Question: How does one go about obtaining vehicle insurance for a 17 year old driver in Dallas, without paying an arm and a leg?

Comment: I think this is a super question to inquire about your teen driver. At 17 years of age this teenage driver can not legally enter a contract since they are not considered an adult. I would assume that most teenage drivers would be considered “safe” drivers they are still not old enough to sign the insurance contract.

I would also assume that most insurance companies would require a parent and or a legal gaurdian to sign the contract and to be financially responsible for the vehicle and the driver’s actions.

I would start off your investigation by making a few phone calls the local insurance carriers in your area and get their opinion on this question.

I really do not see why you could not get decent coverage for your teen driver, but a better question might be are you going to be able to afford this type of coverage?

You might also want to contact the Dallas car insurance bureau or DMV to ask them if there are any restrictions for obtaining Dallas auto insurance in your area or specific situation.

A reader today asks: How does one go about obtaining vehicle insurance for a beginner 17 year old driver in Georgia, without paying an arm and a leg?

I think this is a super question to inquire about your teen driver. At 17 years of age this teenage beginner driver, can’t legally enter a binding contract since they are not considered an adult. I would also guess that most teenage drivers would be considered “good” drivers they are still not old enough to sign on the dotted line of the contract.

I would also assume that most vehicle insurance agencies would also require a parent and or a legal gaurdian to sign the contract and to be financially responsible.

You might want to start off your investigation by making a few phone calls the local insurance carriers in your immediate area and get their opinion on this question.

But I really do not see why you couldn’t get coverage for your teen driver. A better question to ask my be are you going to be able to afford this type of coverage?

You might also want to contact the Atlanta GA car insurance bureau or DMV to ask them if there are any restrictions for obtaining car insurance in Georgia.

Reader question:

If I have insurance on my old car, can I get new car insurance coverage transferred to my new car when I buy it?

Morgan

Yes, you can, Morgan.

Car insurance companies make this pretty easy. Normally, when you go to the car lot to get your new vehicle, all they will ask you for is your current proof of auto insurance coverage. If you don’t have coverage, then you will have to buy it from the lot (this is a hassle), but if you do (which it sounds like you do), then all you have to do is let them see your auto insurance card and copy it. The reason that they let you go with just a look at the card, even if the new car isn’t on it yet, is because auto insurance companies will cover a new vehicle for up to thirty days before you actually have to go get new car insurance for it.

Adding a new car to your new car insurance coverage is pretty simple. All you have to do is stop by your car insurance office or call up your agent and inform them of the change. Some car insurance companies make he switch over from used car insurance to new car insurance very easy, by offering you the chance to edit your policy on their website. My car insurance company does this, and I love it. When we got our new car, all we had to do was log onto our account and enter in the information, and then receive our new quote. It is such a time saver, especially compared to all of the crazy stuff people used to go through.

Once you get your new car insurance quote, you’ll probably notice that it’s a little more than what you had been paying before. This is bound to happen regardless of what kind of car you get, because new vehicles are automatically placed in a higher risk category. Your new car insurance rate will also depend on what kind of vehicle it is that you bought. In order to avoid getting a terribly high auto insurance quote for your new car insurance coverage, I suggest that you get a quote on the cars you might buy BEFORE you go to the lot, and definitely before you drive one off. This can save you a lot of money in the future.

Making sure that your new vehicle is equipped with some of the best standard safety and anti theft features is another great way to lessen the blow of the higher priced new car insurance. Ask your car salesperson what your options are in this area. Remember that if you can afford OnStar and a back seat mounted 9 inch LCD DVD entertainment system, then you can afford traction control and some extra air bags. Enjoy your new car!

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

You never know who you’ll meet up with on a parking lot, which is why collisions like this one can be a problem for many policy holders out there. It’s funny how DMVs will be rabid about students learning correct methods for parallel parking, even if they live in a rural area and will probably never see a city street. Meanwhile, normal parking lot parking methods are completely ignored. From all the vehicles I see double parked or so close to my own car that I actually have to lose weight in order to get in, I’d say it was necessary.

