Personal Finance Tips

Do you remember the Blues Brothers? They were unstoppable. They were “on a mission from God”. Seems like almost everyone standing behind the counter in the rental agency is a Blues Brother when you come into collect the vehicle. They always want to sell you something, usually additional insurance. The most common special offer is loss damage waiver (LDW). It sounds such a good idea to have complete cover against any loss caused to the vehicle while under your control. The magic word is “waiver”. You are excluded from liability even if you drive the vehicle off the end of a pier and it sinks without trace (hopefully without you still inside it). The only problem is this good idea can seriously damage your bank balance when the final bill comes in. That hourly or daily rate just got heavy. So when should you add LDW? The answer is deceptively simple. If you do not own another vehicle and have no insurance cover in place, it may be a good buy. But most insurance policies on your own vehicle cover you while driving a rental. So it all comes down to the extent of that cover on your own vehicle.

To get the maximum discount in these hard economic times, most people have been pushing up the deductibles. In many cases, the potential losses can be managed to keep to the low end. It’s your vehicle. You can talk to the repair shop and get all the work you want done at the best price. But when it’s a rental vehicle, everything is out of your hands. The rental company has no interest in protecting your bank balance. It pays top dollar to get the vehicle repaired and sends you the bill. No searching around to find the cheapest replacement parts and lowest price body shops. Everything is top of the range and then comes the kicker. It’s called the “loss of use” charge. You are expected to cover their estimated loss of profit while the vehicle is off the road. And guess what. If you are paying their loss of profit, they have no incentive to rush the repairs. They can take their own sweet time and, in most cases, you pay – most private policies do not cover loss of use charges. Some credit card companies offer limited cover, but read the small print before relying on it. Limited cover means very little actual money will ever be paid out.

If you are only renting for a few days, it’s probably worth paying for LDW. It may not be cheap car insurance, but it protects you. But if the end bill is going to be too high, trust to luck and your own insurance policy. Hopefully, your own cheap car insurance policy will give you enough of a buffer against claims Remembering, of course, that only the best private policies cover you against the dreaded loss of use charges. If nothing else, all this bad news should give you the incentive to drive like your wheels are passing over egg shells. Drive as safely and carefully as possible. If you are going to break some eggs, make sure the damage is minor and the losses are small.

There’s nothing exciting, interesting or thrilling about insuring one’s car and many of you will definitely agree with that. And taking into account the place you live in it can either be a small piece or a big chunk of your family budget.

The most frequently asked question about vehicle insurance is probably the one about the amount of coverage that should be included. Any professional insurance agent will recommend you getting as much coverage as you can pay for. And while this advice doesn’t lack in common sense it’s practical application is not very different from a realtor’s advice to buy as much living space as you can afford. Logical but quite useless since you don’t get a precise amount recommended for purchase. You have to consider a series of factors in order to make the right decision. First of all you have to learn the local minimum amount of coverage required in your state. Then you have to research what’s that minimum is used for. And in the end you have to analyze what are your exact insurance needs.

What’s the state minimum in the area you live?

The best source to learn state minimum requirements is your state insurance department. Another good source are numerous sites where you can get auto insurance quotes online – they usually post these minimums for your convenience.

State minimums are usually expressed in the following form – 20/40/10, where 20 refers to bodily injury liability for a single person ($20,000), 40 – to bodily injury for the whole accident ($40,000) and 10 stands for $10,000 for property damage.

Is the state minimum enough?

It’s not very hard to determine whether your state minimums are enough to have adequate and cheap auto insurance. Just analyze the medical and repair costs in your area and see if the amounts of basic coverage are enough to cover the costs without requiring you to pay anything out of pocket. In most cases minimum amounts are not enough but it’s not a rule a thumb. If you live in an area with low repair and medical costs it might be just the right sum to carry with your auto insurance policy.

Is there anything else I would need?

There are many types of coverage that don’t make part of the state requirement list you can buy additionally from your provider. On one hand you will pay a higher premium if buying additional coverage with your policy and that’s definitely not a way to get cheap auto insurance. On the other hand, you may need a particular type of coverage if the risk of having that very damage is high in your area. Say you live in a place where floods are common. You would want to buy flood coverage for your vehicle as it doesn’t make part of the standard coverage package.

What are your insurance needs?

This is probably the most important aspect of any insurance procedure. You have to determine what the item of your insurance is and what you really want to protect. Is the exterior of your car really important? Or you are worried about its contents? What about theft? Try to think about the things most important to you in your car and insure namely those things. It’s the most effective way to get just the right amount if insurance coverage you need.

