Shopping Insurance

COVID had gotten me more motivated to shape up financially in case the impact expanded to my employment. To date I have not been negatively impacted financially but others around me have been.

Telecommute has been extended a few weeks at a time, the most recent extension takes me through September. I was not surprised by this and at current rate don't see any sort of partial return to the office before Thanksgiving. This resurfaced the thought of how little I am driving. My mileage was already comparatively low but with telecommute I am only using the car one or two days a week. I have driven a total of 3,000 miles in the past six months due to working from home. The slight premium rebate the insurers provided in the spring was a nice gesture but in the grand scheme of things a drop in the bucket.

I started by calling my current insurer, Progressive, and asking to rework the assumptions about my driving habits. This request was repeatedly interpreted as wanting to change my coverage which I strongly disagreed with. I spent about an hour after this unsuccessful call shopping auto insurance. I found that in an apples to apples comparison I already had the best price I could find mostly due to a minor fender bender I had last year. What I did discover is that Progressive has collision and comprehensive deductible options other insurers don't. I had not wanted to change coverage but the deductible pricing made it attractive.

When I started this shopping quest I had a $500 deductible on both comprehensive and collision. I found that by increasing my deductible by $250, to $750, my six month premium would drop by $73 or approximately a third of the additional liability I would be assuming. I haven't had a history of filing claims every 18 months so I am likely well ahead on this change. I had also priced the $1000 deductibles and found that the premium reductions for this $250 jump were significantly less than the first $250 increase. Annualized savings of $146 for taking the $750 deductible. I will likely eventually be increasing the deductible to $1000 but want to build up a separate savings to cover this deductible so if I need to claim, it won't be such a financial speed bump.