So what kind of car insurance coverage do you need for an encounter with someone who is a deranged and delayed parker? I would suggest you get yourself collision coverage for your car if you want to avoid this problem. While certain parking shop horrors, such as a grocery cart slamming into the side of your car or a piece of glass popping the tire, can be covered by comprehensive car insurance coverage, many people make the mistake of thinking that the same goes for accidents that happen when you aren’t in or around your car. But the same way your collision coverage will take care of your car if you run over someone’s hedge, it will take care of your car if you back up too far in the parking lot. Of course, if you are the victim in the incident, your car will be covered by the other driver’s liability coverage. That is if, unlike the driver in the video, the person who hits your car thinks it right to let you know it was them.

In order to determine whether you need collision car insurance coverage on your vehicle, consider the worth of your car. If it’s a new car, or a car that you’re still paying on, then of course you are required through your contract with the financing company to have both collision and comprehensive coverage on the vehicle. If it’s a newer car that you’ve already finished paying on, then you should still keep the coverage to protect your property. However, if you have an older car that’s worth about a thousand dollars or less, then you should consider dropping your coverage down to just the state minimum. The reason for this is that you will probably be paying out more to insure your vehicle than the car is worth, even the used car rates are lower than new ones.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Reader question:

Do I have to take out a car insurance policy before I buy a new car?

Randy

Yep.

Although technically it depends on your particular situation. If this is the first time that you are buying a car, or if you were previously uninsured for whatever reason, then you will have to purchase new car insurance coverage before you can take your car out of the dealership. In order for you to go home with your new car, not only will you be required to purchase your state’s minimum liability insurance, but you will also have to purchase comprehensive and collision coverage.

This does not apply to you if you already had an insurance policy when you went to buy the car, even if the car named on the insurance policy is not the new car you are buying. There’s no need to call from the lot to add your car. You have a period of thirty days in which you can add your new car on, and during that time it will be covered as though it had already been added.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

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.

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.

There are plenty of reasons to buy a hybrid car. One of those reasons is that more and more car insurance companies are realizing that the people who buy hybrids tend to be safer drivers. Another reason is the financial rewards that come with purchasing a hybrid vehicle. After a new energy bill was signed in 2005 offering more tax credits for environmental measures done by the average American, owning a hybrid car has become a good move for anybody wanting to save money on their taxes. But the question that is coming up among auto insurance companies is whether or not this good kind of vehicle is also the safe kind?

Everybody knows that the safer your car is, the cheaper vehicle insurance rate you are going to get. However, the safety of the hybrid is still up for debate. According to State Farm, there is nothing about the drivers of hybrid vehicles that makes them safer than the drivers of other vehicles. They get into just as many car accidents, and the cars that they drive cost even more than usual to fix. So, why should they have to pay for safety discounts when the hybrid isn’t any better than other cars?

There are a couple of groups that take issue with the electric part of the vehicle, thinking that it might make getting into a car accident more dangerous. These are people who have experience with such things, such as 911 operators and firemen. Other groups beg to differ. They say there is no difference in the safety of a hybrid vehicle and the safety of another type of vehicle, like one that operates on two different kinds of gas. The only difference is that hybrid vehicles are more often than not decked out with the best safety features on the market, making them even safer in the event of the crash. They claim that so long as everything is done right as it concerns emergency procedures, there’s no reason for a hybrid to act any differently in a crash than another car would.

Although the makers of the hybrid cars believe that these kinds of fears are entirely unfounded, they are still trying to do their part to make them go away. On most of the makers’ websites you will find guides for emergency operators about how to deal with hybrid cars in an accident in the safest way, how to work around the electric parts and so on. At the same time, they say that they are still just as safe, but considering that they also have gasoline and the stuff that other cars have, they are art the same time just as dangerous.

A spokes person for hybrid cars says that someone in a hybrid car is just as likely to get hurt as someone in a regular car. So, it seems, the debate may eventually come to a rest among car insurance companies. Some people held out hope that hybrids were actually safer, which might get them better discounts, but considering they are just the same they will probably be treated just like a regular car for most companies.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Trying to figure out what is going on with all of the vehicle insurance options when you rent a car can be crazy. There’s no one way to go. If you get all of the vehicle insurance that they offer you at the rental car company, you’re could end up paying twice what you were paying before. However, if you don’t get any of the coverage that they offer you, then you’re going to be out of luck, most likely, when you get into a car accident. You have to really think about it before you make a decision.