The easiest way to understand how an insurance policy works is to think about gambling. You are about to drive your vehicle out on to the public roads and you make a bet with the insurance company. If you can do this without having an accident, you lose the premium. If you have an accident, the insurance company pays your losses. So, as with a field of horse about to set off round the track, the bookmakers check the records of each horse. How many times has it run and placed. This gives them a basis on which to set the odds. In theory, everyone has access to the same information so you decide whether to place the wager depending on the fairness of the odds quoted. Well, it’s exactly the same with drivers. The insurers make a risk assessment of you as a driver. What make and model are you driving? How many miles a year do you drive? How many years of experience? How many tickets and claims? This profiling gives them the odds of an accident and the company sets the premium rate to quote you. You also know your own track record and have a good basis on which to decide whether to pay the premium.

Unlike a conventional bet, you can decide to self-insure a part of the potential liabilities. This is done through the so-called deductible where you pay the nominated amount before the insurer has to contribute. So if the claim against you is for $800 and you have a deductible of $1,000, you pay the whole of the $800. But if the claim is for $1 million, you only pay $1,000 and the insurance company loves you like a brother. The majority of traffic accidents are minor fender benders and the repair costs are usually low. If no-one is injured, self-insurance is a cost-effective option, i.e. the amount you save on the premium covers the likely payments of claims. But you should consider the issues carefully before accepting the maximum deductibles. Suppose you have a bad run of luck and, in the space of a year, you are involved in three accidents where the claims exceed the deductible. Now you have to find the deductible multiplied by three as a cash sum and your premiums will go up because you have proved yourself a bad risk. Can you afford the pay this lump sum without breaking the bank? Given your premiums are going to rise, do you still want to pay the maximum deductibles in the future?

Planning is all about the worst case scenarios and hoping for the best. There are good discounts for increasing the deductible. There are also good discounts for insuring more than one vehicle or combining both car insurance with home insurance. Because you cannot guarantee you will never have accidents, you should decide what discounts you can find and how much you are prepared to pay if the worst happens. Do not simply buy the cheapest car insurance you can find. In many cases, these policies do not give a good value-for-money cover against liabilities. Shop around and buy the policy that gives you the best protection at a price you can afford.

Cheap car insurance for young drivers may prove to be an extremely intimidating task but still cannot be classified as being impossible since there are ways and means which could be resorted to while seeking such an insurance policy. When it comes to drivers, the main obstacle which is responsible for sky-rocketing the premium is the age factor as it is a scientifically proven fact that while teenagers are often reckless and unmindful of driving rules.

Among the many tips for acquiring cheap car insurance for drivers, one of the tips is to keeps the mileage low as a means of securing discounts on the insurance rates. This logic emerges from the fact that the lesser amount of time the young drivers spends on the road, the lesser the probability of his being involved in a risky situation and this would not only result in saving but also create consciousness in the driver.

One of the most recommended methods of finding cheap car insurance for drivers is to browse the internet in search of insurance quotes, invite quotes from a number of online insurance websites and conduct comparisons among them. This would not only insurance websites and conduct comparisons among them.

When a person decides to get married it is definitely one of the happiest and most memorable moments in his or her life. It is the feeling of everything getting exactly to where it belongs, and it’s truly a wonderful time to enjoy. Of course, there will be substantial changes in many spheres of your life and when in comes to insuring it there will be some important thinks you will have to think over.

First, you have to keep in mind that when you insure your life you protect your spouse and your children against hardship in case you are no longer able to support them. Still, if you choose to insure your life before changing your marital status in most cases your new family members won’t be covered in an insurance situation. That is why it is very important to contact your insurance company after you change your marital status and give birth to kids in order to make sure that your whole family gets the necessary financial benefits in case something happens to you. It’s a very effective way to make sure your family is getting what it deserves if something goes wrong, and it really pays to make sure that your insurance policy has all your needs covered.

Another aspect of life insurance you might want to consider is adding your spouse to your policy if you already have bought one. Most insurance companies have no problems with that. This option is good from the family perspective, because if something happens to either of you, you can rest assured that the other one will get the necessary financial support. And if both of you end up in an insurance situation, your children will receive all the benefits to insure their life and education even if you aren’t around.

In case you don’t have your life covered before getting married, your marital status change can be a good boost to finding a cheap life insurance deal for you and your spouse. You can use the policy benefits to assure your mortgage payout or your children’s college education when time comes, and these are definitely the things you will have to think about well into your marriage. You are not alone anymore and have greater responsibility towards your family, so having a financial tool for assessing certain risks will sure give you a piece of mind. Besides, young families can get better life insurance quotes if compared to singles or older couples, so think about that when you are starting out as a family.

When getting your life insured, make sure you have full understanding of your policy and have some space to adjust it to your current insurance needs. It’s very hard to predict what your needs will be in five or ten years and being constrained by a policy that doesn’t allow you to change certain conditions can turn out being a heavy burden for your family budget. That’s why you have to consult with your insurance agent or broker about any possibilities before actually signing the policy.

Deciding on which form of insurance to go with is also another important topic. Both term and continuous insurance policies have their pros and cons and it really depends on what you want from your insurance policy. Define your needs and take the policy you think best fits your family.