Cheap Student Car Insurance

Reader question:

I really wish they didn’t let teenagers drive, but they do, and now that my daughter is sixteen, she has a license! Worst of all, she has to be on insurance now. I really need some way to get the prices down for her part of the driver insurance, because teens are charged just too much. Can the impossible be done?

Amber

Hey, it’s not impossible.

It definitely is hard to get cheap student car insurance, and whatever you do, you won’t get as low costs as you would get if you did all the same for yourself, but when you’re insuring your teenager, it’s better to think first in the coverage, and second in the price. Teens, especially those who have just barely received their licenses, have higher accident rates than everybody else, and there is much more room for bad decisions and irresponsibility, so you should make room for that in their car insurance coverage. Getting more coverage for your teenager will get you even higher premiums, that is true, but it will be more cost effective and safer for the both of you.

That doesn’t mean that you have to stick with the first price they give you, though. There are several things you can do to keep your teen’s driving insurance low.

• Keep it in the family.

Some parents might be tempted to get their teenager his or her own car insurance policy in order to build their history and teach them responsibility. However, there are better ways to achieve this. It is cheaper for your teen to be on your car insurance policy, and the rates for a teen car insurance premium are often too much for that fast food job to handle.

• Drive between the dotted lines.

Having and maintaining a good driving history without accidents and without tickets is good for your teen right now and later on in life. It won’t have the most effect until they are nineteen, but it will stil help you get lower prices in the present. It does more good for girls than for boys.

• Pay attention in class.

If your teenager complains about doing their homework, they may be more inclined to do it if they’re paying for their own car insurance policy. Getting good grades can get them a cheap student car insurance discount with most companies, and all that is required is proof of a B average or better. Even if they aren’t paying for their own, you still have control of the keys.

• Always learning.

Think that one driving course is enough? Although research doesn’t show any difference between people who take one driving course and people who take two, insurance companies still lower your rates whenever you take an additional driving education course, such as defensive driving. This are cheap, sometimes even free, and can save you a lot of money.

Not all of these ways of lowering prices are restricted to just teens, but they can go a long way when combined and might even be the key to keeping the prices of your car insurance premium steady.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Very cheap car insurance credit

Reader question:

My best friend’s name is Jack, and we don’t have a lot of difference between us. We got married around the same time, had our first kids around the same time. We drive the same kind of car (I got it first) and neither of us have ever had any problems with our driving records. He lives around the block from me. So why is that I pay so much more on my car insurance premium, while he gets the cheapest car insurance?

Albert

I can make a guess.

Looked at with the naked eye, insurance premiums can seem like they are being chosen at random. As though the insurance companies are choosing you, specifically, to suffer for no other reason than that to you fell the burden. This comes to light especially when you compare people that you would say are like you in every way, at least in the eyes of the car insurance industry. However, a lot more is involved in the premium rate decision process these days. Used to, there were only a couple of factors that went into the decision to charge you a certain rate. These were:

• your age.
• your gender.
• your driving history.

However, nowadays, it is much more complicated. It’s not easy to determine, without looking at the car insurance company’s records, why Jack is paying less than you are.

However, I can give you one thing it might be. One of the newer factors that is still fairly controversial is your FICO credit score. These have a big impact on your car insurance rates, even if just from thinking about it it’s hard to figure out what your credit has to do with your ability to keep your car out of the ditch. The car insurance companies think it does have to do with it, though, and if you look at the facts, you’ll see that even if you are great in every other category, a bad credit score will get you a high insurance premium. And even if you are less than stellar in every category, a good insurance score can save you a lot of money. Just another reason to pay your bills, if having running water wasn’t enough incentive.

So what’s the difference?

If you have a good credit score, your car insurance premium will be rated at almost half the price of other peoples. So why do insurance companies even get to use this? Well, in their constant efforts to separate people into groups so that they can charge people more for being part of these groups, they discovered that people with worse credit scores tend to file more car insurance claims. This either means that people with higher scores are better drivers, or they are financially secure enough to not need to file as much. Either way, insurance companies see it as an excuse to raise prices for low credit score customers.

How is that legal?

The right of it is still up for debate. There are a lot of states where the use of credit scores to affect car insurance rates is going through the court system, but the jury is still out. In a few states, it may happen that it won’t be allowed to be used as a factor, or it won’t be allowed to have as much of an importance in the final premium rate decision. However, for the moment it’s an acceptable way of creating risk groups for your car insurance company, and so you should expect to be effected by it.

