Cut Your Car Insurance Premiums

by: David Thomson

Car insurance is one of the dearest parts of owning and running aCar insurance is one of the dearest parts of owning and running a car, however by taking a little time to research the market place and by taking advantage of the resources that can be found online you could save money when it comes to renewing your car insurance.

When taking out your motor insurance policy check out what excess the company is asking or with your policy. By offering to pay more excess you can reduce the cost of your premiums which could end up saving you money. The excess is what you pay towards the cost of the claim when you make a claim, for example you stand to the first £50 or £100.

Having a good no claims bonus can help to cut the cost of your premium by up to two thirds. By protecting your no claims bonus it will cost you but in the long run it could well work out to your advantage.

By adding a named older driver to your policy you can knock off around 10% of your insurance premiums. Similarly, if you have younger drivers named on your policy then have these taken off to help reduce your premiums.

Fitting extra security to your car can also help to save you on your premium. Fitting good quality locks, steering locks and alarms and having your windows etched with security codes can all help to reduce the costs.

If you can afford to the pay for your premium for the year upfront, this can sometimes knock around 30% in insurance off your premium rather than paying for it monthly, which would attract an additional fee.

Consider taking advanced driving lessons. The more qualified you are for driving then the cheaper your premiums are, simply because the insurance company sees you as less of a risk.

Make Sure You Know Everything There Is To Know About Cheaper Car Insurance

by: David Thomson

Of course we all want to save money on our bills, but sometimes it seems that everything is still expensive, especially when it comes to cars and insuring them. They can sometimes be a millstone around your neck. However it is possible to make savings when it comes to buying car insurance and one of the best ways to make savings on your premiums is to shop around.

You can get someone else (ie your insurance broker) to shop around on your behalf or you can have a look online. Buying online can not only save you a huge amount of money but it will also save you a whole lot of time and leg work.

Almost all online insurers can give you an almost instant quote which you are then able to consider and compare with other online companies’. Some sites will also give you a comparison table on their site which even saves you the trouble of searching yourself. Of course you should always double check this information to make sure it is right and currently up to date as you can often find that once you fill in a full application, the premium can vary quite dramatically.

One of the most common reasons why people don't make savings on their car insurance is because they simply don't shop around. Along with this they fail to gain as much knowledge on the subject as they possibly can.

Understanding which policy you would be better taking also goes a long way to helping you save on your car insurance. For example there are two main types of insurance, third party, fire and theft, and fully comprehensive. The type of policy most suited for your needs should be taken into account but also bear in mind that fully comp, while covering you for more, will be the most costly.

There are many ways in which you can lower the cost further. If you have had advanced driving lessons then this should be stated - the safer you are regarded by the company then the lower the cost of your premium.

Your age and sex also plays an important factor in how much you pay for your car insurance. There are specialist websites that cater just for the young driver or say for the female driver and by going with one of these you can save yourself money on the cost of insurance.

Fitting better anti theft devices on your car can also save you money as can offering to pay a higher excess fee.

Car Insurance Uncovered

By:David Thomson

There are many ways in which you can make savings on your car insurance, the best, not to mention the quickest way to make sure you get the cheapest car insurance is to shop around for your insurance.

You can do this yourself by going online or by getting a specialist insurance broker to do the legwork for you.

Things to bear in mind include combining your car and home insurance. There are companies who can offer savings by you taking both policies together. Sometimes you can make savings of around 40% on your car insurance simply by combining the two.

The safety features that are installed on your car can help bring your premium down. Simply by having top notch alarms and window etchings, you can attract huge savings.

Your postcode can make all the difference between the price you are quoted for your premium as certain areas and their postcodes are deemed as high risk crime areas and as such you pose a greater risk just by living in an area such as this.

Younger drivers will normally pay a higher price for their car insurance, due to their inexperience on their road and statistics that say they are more likely to be involved in an accident.

Women drivers - despite the man jokes about their driving - are classed as safer drivers and there are specialist sites aimed particularly with these people in mind who can offer discounted premiums.

If there is more than one driver and two or more cars in the family then you can get a great deal on your insurance by taking a package for two or more drivers. This can save you a whole lot on your insurance, which of course benefits the whole family of drivers.

One mistake that the majority of people make is to stay with their insurance company year after year and not even consider changing. People who don't look around when it comes to renewing their insurance could be paying around 30% more than they should be for the same level of cover.

So when it comes to purchasing your car insurance don't become complacent! By putting a little time and effort in to shopping around - or getting your broker to do it for you – can save you hundreds of pounds on your insurance.

