Car Insurance

Car insurance is something which we rarely think of, but all need. You may not spend a lot of time thinking about your policy unless you really need it. Most of us for this reason have little idea if we are really getting a good deal on our insurance. Learning a bit about car insurance can help you to avoid being taken in by smooth talking insurance salespeople and buying a policy with coverage you don’t really need.

The minimum coverage required by the states varies, and so do some wording in the no-fault insurance states but the concepts are the same everywhere.

The most important part of your car insurance policy is the first section, which covers your automobile itself. This part includes two subsection; collision and comprehensive coverage. Collision is meant to cover those situations where a tree “jumps right in front of you” while driving and those unfortunate incidents when another driver thoughtlessly places their car in the path of yours. Comprehensive covers a lot of things: hail damage, theft and so on.

Liability is the second part of your car insurance policy. This covers the damage done to another driver’s car when you have caused an accident. Liability coverage will be represented in numbers – for instance, 25/50/10. These numbers mean that your policy covers up to 25,000 in costs per person, up to 50,000 per accident and will cover 10,000 in property damage per accident.

Medical coverage protects everyone involved in an accident, regardless of who was at fault in the accident – this part of your policy even covers you if you are hit while walking! Medical coverage will cover you of you don’t have health insurance and will also cover the costs which your health insurance does not cover.

Your policy will also cover damage when you are hit by an uninsured or underinsured motorist, including hit and run incidents. If you have comprehensive and collision coverage as well as liability insurance, you may be able to add towing coverage to your policy for a nominal fee.

Keeping a few simple rules in mind can save you a lot of money on car insurance:

1. When it is time to renew your policy, get a variety of quotes and compare the prices. You can do a comparison of rates on many websites – however, look for quotes on insurance with the same coverage as you have now.

2. See if your home insurance company offers a discount for buying your car insurance from them as well.

3.Ask about discounts. There are a number of discounts offered. For younger, higher risk and higher premium drivers you often can get a discount for driver?s education courses or good student discounts.

4. Make sure that you really need to cover your car. If you don’t have a loan on the car, you might find it cheaper to just let the comprehensive and collision part of your policy go. Compare the payments you will receive if the car gets totaled against the Kelly blue book value – If this amount is less than two years of your monthly premium, you may want to drop this coverage and use the savings for a newer vehicle. However, don’t be cheap when it comes to liability coverage; it is well worth the cost.

5.Get a weather beater. These are older cars that you use for driving back and forth to work. Save the good car for special trips. When you assign the most driving to the old car, carry only liability and use the new car with full coverage for pleasure us only, you save wear and tear on the car and the money spent on the beater is more than covered by your savings.