It is much easier to separate your assets into trusts, and when the big personal liability claim hammer comes down, file bankruptcy and you're done. The cost for a complicated bankruptcy filing is peanuts compared to your actual liability and very small compared to the large policy price difference between a 500K vs 1M vs 10M umbrella type policy. Of course you can only use your get out of debt free card once every 7 years and anything that is mingled personally like houses, cars, furniture, etc all go away. Welcome to a society that sues everyone for any reason and is the laughing stock of the world.
As I was driving in to my dealer today for a 25k service, what did I come upon but a fresh 3 car wreck with at least 2 of the vehicles demolished from the firewall forward. While in the dealers, I happened to notice the sticker price on some of the cars. About 8 years ago I collected on a insurance claim (no injuries) for a totaled 8 year old car that ran about $28k. Insure for what you think, we each have a different risk tolerance. Different income and assets too.
True, location is a big part of it. Yep, a little more empty roads in Nebraska. Plus drivers are a little more sane here. You rarely see road rage or even extremely aggressive driving in general.
Where I live is rural. Prince Edward Island. No such thing as traffic, really. But one can easily expect to be passed by someone doing well over the limit, at night, on double yellow lines. So as the saying goes: "Your mileage may vary." ;-)
I just put mine on my insurance yesterday, and it only resulted in an increase of like $145.00 every 6 months over what my Matrix was, and that was after bumping the collision down to $250 deductible instead of $500 and adding on gap insurance through Progressive.
My insurance just jumped through the roof for my 2014 prius c from my 2010 vw golf. It actually doubled! I'm still excited about my purchase of the prius, but this is a huge added unexpected extra expense on top of the car payment. I'm with Esurance, and comparisons with Geico and Safe Auto were just as bad or worse. Any suggestions? Help!
First of all, how old are you? Age plays the biggest factor in insurance costs, as young guys typically tend to like taking more risks while driving, and subsequently get into more crashes and tickets statistically speaking. Not much you can do about this if you're an 18-25 year old male, just have to wait till you get older and more experience driving before the costs start coming down more. Secondly, keep shopping around, there are lots of other auto insurance companies such as AAA, State Farm, American Family, Progressive, that I can think of off the top of my head. I think hybrids in general are more expensive to repair as well if you do get into an accident in one, hence the higher rate vs a gas car. Third, is your credit score good? I know it's kind of dumb to base insurance rates off that, but some, if not all of them, will also look at that. Maybe they think if your score is low, you're more of a risk for whatever reason. Newer cars also tend to be more expensive to insure in general, because if you get into an accident, they are worth more, so it'll cost the insurance company more to fix any damages on it. Or if they total it, it's also more money they have to shell out. Like in the first example, there's not much you can do about this with your car, but it should theoretically get cheaper the older it gets.