How To Make Great Savings On You Car Insurance

As anyone who has a motor car knows, car insurance can be expensive. However there are many ways in which you can save money when it comes purchasing for the first time or renewing your car insurance. Here are some simple ways that you can make some small and some substantial savings.

The premium you pay for your car insurance can vary a lot from company to company so it is in your best interests to shop around. You can do this yourself by trawling the internet or get a specialist broker to do it for you.

Work out what type of insurance you want, be it third party, fire and theft cover or fully comprehensive. If your car is an older model, for instance, then consider just taking third party, fire and theft car insurance.

Once you have determined the level of cover that you need, then get at least three separate quotes from different companies.
by: David Thomson

Getting a quote online will vary from company to company and you do need to compare quotes on a like-for-like basis.

One great way to lower your premiums is to offer to pay more for the voluntary excess you would pay if you were to make a claim. By doing this you can make savings.

If you choose to go with an insurance company that does home cover, sometimes if you take your household insurance cover along with your car insurance then you can make noticeable savings.

Finally, if you have taken advanced driving lessons or have no claims bonus for a number of years then it is worthwhile asking about any special considerations you might be entitled to receiving. While the majority of insurers ask about things such as this when filling in an enquiry regarding car insurance, it is also worthwhile mentioning if they don't.

Auto Insurance Quote - It Is Better To Be Prepared

By TOMICA FRANJA
The first thing you need when buying car insurance is an auto insurance quote from some A-grade companies. By comparing the rates and offers of different companies, you can manage to save some precious hundreds of bucks as premium! And you can also get the most suitable kind of insurance coverage plan for your vehicle, depending upon your lifestyle, the vehicle you own, your driving habits and your neighborhood.

For example, if you rarely drive your car, then there is absolutely no point in paying a heavy premium for it. You can get some other low mileage plans. Online quotes can help you compares the packages and rates most easily, from the comforts of your own home and without having to make dozens of phone calls to insurance companies.

Some Facts About Insurance Premiums
Knowing some important facts about the way the insurance premiums are determined can help you select cheap policy with the most optimal coverage plan for your vehicle. Auto insurance quote is based on the premium rates fixed by the government or by the individual companies, in accordance with government regulations. Generally, these companies have more flexibility in pricing the physical damage coverage as against the mandatory liability coverage.

Factors Affecting Insurance Cost
The premium charges in an auto insurance quote vary, based on a number of factors. Some of them include the car make and model, how much is it used (number of miles driven per year on an average) and the profile of the driver. It is normally seen that teenagers tend to make a more risky profile, more accident prone. Hence their premiums would be high. While senior citizens, who rarely drive their car, generally get discounted rates. Moreover, females get some advantage because data reveals that they drive less per year than men, and are less involved in accidents.

Other than that, factors like where you park your car and the number of people who drive it also affects its insurance premium. Besides that, if the car is on loan/lease, there is also something called GAP protection in some of the coverage plans. This is to provide monetary compensation in the event of an un-repairable damage when the sale value of the vehicle is less than the balance amount owed on the car loan. So these are just a few of the things to note when selecting an auto insurance quote, which would not only provide the most ideal coverage for your car, but offer the most affordable rates too.

HEALTH INSURANCE MANDATES

By Brian

Barack Obama’s health care policy has come under a lot of blogworld attacks for not including “mandates”, i.e. fines for people who don’t buy health insurance. Here’s a typical passage from Ezra Klein.

A central tenet of his proposal is that ” No insurance companies will be allowed to discriminate because of a previous bout with cancer or some other pre-existing illness.” You literally cannot have that rule without some mechanism forcing everyone to buy in, as the healthy will stay out. … A mandate is not how you cover everyone, it’s how you force insurers to cover everyone, and discriminate against no one.

I don’t know what the force of that ‘cannot’ is supposed to be, but I know it isn’t historical impossibility. Australia for several decades did just the thing Ezra thinks that you can’t do. It had community rating of health insurance, and it didn’t have health insurance mandates. This was true of the periods 1953-1975, and again from 1981-1984. At other times it had compulsory universal basic health insurance. The system wasn’t perfect, bringing in compulsory public health insurance was a very good thing, but it wasn’t as bad as anything I’ve seen in America, and nor was it somehow an impossibility.

The argument for mandates is basically that without them you have adverse selection effects. I don’t particularly think those will be huge. In Australia we still had insurance levels of 70-80. That was with a pretty good level of public provision of emergency care, so you didn’t have to worry about needing health insurance if you were in a car wreck. And it was with a system of GPs where (at the time) the uninsured were charged about as much for a doctor’s visit as I now pay in my co-pay. Had the health options for the uninsured then in Australia been as bad as they are now in America, a huge percentage of people would have been insured. As it was, the system still more or less worked, at least compared to anything the U.S. has seen.