If you have a bad credit score, you don’t have to give up hope. Aside from trying to improve your credit, which you should be doing anyway, you can do other things to keep your car insurance rates down. Even someone with bad credit can get very cheap car insurance. These are the usual ways, such as finding out about discounts, raising your deductible, and shopping around before settling with an auto insurance company.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Car Insurance Fraud

Reader question:

Is the reason that car insurance rates are so high because of car insurance fraud? Is there some way that I can protect myself from car insurance fraud?

Tony

Good question.

Nobody wants to waste their time thinking about car insurance fraud, but considering the billions of dollars of profit in New York alone that have come out of car insurance fraud, it is no longer something to be considered a waste of time. Car insurance fraud is rising, and it is indeed one of the reasons that you pay so much for your car insurance premium. The companies that deal your insurance take into account all of the claims they have paid out and how much in order to decide how much they should charge on premiums, and fraud skews the numbers normally based on legitimate claims. It’s something that you have to watch out for, especially because sometimes you can become considered as part of the crime even if you didn’t know anything about it, just because you weren’t watching your back.

Yes, there are people out there who will use you in order to get unneeded money out of a car insurance company. And the only way to keep yourself from becoming an unwitting victim is to know what they do and how to avoid them. Here are a few ways.

• Repair shops.

Whenever you get into a car accident and you need to have repairs done on your car, you take it to a repair shop. However, not all repair shops are the cleanest out there. In fact, it is often the case that a repair shop will fix the bill that they tell the insurance company the repairs will cost so that they get more out of the deal. They can do this by over charging, or even by fixing things that weren’t broken in the first place.

So how do you avoid it?

This one’s easy and all it needs is for you to stay up to date in your claims process. You should be fully aware of all of the repairs needed for your vehicle and keep involved in the talks between your company and the mechanics. Shopping around for the best rates on car repairs also can’t do any harm.

• Instigated collisions.

Believe it or not, some people actually get into car accidents on purpose, and they’re not even suicidal. A lot of the time, car insurance fraud will be committed in this manner when both cars are involved. However, sometimes only one driver is aware of the fraud. These are the trickier ones, because it isn’t easy to cause an accident and then make it look like the other person is at fault. These are also the scariest ones, as they put your own health and history at risk.

So how do you avoid it?

Defensive driving is your friend. Watching the behavior of the cars around you can always clue you in as to when one of them is acting dangerously. Always keep at least three second distance between you and the car in front of you, unless you have no choice.

• Fake claims.

This is another one that takes many forms. Some who have their hands in high places can get police reports filed for accidents that never happened. They can scheme with their attorney to make claims and file lawsuits based on damages to car and body that don’t exist. These aren’t impossible to get, and sometimes people can get as much as a million dollars in damages for something that never happened.

So how do you avoid it?

Unfortunately, you can’t do much with this one unless you’re in the car insurance business yourself. These kinds of claims make the rates go really high, because they require the most money to be awarded out.

If you really want to keep away from car insurance fraud, just do the responsible thing and be vigilant, and keep track of everything in the claims process. Always take pictures after an accident and document everything.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

RV insurance

Reader question:

I retired a couple of years before my husband did. Now that he’s retired, we want to take our RV around the country and see the sights that we never saw when we were younger and didn’t need glasses to see them! But can you use car insurance for an RV, or is there a special RV insurance? We want to be protected while we’re enjoying life.

Rebecca

Great question.

I’m not going to lead you wrong. You can get regular car insurance for your recreational vehicle, but it isn’t advisable. When you insure your RV with a typical car insurance policy, you will be covered for whatever that policy typically covers on a car. That will include, if you get comprehensive and collision as well as liability, the costs of damages and injuries to another driver if you crash, your own medical costs, cost of replacement or repairs in a crash, or theft, or storm. However, an RV is so much more than a car, and because of that it needs more protection.

Consider what an RV contains. A kitchen sink, a bedroom…These things aren’t going to be covered by your car insurance company if something goes wrong. This RV, for the period that you are traveling around the country, will be more like your portable house than your vehicle. It will probably contain plenty of valuable things that you cannot replace. While it is not recommended to take expensive things with you on a journey around the country in an RV, it is the case that even a set of dishes or a stereo system that will be loose in your RV cannot be replaced, and that can set you back.

That’s why you need to get recreational vehicle insurance. This is RV insurance, and it also covers things like trailers and snow mobiles, and more. So what does it offer that nothing else does?

• Home insurance like coverage.

