Monday, April 6, 2009

Be Careful with your Car Insurance Quotes

By Lynne Addington

Below we are going to provide some useful tips that you can use to get a car insurance quote that is more affordable to ease your through these terrible recessionary times.

The most important tip that we can give, which is especially true in this economic climate is to be willing to shop around and to spend time looking for car insurance quotes that are suitable to your needs and also your price. Car insurance quotes are one of those products where the price can vary substantially between one insurer to the next, sometimes as much as 50%. In this business climate the variation are even greater as car insurance companies try even harder to get customers.

One thing though, many people mistake the cheapest quote to be the best. This is wrong as the cheapest could also provide the worst coverage. You have to be sure of the coverage that you are receiving then judge the product as a whole in terms of value. You also have to be sure that the insurance company that you are thinking of signing up with will actually pay-out should you request a claim. Do some research on the insurer before signing up.

It is also extremely important to know exactly what you are getting from your car insurance quotes. It is quite common for many different insurers to have similar sounding products with words such as comprehensive or first party which isnt really a definition for anything. What is important is to know the exact coverage of each product down to the detail. It is only when you know exactly what you car insurance actually insures that you are able to compare the true value of the policies from the different insurers.

One smart way to lower your yearly car insurance payments is to increase you excess amount. What this means is that you will have to pay more should you decide to make a claim in the future. This is perfectly fine if you are generally a very cautious person and dont see yourself likely to make a claim. The only problem is that you will have to be sure that you always have enough cash in your bank account to cover the excess should bad luck befall you and you need to make a claim against your insurance company.

If you find that making a one time a year payment is a bit heavy then you can always request to have your payments staggered for every month instead. Most insurers wont have a problem with this and would actually welcome it. The only downside is that the actual amount that you pay per-year might be slightly more but the ease of budgeting that this allows is often more than worth it.

To ease your budgeting process, it also helps to stagger other yearly payables too. Anything that is payable yearly is normally quite heavy. You should never have anything that is big in the same month as that can cause a very big cash flow problem if you arent careful or have enough money in your bank account.

If you want to really save on your car insurance bill then it pays to be very specific on what you want and what you dont want in your car insurance policy. There are no benefits in simply buying a pre-packaged plan that is made to suit everyone. If you are willing to take to policies with a fine toothed comb then you can save quite a bit by removing coverage from items that you dont want or need.

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