Even if there were adverse selection effects, it isn’t clear what the downside will be. Ezra links to this 3 page Urban Institute report that comes out for mandates, and seems to say the downsides are that we’ll need more government financing. I think anyone who thinks we’ll get a better U.S. health system without some extra government financing is basically living in a fairy tale, so I’m not at all sure why this is a problem. Perhaps mandates are supposed to be politically easier to sell than tax rises, but this seems nonsensical. Given the hideously unbalanced state of the U.S. tax system, we can quite justly have tax raises that cost the vast majority of people not one penny. It’s impossible to have health care mandates that do that.

Of course, without some form of subsidy for insurers, a few insurers will probably fail. Again, I’m not sure that this should be a problem, given the appalling state of the U.S. health insurance industry.

What’s quite irritating about this whole debate is that several writers (most notably Paul Krugman) have been insisting that Obama’s credentials as a progressive are somehow undermined because he doesn’t favour penalising people who decline to buy health insurance. I seem to recall a few years ago John Howard running on a policy of penalising people who decline to buy health insurance. We didn’t think this was a particularly progressive policy when he did it. (Though to be fair to Howard, his penalties only kicked in for people earning significantly above average earnings.) And we didn’t think it was a sign of creeping conservatism in the Labor Party that they opposed it. Quite the opposite; it was caving to Howard’s policies that was the sign of creeping conservatism. We thought, quite accurately, that what Howard was doing was trying to undermine public (i.e. universal) health insurance by propping up private (i.e. partial) health insurance. To see a candidate be smeared as a conservative for not being enough like John Howard, well it’s a bit galling.

Now some may say that there are differences between the Clinton mandate plan and the Howard mandate plan, differences that are big enough to make one plan the paradigm of progressive thought and the other a clearly anti-progressive plan. Personally I think the differences aren’t huge. Both plans let people fulfill their mandated duties by buying into a government plan. Perhaps Clinton’s government-run insurer will be preferable to Medibank Private, but we’ll have to see how that pans out. Both plans have some steps for making it affordable for low-income people. Though in this respect Howard’s plan, which didn’t apply to low-income people, was clearly preferable. Perhaps the penalties will be fairer in Clinton’s plan than Howard’s, though since Howard’s penalty was an extra 1c on the tax rate, it’s hard to imagine that Clinton will suggest a more progressive penalty. Anything not income-tied would clearly be much less progressive.

Obviously Howard was proposing this mandate in a different context to the current American system. But the Clinton/Obama debate is taking place in a different context to the current American system. Both suggest making a range of changes to health insurance, with community rating being the key. The big question is whether we should make all those changes, or make them all and fine people who don’t buy in. I think adding the fines is no better than what Howard did, and I opposed that at the time (and still do), as did many people from the left, so I oppose the Clinton mandates. I could be convinced that there are deep reasons to support the mandates, but I doubt I could be convinced that it is the lefty thing to do. That wouldn’t be John Howard’s style.

THE HIGH COST OF HEALTH INSURANCE

Single-payer advocates would have us believe that the high cost of health coverage is caused by greedy insurance companies. And, predictably, the remedy these people recommend is more government regulation.

Well, as this excellent WSJ piece explains, more government regulation is not the solution. Why? Because excess government regulation is the CAUSE of high insurance prices.

To hear some of the presidential candidates, you’d think that health-insurance companies are the driving force behind the growing cost of health insurance. The more likely culprits are our politicians and the laws they pass.

Most government regulations are the result of pressure groups colluding with lawmakers to tilt the playing field toward some party in the market transaction, and health care is no different:

For almost every health-care product or service, there are at least two groups that want insurance to cover it: those who sell the products and services so they can get more business, and those who use the products and services to lower their out-of-pocket costs.

Both groups, therefore, push legislators to pass laws requiring insurance companies to cover these products and services:

As a result, government interference in and control of the health-care system is steadily increasing — and so is the cost of health insurance.

The concession that the insurance industry exacts for acquiescing in this kind of government meddling is protection of statewide markets and the right to charge exorbitant prices. But it doesn’t have to be this way:

Such micromanaging of benefits is unique to health insurance. State legislators aren’t nearly as aggressive in controlling life, property and casualty, and even auto insurance. As a result, those insurance markets function better and provide consumers with more choices.

So, how about we deregulate the insurance industry and remove the artificial barriers to competition? If we let insurance companies decide which products to offer the public, while opening up the market so that insurers must compete for our business, the cost of health insurance will go down and a big driver of health care inflation will disappear. By Catron