Like your home insurance policy, an RV insurance policy will not just cover the vehicle itself, but also what’s inside it. So if you have your priceless DVD collection of your favorite actor’s films, you can rest assured that you will be compensated in the case of a disaster. A thing like a bed is not that easy to replace when you have just gone through an accident, and it’s especially hard to deal with things like this when you’re across the country.

• Traveling out of the U.S.A.

Normally when you travel to a different country, you have to get a new car insurance policy for your time there. However, most companies that off RV insurance extend their coverage to the neighboring countries of the U.S., so if you decide to hop over to the Canadian side of Niagra Falls or take a drive through Michoacan, you’ll be covered.

• Injuries.

Your health is more important than ever after you’re retired, and RV insurance protects that. It gives you more liability coverage than most car insurance policies so that you can cover the safety of all the people traveling with you.

• Total loss replacement.

Your RV will probably go through more wear and tear in much less time than will your car. You may use it less, but when you use an RV, it is driving more time on average than a regular vehicle and is subject to more extreme conditions. Luckily, RV insurance covers the replacement of an RV in the event of its loss.

It’s easy to get RV insurance rate quotes, and it only takes a few seconds online. It’s very important to have this if you ever intend to go a-wandering in your recreational vehicle. You might consider just adding it to your regular car insurance policy in order to save money, but this will only cost you more in the long run.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

DUI Insurance Rates

Reader question:

Does DUI insurance always cause your rates to go up?

Malcolm

Not always.

Believe it or not, the possibility exists, although it is remote, that the car insurance company you are with will never know that you have committed a drunk driving offense. In most cases, they will find out, because usually you are required to file an SR 22 DUI insurance form. However, in some states it is not required that you do this, and in such states a car insurance company won’t know until it goes looking. According to research done by the Insurance Research Council, 25% of traffic violations don’t end up following their drivers around. Why is this?

• Lack of communication.

The courts don’t keep up an open road of communication with the department of motor vehicles. For this reason, some traffic violations never make it on your record.

• Driving classes.

A lot of people take a defensive driving course in order to get a violation taken off of their record. If they do this, it is often removed before the car insurance company even thinks to look.

There are other possible reasons. Sometimes, if you only get your license suspended for a month, nobody knows. It’s also true that if you reduce your plea bargain, then you probably won’t be getting higher car insurance rates. However, this is a close chance to cut. Your insurance company has an entire three years to find out about your mess up, and if they do, they are well within their rights to cancel your policy. This can be both because you misrepresented your information by not informing them about the DUI offense, and also because of the offense itself.

But sometimes, when a car insurance company finds out about your drunk driving offense, sometimes your car insurance rates still don’t go up, and it isn’t magic. Even car insurance companies can be reasonable, and usually they’ll look at your past with the company and consider it seriously before deciding to raise your rates. Often, if you had a good driving record before and were part of the preferred risk group, you can keep that status. Other times, even if you were preferred, you will only get knocked down to the standard risk group. Either way, you’re a lot better off than are those in the high risk group.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

SR 22 Insurance

It may be funny to think of a fuzzy alien being subjected to a breathalyzer test, but beyond that, drunk driving is no laughing matter. Thousands of people every year die in car accidents involving one or more inebriated drivers, and despite all of the campaigns and all of the many ways that one can avoid driving drunk, people still do it. Perhaps the appeal to compassion for human life isn’t enough. Even if someone getting behind the wheel while tipsy admits remotely to the possibility of a car accident, most won’t confess to themselves that this possibility includes the possibility that they or someone else might get injured. And they may never even dare to think that they or someone else might get killed. After, it’s only a short trip home, right? And no one is out on the road.

That’s the thought process, and as we all know, it isn’t always justified. However, one thing that might encourage people to start driving more responsibly is the appeal to the wallet. This seems to work in many cases where simple care for their fellow human doesn’t work all by itself. What does drunk driving have to do with your check book?

The law comes down on DWI convictions very hard these days, and it takes up to five years, if not more, to recover from the results. First, there is the possibility that you might lose your license. If you don’t lose it outright, then you might have to pay the department of motor vehicles a certain amount to keep your license instated. If you do lose your license, you’re looking at thousands of dollars in fees to get it reinstated. This could have been avoided with a twenty dollar taxi ride.

One of the most costly things, though, is the DWI car insurance. If you get arrested for driving under the influence, then in many cases, your car insurance company will cancel your policy right away. That’s even before you are convicted. If you turn out to be innocent, then you might be able to get your policy renewed, but that in itself is a difficult process. For people who actually get DUI convictions, the drunk driving car insurance costs are much steeper.

