Insurance

Using Car Insurance Comparison Web Sites to Find the Best Rates

Guest Post

In reason # 10 of 11 Ways to Cut Your Car Insurance on this site, the suggestion was made to “Shop, shop, shop!”—but you need a way to do that quickly and efficiently. Car insurance comparison websites enable you to gather information and rate quotes from the largest number of carriers in the shortest possible amount of time.

The goal should be to get cheap car insurance, and not just cheap, but sufficient coverage to make certain you’re adequately protected and in compliance with legal requirements. After all, that’s the whole point of car insurance, isn’t it?

Car insurance comparison web sites as a source of information

5 Ways to Cut Your Health Insurance

By Kevin M

Last week we examined 11 Ways to Cut Your Car Insurance–this week we’ll flip it around and take a look at what we can do to lower our health insurance costs. This one is even bigger—in many households, health insurance costs are second only to housing as the top expense. And many times the difference between housing and health insurance isn’t all that much.

Raise your deductible and co-pays

Raising your deductible and cutting co-payments is the most common and probably the most effective way to cut your health insurance. In fact you can reduce your monthly premium by hundreds of dollars with just this one step.

As an example that I’m pulling from one of my own recent posts on this site:

“…coverage for a family of four living in Georgia (male, 40, female, 39, two children, non-smokers) with a deductible of $2,000 and $35 co-pays for doctor visits will be $863 per month (via Assurant). If the deductible is increased to $10,000 and the $35 doctor visit co-pay is eliminated, the monthly premium falls to $295.”

Increasing the deductible from $2,000 to $10,000 is admittedly extreme, but it illustrates the point clearly—the premium falls by nearly 70%. You can achieve significant savings even with smaller increases in your deductible. This is something you might consider doing if you are in good health and not a frequent user of healthcare. If you have health issues and regularly use healthcare, you’d be better off staying with the low deductible.

If you do raise you’re deductible, you can offset the risk with one or more of the following:
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How Traffic Tickets Affect Car Insurance – And What You Can Do About It

Guest Post

How might tickets and accidents affect your car insurance premiums? One speeding ticket in the last three years will likely not have a significant impact on your car insurance rates, unless it is a teenage driver. However, multiple tickets and accidents most certainly will impact your rates.

If you have experienced a large increase in car insurance premiums your best bet is to take time to receive comparison auto insurance quotes from competing insurance companies.

All insurance companies are not equal

The reason why it is important to request comparison car insurance quotes is because insurance companies charge differing amounts of money when tickets and accidents accumulate. Some insurance companies essentially want you to take your business elsewhere by increasing your rates substantially, while other companies will make your rate increase more reasonable.
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Dealing With Personal Disaster

There’s a definite “can do” spirit in the personal finance world. What ever it is you want to do—taking on a new career, starting your own business, planning a rich retirement, insuring against disaster–you can do it and we’re here to help! There are no glass-half-empty prophets here.

But what about those situations that don’t fall quite within the realm of advanced planning, the ones you can’t always insure around or can’t save up enough money to cover? You know, disasters that aren’t even necessarily about money? They’re out there and they DO happen—but hopefully not frequently—and they require a different approach entirely.

What kind of disasters are we referring to? How about litigation, accidents, medical malpractice and the like? These aren’t the kind of disasters that can be completely prepared for, and usually require some kind of legal representation. And if that’s the case you’re best to go with an attorney who works on a contingency fee basis, also known as a no win/no fee attorney.
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Driving While Distracted: Driver Distractions, Auto Accidents And Your Car Insurance Rates

Distractions draw your attention away from the road whenever you’re behind the wheel. On any given day, you might confront thousands of things that cause you to divert your attention or take your mind off traffic. Some are necessary. Stop signs, merging vehicles, traffic lights, and construction crews all must be acknowledged. On the other hand, cell phones, texting, reading, and putting on makeup should be avoided while driving. These and countless other distractions dramatically increase the risk of causing an accident. That will cause your car insurance rates to climb.

