5 common car insurance mistakes to avoid
October 22, 2009 · Tagged with Insurance
Recently Five for the Money took a look at some of the biggest mistakes consumers make when buying life insurance. This week we’ll tackle car insurance. Auto insurance isn’t as fraught a subject as life insurance; buying a sensible policy doesn’t need to be a reminder of inevitable death. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy to negotiate. Having the wrong car insurance, or making the wrong claims, can put a serious ding in someone’s financial health.
As with life insurance, some of the rules are straightforward: shop around to ensure a fair deal and review your policy annually to make sure that it still fits your life and financial condition. Here are a few other common mistakes policyholders should swerve away from:
1. Don’t assume the insurance salesman is your friend.
The best insurance policies for consumers aren’t necessarily the ones that bring in the best numbers and bonuses for salespeople, says Andrew Tignanelli, president of Luthersville (Md.)-based money management outfit Financial Consulate. Remember that the next time you go shopping for car insurance. Often it’s in the salesman’s best interest to sell the “least amount of insurance that they can possibly justify.” Smaller policies leave insurers less exposed to risk and proportionately tend to be more expensive. As a result, they’re more likely to be profitable for the insurer. Because of this conflict of interest and other factors, Tignanelli says he finds that even wealthy clients are often underinsured.
Make sure you have “liability” coverage, which is usually mandatory in most states and covers the costs of another person’s car damage and injury. “Comprehensive” will protect you if your car gets stolen, catches fire, or is damaged without coming into contact with another car. And “collision” covers damages if your car collides with another vehicle or object, no matter who’s at fault.
2. Don’t have a tiny deductible.
When buying auto insurance, consumers frequently think of it as a way to protect themselves against every ding and scratch. That’s a bad idea. “You should insure for what you cannot afford to lose,” says financial planner Jeffrey Bogue of Bogue Asset Management. That means, don’t have a miniscule deductible of $100 or even $250. “If you nickel-and-dime the insurance companies with these small claims, you may get socked with a premium hike or they may say ‘we’re not going to insure you,’ ” he says.
Policies with higher deductibles (Bogue says $1,000 is often sensible) that extend to higher coverage levels are not necessarily more expensive and protect drivers from costs associated with more serious car problems. Higher-deductible policies also cost less.