They will have to get SR 22 auto insurance. Not all companies offer SR 22 auto insurance, to begin with. Having this type of car insurance places you in a high risk driving group, so it is very possible that you will have to take out a policy from a insurance company that specializes in insuring people in high risk groups and, failing that, you will have to join your state insurance risk pool. Either way, you’ll be paying a lot more money just by switching to these companies, even if you didn’t have the DWI on your record.

But once you factor in the DWI, your rates go up significantly. You remember how much you had to pay in college? It’s like that. And if you still are in the under-25 driving group, your prices will be phenomenal. You’ll also likely be required to have proof of insurance for a certain amount of time in order to keep your driver’s license, which is where the SR 22 insurance comes in. SR 22 insurance is a form that your car insurance company files with the department of motor vehicles. Depending on what company you’re with, you might be able to get this form over their website, or they could mail it straight to you. Most companies will file the SR-22 form with the department first, and then later send you your own copy. Once you have it, all you have to do is provide it to the office where you get your license, and you’re good to go.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Cheap High Performance Car Insurance

Why should you pay more for high performance muscle car insurance? Could it be justified because you own a fast car, does that mean you are going to drive fast and reckless?

I know of many fast car collectors in this country and many of them do not really drive fast at all….heck their cars cost too much money to put in jeopardy driving like a mad man.

So does this mean that their car insurance carrier will give them the same low rates as a “normal” vehicle? Ya right my friend, think again.

I would assume that the vast majority of cases the insurance rates will be greatly higher for a muscle car than that of a regular whimpy vehicle. Could this be fair? Can one really expect to find cheap fast car insurance?

So how can a high performance car owner reduce your insurance rates?

1. Carry the highest deductible allowed
2. Move all other insurance plans to one company to take advance of combined coverage discounts
3. Check for discounts like limited use or restricted use vehicles if you only drive on the weekends or at certain times of the year etc.
4. Take defensive driving class or some other state offered driving program
5. Clean up your driving record. Keep your record clean and clear of violations even when not driving in your fast car. Any and all violations will increase your rates regardless of what kind of vehicle you were driving in when you were giving the citation.

Want to get more ideas and tips on how to lower your high performance car insurance rates? Our new site is made for visitor feedback to help fast car owners get lower rates on high performance car insurance allowed.

Zip code vehicle insurance rate

California’s state department of insurance now has a new set of rules that makes it harder to base vehicle insuranc premium rates on what zip code the car is parked in. Right now in California, most of the factors that car insurance companies can use to determine the vehicle insurance rate are things that the drivers can change, such as the safety rating of their vehicle or their driving history. Zip code falls in with the widespread but a little more fishy factors that also include gender and whether or not the driver is married.

Zip codes currently have a big effect on a person’s auto insurance premium, and the new rules set by the state commissioner will change that. According to the new set of regulations, there will be three main factors when it comes to deciding what the price for vehicle insurance should be, and those factors are:

• mileage
• driving record
• experience

Companies can use factors besides just these three, but they will have to have a lot less of an importance on the final decision.The law was brought about by voter demand. Several different groups have been making trouble for the past twenty years over whether or not it’s okay to use zip codes as factors in vehicle insurance quotes, and the commissioner said that it would be a lot better for everyone to just put an end to all of it and clear up there by making things more understandable.

It took a couple years of looking over different methods of how to work the importance of the zip code out of the insurance factor process before they finally decided on which way would be the best. The decision ended up being that it was better to allow it to still be used to some extent, but as a secondary factor. Under California law, the secondary factors cannot have as much effect on the rate as can any of the primary factors. This was because people believe that zip codes were given an unfair weight and more important than options like car safety.

State Farm doesn’t see the good in it. According to that company, the use of the zip code actually did good for most of the state of California. After the new laws are put in place, California vehicle insurance will cost more in eight out of ten counties state wide. Allstate was in agreement with this. In their company, it may be that forty percent of California drivers will see a decrease in price, but the other sixty percent could actually see a significant increase now that zip codes are out of the question.

However, the state consumers union claimed that the use of zip codes were used for purposes of discrimination. The basis of these claims comes from the fact that zip codes in which the majority of the residents were black or Hispanic got charged a lot higher on their vehicle insurance premiums than the zip codes that were predominantly white. These zip codes paid almost twice as much as the white communities. These groups claim that the practices are ridiculous, and that vehicle insurance rates should be based on how well a person drives and nothing else.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Vehicle insurance diminished value

The Automotive Service Association, also known as the ASA, has some strict requirements when it comes to having car insurance companies repair a vehicle after it has been involved in a collision. The organization is one of only many to state that it is the sole responsibility of the vehicle insurance company to bring the vehicle that it is insuring back to its pre accident condition. This means that the repair shops which it hires to do the work should be held up to the highest standards. They should:

• always use the best materials, and this applies to both physical materials and actual labor. Specialists should be brought in when they are required for the best result, and the best paints and things such as that should be utilized.
• Welders that are working for the repair shop on the car should be of the best kind, with lots of experience and a good welding record. They should only weld a car according to the specifications issued by the car’s original maker.
• The people who are repairing the car should do everything that they can to find out everything with the car that has gone wrong, to the point of perfection.