When you only have the minimum liability on your regular car insurance policy, then you should probably look into buying an LDW or CDW waiver for extra coverage. The company that you’re renting the car from might not offer both. Some companies offer different kinds of waivers, such as Alamo. The way that the Alamo waivers work is that there is one that is most expensive, which makes it to where you don’t have to be liable for any damages done to the rental car. The next level of cost makes it to where you only have to pay for anything under five hundred dollars. And the final level of cost makes it to where you only have to pay for anything under three thousand dollars.

If you already have collision and comprehensive on your personal vehicle insurance policy, then you probably don’t have to get the LDW or CDW. However, you should keep in mind that with your insurance company you have to pay a deductible, so you should weigh the costs.

If you’re renting a car because you don’t own one, then you probably don’t have a back up personal vehicle insurance policy. In this case, what you should look into doing is expanding your rental coverage with the supplement of liability coverage. It’s pretty cheap considering, but before you pay for it you need to check your state insurance laws. A lot of states have it to where you don’t have to pay for the minimum liability insurance on rental cars if you don’t already have personal insurance coverage. If that’s the case for you and you think that you’ll be safe with the car, then you can probably handle the whole thing without having to pay for any kind of insurance at all.

The car company that rents you the vehicle will usually offer you a bunch of other types of insurance that you probably won’t need. They might offer you coverage for property loss, medical, and death coverage. However, you might already be covered for these things under your life insurance, your health insurance, and your house insurance. The house insurance takes cares of anything of your property even if it is in a rental car. The life insurance is good whether you die in a rental car or get swallowed by a whale. And the health insurance takes care of you regardless of how you got injured. Because of all that, purchasing these coverages would just be insuring yourself doubly, and that’s a waste of money.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.

Buying a car is a long and arduous process. I know, because I’ve done it several times. One time I was at the dealership for five hours because my salesperson told us he’d be right back, and then went on a two hour lunch break. And that isn’t a unique experience, either. Another thing that clogs up the process is that most car dealerships won’t let you drive off the lot until you get vehicle insurance for your new car. This means having to call up your insurance company and go through all the trouble of giving them your information, getting a quote, and all of that, while you’ve already been on that lot for hours. A bunch of dealerships in California have found a solution for this hassle.

In these dealerships, they now have a way that you can drive off the lot with your car the second that the sale is finalized, without having to go through the trouble of calling up for that needed comprehensive and collision. Called TurboCoverage and operating out of Palo Alto, this new company is giving uninsured drivers who are buying a new car a way to get their vehicle insurance immediately when at the car lot, instead of having to spend yet another hour just on the phone.

Right now TurboCoverage is only selling their policies to people that are in higher risk pools and have more trouble getting insured, as well as people who don’t have vehicle insurance in the first place. According to the company’s CEO, once they’ve gotten their foot secured in what they call the non standard market, they tend to move on to marketing for lower risk drivers.

Twenty percent of the people who go to buy a car have to buy their insurance right there at the lot, claims TurboCoverage research. That’s a total of three million policies bought from the dealership. Now twenty five of the lots in California have TurboCoverage to help expedite this process, and by next year there will be another sixteen states under the TurboCoverage banner.

As opposed to the usual hour, getting car insurance through TurboCoverage only takes ten minutes, and you get to choose between several different car insurance companies. Right now they only have three different vehicle insurance companies that work with them, but they are working on getting about five more to expand the purchasers’ options.

TurboCoverage is essentially a company for the sell of vehicle insurance, not for the provision of vehicle insurance itself. They get their profit from commission for every sell and also a broker fee from the car dealerships. The dealerships that work with TurboCoverage have little kiosks in them so that all the buyer has to do is go up, sit down, grab the phone, and they’ll immediately be talking with a TurboCoverage sales representative. The salespeople at the dealership have no part in the process, allowing the buyer a lot more freedom so long as they stay within the terms of their lease.

There are several ways for a customer of this company to pay for thei new coverage. They can go with either a credit card or an electronic check so that the purchase is instantly finalized. Then they are sent two copies of their insurance card through the fax machine, one of which belongs to them, and the other of which goes to the car dealership. It’s simple!

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.