How to save money on car insurance?

padraig737

I haven't noticed a thread setting out ways to save on your car insurance. I'm not talking about lying or being deceptive, but people seem to forget or don't know that certain pieces of information will lower your premium.

Hopefully we could make a list to help one another out.

1. Change the cars value.
People over value their car. I know people who will buy a car and leave the value the same for the next 3-5 years. Your car depreciates each year, but your insurer doesn't drop the valuation at renewal time. If you pay 40k for your car, it isn't worth 40k next year so check a car sales website for a valuation.

2. Named drivers,
Adding your spouse seems to always drop your premium. If your a young driver, adding a parent will also drop the premium. However adding multiple drivers can end up raising the premium so also look out for the price of open drive if you need 3 or more people insured on it.

3. Loyalty from insurers is rare.
Shop around. It may take an hour or two but you could save hundreds. So if you don't make a hundred an hour at work, it makes since to spend some time saving on your renewal.
Looking at a thread on boards where people list 10 or more insurers, shows a major difference.

4. Correct mileage
I'm not sure how much you'll save here. If you don't use your car much let your insurer know. It's simple to check you average annual mileage through your service history or NCT records.

Has anyone anything that could be added?

micah537

If you have never replaced a windscreen, do you really need the cover?

Not really a money saving tip, but there is a lot of people who don't understand the difference between open drive and driving other cars extension.

Some people think open drive means you can driver any car which is not true.

Open drive means anyone (certain restrictions may apply) can drive your car.

Driving other cars extension, means you can drive other cars you don't own (restrictions also apply)

So don't buy something you don't need.

SureYWouldntYa

padraig737 wrote: »

1. Change the cars value.
People over value their car. I know people who will buy a car and leave the value the same for the next 3-5 years. Your car depreciates each year, but your insurer doesn't drop the valuation at renewal time. If you pay 40k for your car, it isn't worth 40k next year so check a car sales website for a valuation.

This might be different depending on the value of your car, but I know that for lower value cars for Liberty when they allowed you to enter your own value for the car (new online quote layout doesn't allow this), your insurance was cheaper if you put a €3k car down as being worth €12k

I'd change nothing else on the form and it would give cheaper insurance, and if anything happens the car would be rightly valued at €3k by them

So it might be worth playing around with your perceived value of the car to see what your premium becomes

padraig737

That's interesting.

I did hear about cars valued at €1k or below being negatively loaded.

Thanks

Henry Ford III

Plenty of info on this thread OP

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057482518

Cape Clear

padraig737 wrote: »

That's interesting.

I did hear about cars valued at €1k or below being negatively loaded.

Thanks

I ran quotes on different values from €1K to €5K €5K was the cheapest and €1K the dearest.

zg3409

Advice I give is to haggle on the phone and make up fake lower quotes which they then match. This typically saves me 40 euro per year.

Even with real lower quotes it easier to stay with existing insurer if they match the quote.

Look at the profession you put down. Depending on your job there may be 2 or 3 options that are OK, with different quotes.

Another trick if insurance is really low cost, there is often minimum premiums, so you can add things like windscreen cover, breakdown cover, fully comp and you still pay minimum.

Before you buy a car check if its a high insurance car, some cars just have high insurance, particularly >10 years, and large size engine.

Start searching for new quotes 3 weeks before renewal date. Your existing insurer gives better phone deals a few weeks out than on last day of renewal.