Joined Jun 2005
kyivindependent.com
Forum Thread
liability car insurance rates
January 31, 2023 at
02:45 PM
Thread Details
We just got our latest 6 month car insurance bills in the mail from State Farm. Despite only having liability coverage, I just realized for the first time that over 6 months, we will pay more for our insurance than we did for one of our vehicles from a dealership.
Cars we have:
2000 Chevy Metro - paid about $1k 2.5 years ago (bought at local Chevy dealership, single owner turned it back in and purchased a new car)
2012 Toyota Yaris - paid about $6k when it was 5 years old
2013 Toyota Yaris - paid about $8k when it was 6 years old
2006 Ford Focus - paid about $1k last summer (granted, it needed about another $400 in parts before working well)
2008 Cadillac STS - paid about $3k just under a year and a half ago (needed about $500 in parts to fix several problems, but has a great Harley Davidson design on the hood)
Anyway, our insurance just jumped up to $1,042 for 6 months. We have 2 adult drivers, plus two adult teens. (1 boy, 1 girl) In the past, the bills for each car came separately,
which I suppose may have sort of blinded me to how much total we are actually paying each year for car insurance. No accidents. Now it will be over $2,084 a year. Obviously, we have older cars plus a spare car if one needs to be in the shop, but this means I've never felt the need for comprehensive coverage. If there is a wreck, we just look for another used car. We don't have to pay the huge comprehensive coverage amounts.
Is this pretty typical? A couple of years back when I 'shopped around', I was getting rates that were higher than the ones from State Farm, so I figured I might as well stay put.
I was wondering if any of you out there who also have liability only coverage, and perhaps a couple of older teen drivers might be able to pipe up with a quick comparison.
Are there any online tools a person can use to shop around without having to get loads of sales calls?
Thanks!
Cars we have:
2000 Chevy Metro - paid about $1k 2.5 years ago (bought at local Chevy dealership, single owner turned it back in and purchased a new car)
2012 Toyota Yaris - paid about $6k when it was 5 years old
2013 Toyota Yaris - paid about $8k when it was 6 years old
2006 Ford Focus - paid about $1k last summer (granted, it needed about another $400 in parts before working well)
2008 Cadillac STS - paid about $3k just under a year and a half ago (needed about $500 in parts to fix several problems, but has a great Harley Davidson design on the hood)
Anyway, our insurance just jumped up to $1,042 for 6 months. We have 2 adult drivers, plus two adult teens. (1 boy, 1 girl) In the past, the bills for each car came separately,
which I suppose may have sort of blinded me to how much total we are actually paying each year for car insurance. No accidents. Now it will be over $2,084 a year. Obviously, we have older cars plus a spare car if one needs to be in the shop, but this means I've never felt the need for comprehensive coverage. If there is a wreck, we just look for another used car. We don't have to pay the huge comprehensive coverage amounts.
Is this pretty typical? A couple of years back when I 'shopped around', I was getting rates that were higher than the ones from State Farm, so I figured I might as well stay put.
I was wondering if any of you out there who also have liability only coverage, and perhaps a couple of older teen drivers might be able to pipe up with a quick comparison.
Are there any online tools a person can use to shop around without having to get loads of sales calls?
Thanks!
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Cars we have:
2000 Chevy Metro - paid about $1k 2.5 years ago (bought at local Chevy dealership, single owner turned it back in and purchased a new car)
2012 Toyota Yaris - paid about $6k when it was 5 years old
2013 Toyota Yaris - paid about $8k when it was 6 years old
2006 Ford Focus - paid about $1k last summer (granted, it needed about another $400 in parts before working well)
2008 Cadillac STS - paid about $3k just under a year and a half ago (needed about $500 in parts to fix several problems, but has a great Harley Davidson design on the hood)
Anyway, our insurance just jumped up to $1,042 for 6 months. We have 2 adult drivers, plus two adult teens. (1 boy, 1 girl) In the past, the bills for each car came separately,
which I suppose may have sort of blinded me to how much total we are actually paying each year for car insurance. No accidents. Now it will be over $2,084 a year. Obviously, we have older cars plus a spare car if one needs to be in the shop, but this means I've never felt the need for comprehensive coverage. If there is a wreck, we just look for another used car. We don't have to pay the huge comprehensive coverage amounts.
Is this pretty typical? A couple of years back when I 'shopped around', I was getting rates that were higher than the ones from State Farm, so I figured I might as well stay put.
I was wondering if any of you out there who also have liability only coverage, and perhaps a couple of older teen drivers might be able to pipe up with a quick comparison.
Are there any online tools a person can use to shop around without having to get loads of sales calls?
Thanks!
First off, having two teen drivers on you policy is going to adversely affect your rates with just about any legit insurance company in my experience. There are few things auto insurance companies hate more than teen drivers.
Next, comprehensive and collision on cars whose blue book value is marginal at best is typically not that expensive and while they are not worth getting for cars that have values under 2k depending on your deductible, it is not saving you a lot of money in all likelihood relative to the cost of liability protection or to the cost of buying another 5-6k used car.
As to costs for the insurance. 2k for a year with 5 cars and two teens is imo a decent price assuming you have a good amount of liability protection (300k+). If you are carrying your state min on that (usually < 100k in many states), I would have no idea. As always, I would advise consulting with an independent insurance agent and getting him\her to run a series of quotes to see what is the best deal out there for you apples to apples. Often times, insurance companies will gouge you on renewals and your best rates are had by switching companies.
My 2 cents.
You may want to see if you can designate one car for the male teen driver and register the car in their name. Pick the car that will have the lowest rate.
You could be paying a high rate on all the cars because of him. With 5 cars you could be better off with an umbrella liability policy rather than paying for 5 separate ones. Talk to your homeowners agent.
get a google voice number and another email address and use it for stuff like this!
Well, it's $100,000 each accident, and $50,000 bodily injury per person. Is that decent? It seems like a LOT of money to me, but then again, I only make about $29k a year.....
As others have said you might want to look into combinations where the teens are on different policies.
And your $100k/$50k limits, yeah it *sounds* like a lot but if there were a bad accident you could burn through that quick.
Dang, your comment got me a wake up call. I have to get full coverage. liability coverage on a used car is too risky. i can't be too cheap on everything in life and i sometimes have a hard time accepting that.