instead of every 6 months, we could save over $800 a year.  Of course that's not something they're going to tell you.  Unless you ask.  And you have to be able to pay a year's worth of insurance at one time, which in this case amounted to paying about $400 more than we would've had to pay anyway - just for 6 months.

Of course, there's no guarantee you'll get the same savings through your insurance company, but it's certainly worth calling to find out.  And if you're calling insurance companies to compare rates, be sure to ask about the cost of an annual policy while you're at it.  You just might be able to save hundreds of dollars every year.