Occasional teen car insurance

Reader question:

My son is about to get his license, but will only drive the car very rarely. Am I still required to get teen car insurance rates on my policy?

Malcolm

You sure are.

A car insurance company is a tricky type of dealer of business. One thing they will tell you is that any member of your household is covered on your policy, even if they aren’t listed. They’ll require that you list your spouse, but pretty much everyone else you can leave off. However, they will know when one of those members of your household suddenly moves into a higher risk group. Whether you want to or not, whenever your child gets his driver’s license, your car insurance premium will fatten up more than just a little bit.

It doesn’t matter if the kid will only driver your vehicle now and then. Heck, car insurance companies don’t care if he never drives it at all. As long as he is living under your roof, there is the assumption that it is possible for him to drive your car, he has access to the keys, and someday he will probably take advantage of that. At least this is how car insurance companies think.

Even if you manage to trick your car insurance company into not realizing that you have a teen driver under your roof, they will consider this misrepresentation since you are leaving a high risk driver off in order to avoid the higher teen car insurance rates. That means that if on one of those rare occasions that your son is driving a car and he gets into a car accident, his claim is most likely going to be denied. This means a probable loss of license for him, big fines, and since the damages will probably be too much for him to pay for, either you will pay for it out of pocket, or he will spend the next decade of his life having to pay off the thousands of dollars in damages that he could have saved with an expensive, but much cheaper than that, car insurance policy.

Car insurance coverage is important for everyone, and especially teens. Instead of concentrating on how to avoid paying extra for your son’s car insurance policy, Malcolm, think about how you could pay less. Are you having trouble getting him motivated in school? One of the biggest savers for young people everywhere on car insurance is the good student discount program run by many companies that gets you as much as a 15% discount off of your premium. Make it a requirement to get a B average or above before you son gets to take the car out for a spin, and you’ll see results. While that won’t take off the 100% increase you’re likely to see coming with a young male on your car insurance policy, use other ways to chip it off. Every little bit helps.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.