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Many people, when looking for health insurance quotes or other types of insurance premium pricing information, begin to feel like they would be better off just saving their money rather than sending it to an insurance company to make a premium payment. They often feel this way because they think that the likelihood that they will actually use the insurance that they are paying for is low, so they will spend all this money on premiums and then have nothing to show for it, which leads many individuals to decide that it would be better save their money and put it into an interest-bearing account and forgo the insurance policy.

Savings vs. Insurance

An insurance policy pays for large expenses – things it would likely take you years to save enough money to pay for on your own. And these expenses aren’t just big in terms of cost, they are important. For instance, staying with the example of health insurance – let’s say you need knee surgery. If you haven’t saved enough money (tens of thousands of dollars) to pay for this and you don’t have insurance, then you need to wait until you have the money in your account before you can get it done. That means you will have impaired mobility for years until you have enough to pay for the surgery. If you have insurance, however, you can get the surgery post haste. You can also get treatment for emergency medical needs and not have to leave the hospital wondering how you are going to pay for it.

Making Insurance Affordable

The real issue here is making sure that you can afford the insurance premiums you are paying. Avoiding insurance and trying to save the premium dollars will probably leave you high and dry when you actually need the money. But creating an insurance premium that you can actually afford to pay – and don’t resent doing so – will be a better plan. Here are a few tips to help you do so:

1. Look for discounts: Whether they come from bundling several insurance policies through one insurer, from taking the necessary steps to be a low-risk customer, or from paying your entire bill annually, take advantage of all the discounts you can. They add up!
2. Get only the insurance coverage you NEED: No matter what type of insurance you’re looking at, get only the amount you actually need to cover that individual risk. Being over-insured doesn’t provide you with any extra protection. Insurance is meant to make you whole, so the insurance company isn’t going to give you an extra payment if the value of what you are insuring wasn’t worth that much (the exception here being life insurance, which pays out your death benefit in full).
3. Continually review your policies: Your lifestyle and situation can change continuously and when it does, so too should your insurance. Every year before you renew, make sure there isn’t anything frivolous that you are paying for and no longer need and adjust anything else that could have a bearing on your premium.
4. Get new quotes: Insurance rates vary from company to company, and the initial search that you do for insurance quotes is not always relevant a year or two later. Getting regular quotes from other insurance companies can help you to ensure that you really are getting the best deal out there.

If you plan it well and stay aware of discount opportunities, you will maximize your insurance premium dollars without sacrificing the coverage you need.

There’s always quite a big political edge to issues surrounding the insurance industry. In the case of vehicles it comes down to two big question marks. The first is whether the insurer should focus interest on the driver; the second on whether the insurer should use price as a lever to change driver behavior. You see the first in the ongoing debates on whether premium rates should be based on the ZIP code or the driver’s credit score. You see the second in the continuing environmental debates about pay-as-you drive insurance.

The argument is easily put. At present, the insurer creates big groups of drivers and shares out the cost of the risk between them. This means all the safer drivers subsidize all the more dangerous drivers. Obviously there are some trade-offs, but the range of premium increases for individual drivers who prove unsafe is limited by the “profit” the insurer makes from all the safer drivers. Now look around you. We are living in the middle of a technological revolution. The vehicles we now drive are full of chips and many of us carry cell phones and other technology that allows service providers to track where we are. If we wanted, all vehicles could be fitted with technology to capture how and where we drive. This information could be transmitted on a continuous basis to our insurers. Those that drive the lowest number of miles and have the fewest accidents could then pay less to insure. Everyone who breaks the speed limits and travels thousands of miles a month would pay more.

The environmentalists love this idea. Price will be used to encourage people to drive less. There will be fewer greenhouse gasses released into the atmosphere. The world will be a better place. Law-enforcement are also excited by the possibility of being able to monitor all vehicles close to the scenes of reported crimes. Just think how useful it would be to know that seconds after a bank robbery, a car drove away from that location at 100 mph and was then abandoned in an alley where a second car then left… and so on. A recent study by the Conservation Law Foundation looked at the relationship between mileage and insurance claims in Massachusetts. It estimates that switching to pay-as-you-drive insurance would encourage drives to use the car less, reduce CO2 emissions, and cut accident costs.

Well, if you live in California, you will be able to try it out as from February 2011 when you apply for your auto insurance quotes. If you work from home, are unemployed or retired, or just generally drive less than 19,000 miles a year, you could be in line for a discount. State Farm and the Automobile Club of Southern California will be offering you the chance to self-report your odometer readings or to have a communications device installed that saves you the trouble of that cellphone call. So use this chance with your auto insurance quotes to save the planet and save dollars. Drive less, keep the gas in the ground and have better air to breathe.

One of the more interesting features of insurance is the degree of trust the insurer shows in what you say. Unless you are asking cover for something expensive and unusual, no insurer is going to ask to see whatever it is. You are allowed to add the vehicle or top-of-the-range electronic gizmo to the policy without question. But, if it later turns out you were less than honest, the insurer is allowed to cancel the policy and leave you without any cover. So the insurer is always protected and you pay the price of facing any claims without a policy to pay. Yet, while this has been standard in the insurance industry as a whole, there’s been a reluctance to trust drivers to report their mileage honestly. Younger people claiming unusually low annual mileage have been greeted with skepticism. To qualify for a discount, people have been forced to drive to the local office of the insurer to have someone verify the odometer reading once a month. This has been inconvenient and not so many people have taken up the discount offer.

