the Price of a Year of Car Insurance

I pay $1250 for car insurance that covers three cars and two drivers, both over the age of 25. One of the cars is a 1997 that doesn't get used that much so it only includes liability insurance. The other two cars are newer but still not brand new (a 2004 and 2003) and those include comprehensive insurance but not a rental car and not whatever makes the deductible waived if an uninsured motorist hits you. Some discounts are applied like good driver, long-time policy holder, and off-street parking. One driver has had no tickets or accidents in the last five years. The other driver has had no tickets but two accidents (one not our fault) in the last five years.

I've been a policy-holder with this company for 30 plus years. It's a major insurance company. The only complaints I've had is that (1) they will only deal with the primary policy holder. We have two unmarried adults on the policy and even if any issues (e.g., dealing with car accidents) only affect the secondary account holder, the primary account holder has to manage the claim. It's annoying but I don't know if that's the company's fault; it might be something reasonable that they just can't get around.

The second complaint is that they didn't seem to advocate enough for us in an accident. It ended up that the person who's fault it was, in our opinion, was determined to be 49% at fault, and we were 51% at fault. This caused our insurance rates to go up. We later heard that the other driver's insurance company (a well-known insurance agency) was known for fiercely advocating for its policy holders. We felt that our insurance company wasn't so worried about keeping our record clean -- they were gonna get the money anyway.

Shop around. Go with a reputable company. Be sure to ask for all discounts, there are crazy ones like ones that are based on the driver's profession, and I don't know that they willingly apply all applicable discounts without you asking. There are different deductibles so you should consider in advance how much cash you will have on hand should you unfortunately get in an accident, even if it's not your fault.