Reader question:

Is the automobile insurance value of getting discounts worth the hassle that you often have to go through to get them in the first place?

Angel

I would say that it is, Angel.

I’ve been doing a lot recently to cut my costs, especially now that I have a high performance car, and one of the main areas in which I save is from getting car insurance discounts. There are only so many recurring bills that you can actually cut the price of, and I think that you should take advantage of this whenever you can. Just like it doesn’t hurt to keep the doors closed when you have the AC on and turn off the lights when you leave the house to keep your electricity bill low, it also doesn’t hurt to do your best to get automobile insurance value discounts so that you can make an often big expense into usable pocket money or extra savings.

Let me show you what I save on my car insurance premium to give you an idea of what automobile insurance value discounts can do for you. To set the scene, we own a 2007 Chrysler PT Cruiser and a 1987 BMW 325 I. I’m twenty years old and my husband is twenty five. Neither of us have any moving violations on our records, but we do have tickets for no insurance, expired registration, and a non working light. Our monthly payment to begin with was $160.90, which over six months is $965.40.

• We switched from monthly premiums to paying all at once every six months–price went down to $954.23.
• Got the good student discount because I have an above B average in my college classes–price went down to $821.10
• Got the low mileage discount for BMW–price went down to $793.14
• Got all policies with one company–price went down to $721.84.
• Raised deductible to $1000–price went down to $650.73.
• Installed air bags on BMW–price went down to $604.39.

Those are all of the discounts that we have right now, although we are working on getting a cheaper quote for having good credit by paying off our debt. That’s not technically a discount, but it helps. As you can see, though, we saved over $300 dollars just on discounts, which is six hundred dollars a year. And I never would have gotten the beginning price that I had gotten if I hadn’t shopped around and gotten as many quotes as possible.

Cheers,

Fashun Guadarrama.