Hey everyone. In this post I just wanted to talk about saving money on car insurance. I think that sometimes this is overlooked, particularly by young people like myself. I wanted to take some time to speak about my own personal experience saving money on car insurance.
You see, when I first got car insurance, all I was thinking about was how I could save as much money as possible. I got car insurance through my dad and brother’s insurance agent, Salim. He was a really friendly guy and I was more than happy to support him. At the time, my priority was to just get car insurance because it was a requirement. I wanted to just get liability insurance but ended up getting full coverage after Salim sold me on the idea.
I ended up having to pay about $103 per month. Eventually I became more and more broke (long story…I won’t get into that now), so I decided to opt out of the full coverage option which then dropped my insurance down to $75 per month or so. That way I could save an extra $25+ per month or so and purchase stuff like muscle supplements, vitamins, energy drinks, Ramen, and other random stuff that I was buying at that time. About a year later my car’s engine ended up blowing up and I ended up taking the insurance off. After my car ended up being a total loss, my aunt bought me a Jeep which eventually broke down as well, and then eventually I bought a reliable 2011 Nissan Altima.
Throughout this period my credit became progressively worse. I ended up signing up for insurance through Esurance and had to pay a whopping monthly payment of $175! It was insane! I was paying that every single month for about two years. During this period I just accepted the fact that I’d be paying about $175 per month. After paying $175 per month for about 2.5 years, I ended up receiving a call from AllState. They actually called me a few times and left messages but I never called them back because I figured that it’d be a typical sales call.
One day, it dawned upon me that I should just show them some courtesy and give them a call back since they were so persistent. When I called them back, they ended up giving me a quote and said that they could bring my monthly payments down to $78 per month! I was in absolute SHOCK! I had no clue that a company could help lower my insurance by almost $100! Needless to say, I ended up signing up with AllState and was a very happy man from that point forward!
The lesson here is to not give up shopping around for car insurance. I urge EVERYONE to have insurance because it’s required by law, and even in some regions where it’s not required, it’s still a great idea to possess because we can’t predict the next time we’ll get in an accident. If I had shopped around a bit more earlier, I could probably have saved hundreds of dollars. I just got caught up in the same pattern that a lot of young people get caught up in, which is just paying the same monthly premium and being too lazy to look around.
I urge everyone to learn from my experience. Get yourself some quality car insurance, pay your monthly payments, and then every 12 months or so, challenge yourself to look around and see how you can save some money. You might just surprise yourself.