With new technology, all this is changing and insurers are now moving into the pay-as-you-drive market with more enthusiasm. In part, there are also environmental reasons for this change. No matter what you think of the climate change debate, there’s no doubt more cities are being affected by smog. So whether this is big picture or the number of people lining up with asthma attacks at the local emergency rooms, there’s a move to encourage people to drive less. Accompanied by improvements in the mile-per-gallon performance of new cars and better emission controls, there’s now hope the air will stay breathable for longer. The pay-as-you-drive option gives people a direct incentive to drive less. Fewer miles driven means fewer accidents. If the full technological capabilities are introduced, it will also be possible to monitor whether drivers keep to the speed limits. Any vehicle reported stolen can automatically be tracked and recovered.

The first real signs of activity are coming in California. State Farm Mutual and the Auto Club of Southern California are introducing new policies in February 2011. Drivers will be given the choice of independent verification of their odometer readings or fitting a data transmission device. State Farm is estimating that people driving less than 2,000 a year will see their premiums fall by 45%. Using this as a base, State Farm is aiming to sign up at least a quarter of their current policy holders. Everyone who drives modest distances will save with rates set in 500 mile steps. Auto Club has four steps of 2,500 up to 10,000 miles and then the premium rises in 5,000 mile steps. At present, the Californian Insurance Commissioner is protecting drivers’ privacy, so no general data will be collected by insurers.

So, if you live in California, your auto insurance quotes should include this option come February 2011. While this is not a revolution, it’s certainly a change for the good, protecting the environment and encouraging better driving. Auto insurance is going green.

There are a lot of TV shows emphasizing the style and popularity of customized cars, and for many car owners such a temptation is very hard to resist. Today there are a lot of accessories you can use for customizing your car and it goes far beyond fuzzy dice. With so many cars on the road, many drivers want their vehicle to stand out from the crowd, that’s why you see all those stylish grills, spinners, insane stereo systems and LCD screens all over the car. It’s all limited only by your budget and imagination.

But one thing drivers tend to forget about when customizing their vehicles is the added cost of insurance that increases after you’ve installed all the fancy and expensive add-ons. What does your insurance company think about that? Here are some things to keep in mind when looking forward to customizing your vehicle:

Start customizing only after speaking to your insurance provider

It’s the most reasonable way of avoiding additional problems with car insurance. First speak to your insurance company representative and learn what your policy will and will not cover. You don’t want to find that out after having an accident and filing a claim, right? Otherwise, you risk being underinsured or even denied coverage simply because you have customized your vehicle without informing the insurance company.

Your car insurance provider will typically ask you whether you want to make a minor or a substantial customization. In case of a minor customization that doesn’t seriously affect the value of your car you may leave your policy intact since it will be enough to pay for the repair. But if you want to change a lot of details and install costly features, you will definitely need an endorsement to cover the installed equipment and parts. You might as well need to raise your collision and comprehensive coverage amounts in order to make sure that your policy is adequate to the increased value of your vehicle, which will definitely rise after you’ve installed all the costly things in it.

In most cases the custom parts cost more than the original parts, so you will want to reconsider all your coverage amounts in order to make sure that the car is covered properly. Because in case you end up in an accident and need a repair, your insurance company will only cover the actual value of the original parts, or can even deny you with coverage because you have failed to inform them about customizing your vehicle.

Safety is important

Don’t forget that the most important thing about customization is safety. Make sure that the custom parts are installed by a professional, don’t attempt to do it on your own. You may install the parts in a wrong way, which will decrease the safety of your vehicle. And you definitely don’t want to do that if you want to have lower car insurance rates from your provider. Not to mention that such mistakes can be a threat to your life. So be smart when customizing your ride – spend some money to pay the professional.

When small business owners who have their home-based enterprises think of buying a new car that is to be used by the business, they always confront with the dilemma whether they need individual or commercial vehicle insurance. In many cases the coverage provided by personal policy carried by business owners provide just the right amount of coverage to have the vehicle protected. Still, for home-based businesses the picture might be quite different

Insurance experts agree that it depends on the exact purpose of your vehicle’s use in the business. If you’re a real estate broker, for example, and simply drive to work from home, taking clients with you on occasion then you don’t need commercial auto insurance since your personal policy will be enough to cover any costs. However, if you have a regular delivery of products with your car or take passengers all the time as a part of your job then you will have to purchase commercial auto insurance, since the vehicle will be regarded as a part of your business assets and has to be covered respectively.

For home-based enterprises it’s very important to have the third party liability limits in check in order to assure that both personal and business assets are covered properly. Because of this, the amount of your liability coverage and your deductible are the main variables that will determine the cost of auto insurance for your business. The larger is the amount of coverage and the lower is your deductible, the more you will have to pay for insurance in premiums. And don’t forget about your yearly mileage, driving record and the list of persons who will operate the vehicle – these factors will also affect your insurance premiums.

In order to lower the risk for your business, your liability coverage limits should be higher with a commercial insurance policy as compared to an individual policy. As a business, you may be subjected to larger claims, because the other party involved in the accident can follow you both as an individual and as a business. Because of such vulnerability, car insurance quotes for commercial auto insurance tend to be higher when compared to individual policies with the same coverage amounts.

In case your business involves taking a lot of equipment with you while you’re driving the car, and you also have a homeowners insurance policy, your equipment will have a certain amount of coverage. Still, in case if the value of the equipment is rather high, your car and home insurance policy can provide too little coverage, so you’ll have to buy a rider and get additional coverage amount for your equipment. A typical business owner insurance policy will cover damage and liability in the amount of up to $10,000. If this is not enough to replace your equipment in case it gets destroyed, then you definitely have to buy more coverage.

Commercial auto insurance goes by the same rules as any other form of insurance. If you want to get better rates, you should check car insurance quotes and do some comparison shopping with different companies. However, keep in mind that you will have to get car insurance quotes with respect to your higher liability limits. Don’t strip down the policy to the bare minimum as your business may depend on it.