The ASA is very hard on the point of repairing these cars to their former condition. They say that everything that is possible to do, every action that is possible to take should be taken towards making sure that these cars are as they were when they came out of the factory.

However, according to many advocates of the vehicle insurance companies, there’s no way that this process could work. No matter what these body shops do, it isn’t possible to repair a car so well that it is just like it was when it started out. It can’t be done. The repairers can try as hard as they want, but in the end they end up altering the process in some way so that while the car may be as good as it was, it is not the same, and any kind of difference no matter how positive has an effect on the value of the car itself.

The reason that this is, is because the makers of these car models have the resources to design them to perfection. They have machines, expensive ones, which are able to do the job of aligning parts perfectly or of getting all of the paint even and of the same exact color. The repair shops don’t have enough money to get all of that equipment, so there’s no way they could complete the same work as the manufacturer, even with the same amount of skill. These people who repair cars do their work with their bare hands, and unlike machines, hands can make mistakes. They have to use their eyes, and so they can only make a car as good as it looks to their bare vision. For most people, this would be okay, it would look fine, but for a professional appraiser of vehicles, they can tell even the slightest difference, and that will cause a significant price drop.

Even the people that due see diminished value as a problem that car insurance companies should be responsible for don’t believe that the company should automatically hand over the money for diminished value to everybody who gets into a car crash with that company. You can’t assume diminished value, they say. If you want recompense for the problem then you have to have actual proof that you tried to go out on the market and sell it for the valued price. However, whatever the case, they think that people who have vehicle insurance should know about the existence of diminished value, whether they need it or not. It says a lot, they say, that back in the day car insurance paid often for diminished value although they don’t anymore. Why is that?

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Vehicle insurance claim mediation and arbitration

If you get into a claims situation and you and your vehicle insurance company can’t come to a mutual decision, then the next step to take might be for you to hire a mediator. The advantage of having a mediator is that, unlike an arbitrator, they don’t carry the weight enough to make a final decision. What they say at the end of the process between you and your company is meant more as advice than command, and they don’t get to say who gets the money and how much.

It’s a lot better and cheaper to go with mediation first before stepping up to something more hard line, because it is possible to solve things more quickly this way. It only works, though, if everyone works together. Both you and your company have to be willing to talk to the middle man in order to come to some sort of compromise.

If you figure out that you want to go ahead and take the step of mediation, the first thing that you need to do is get out your vehicle insurance policy. Your policy will have details within it that tell you what steps you will need to take in order to start up the mediation process. Normally, you have to get a request for arbitration form so that you can fill it out and send it back to the vehicle insurance company.

These forms can be got at the website of your state department of insurance and printed from there. Or, if you’re more old fashioned, you can just run up to the department’s office and get one. It may sound like the form is only for arbitration, but you can point out within the form that you want mediation instead, since the same form is used in both cases. Then there will be a person or company that is picked by your vehicle insurance company who will provide both of you with a list of possible mediators. Both you and the company can cross names off until you agree on which mediator you want to use. If you need, lawyers can also help you understand the mediation and you can even bring your lawyer to the sessions.

If you want to arbitrate, then again you will have to have the same form, specify arbitration, fill it out and send it in either to the dispute office listed in your policy or, in case there isn’t one, send it to the state department of insurance. Like mediation, both you and the company have to be fully on board with it.

Should you intend to use a lawyer for your representation at the hearing of arbitration, you have to send an advance notice about it to your vehicle insurance company. The same rule goes for them if they want to use a lawyer then.

The arbitration takes place kind of like a trial. Both you and the company come forth and present your side of the issue, with your evidence and so on and possibly the representation by your lawyers. You can have witnesses which can be cross examined by the opposite party’s lawyer. The arbitrator can send out subpoenas to bring some witnesses in. There may be a certain amount of time in which the arbitration must be completed, and if it is not stated in your policy, then the arbitrator will decide it. Once the arbitrator has decided who is in the right or how the case will in, the decision is final and you can’t take it past that.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

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