Below, we’ll share a few statistics that will demonstrate the extent to which talking on the phone impairs your ability to drive safely. We’ll then take a look at other activities that can pull your attention away from the road. You’ll also learn how a single mistake due to distracted driving can influence your auto insurance rates for years to come.
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11 Ways to Cut Your Car Insurance

By Kevin M

It’s often said that the only two things that are certain in life are death and taxes, and while that’s true enough, if you own a car you can add car insurance to that short list. Car insurance is virtually mandated in most of the Western world, and since you have to pay it, it helps to keep it is inexpensive as possible.

How do you do that? There may be 100 ways, but I’ve identified at least eleven.

1) Carefully chose the car you buy. Much of the cost of car insurance is set when you purchase your vehicle. Higher priced vehicles, certain model types as well as newer cars generally cost more to insure. Before buying your next car, you might want to get insurance quotes to see what it is you’re setting yourself up for. Once you own the car, it will be too late.
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The importance of Professional Indemnity Insurance for Management Consultants

Guest Post by Jodie McDonnell

A report from the Management Consultancies Association (MCA), the representative body for management consultancies in the United Kingdom, has highlighted the importance of taking action to protect your business during difficult trading conditions.

As a sign of the times, 76 per cent of clients are now transferring project risks to their consultants, state the MCA. Their research suggests that risks faced when delivering consulting and outsourcing projects over the past two years have increased, placing the financial security and company reputations of consultancies in danger. With difficult business conditions also being experienced across the pond, it follows that business consultants operating far and wide should be prepared.
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There IS Affordable Health Insurance IF You Know Where to Look

Guest Post by Timothy L. Barnes, CLU

This post is Tim’s response to my post of June 17th, The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma. As a Chartered Life Underwriter, Tim wishes to point out that there are affordable health insurance options for the self-employed–and for nearly everyone else–if you know where to look and are prepared to make necessary trade-offs.–Kevin M

In the 1939 classic, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” Frank Capra illustrated thatWashingtonD.C. had already become a place where politicians were willing to spread lies and misinformation to serve their own desire to hold onto power.

Nothing has changed in the last 60 years. Politicians have used the media to spread rumors about health insurance that are not entirely true. The only difference is that in 1939 the media was dominated by newspapers. Today, politicians prefer to smile in front of TV cameras.

The people called “journalists” in 1939 are now called TV anchors. Just like the “reporters” in the 1930s, TV news tells stories that will result in more advertising dollars. Newspapers before World War II and TV stations today honestly tells stories but with their own agendas in mind.

Most recently, politicians and pundits have told Americans that they need to be scared by the high cost of health insurance. They are using the classical political trick that Michael Douglas exposes in “The American President.”

They are,

Telling Americans what to fear.
Telling Americans who to blame.

“That is how you win elections!”
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Simple Ways to Save Money Every Day

Guest Post by Philip Reed

Whether you’re feeling affected by recent economic troubles, or you’re just looking for a few ways to lessen the pinch on your pocketbook, here are some simple ways how to save money every day.

Transportation

Commuting can be a major expense! Not only do you have to pay for fuel, but there is also additional maintenance and even tolls in some areas. Depending on where you live, parking fees can add up quickly. Just owning a car is a major expense in itself, but a long, daily commute can multiple all of the expenses related to it.

If public transportation is an option, consider whether this would be a productive alternative to getting you where you need to go while trimming a few expenses related to driving an automobile. Still another option is carpooling. In some cites, such as Atlanta, High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) lanes are dedicated to cars with multiple occupants and usually provide quicker routes that are less taxing on your vehicle.
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The Self-Employed Health Insurance Dilemma

By Kevin M

Health insurance coverage has become a national concern, but no where is the issue quite as close to home as it if for the self-employed. An employee may be concerned with the size of his premium contribution, or with co-pays and deductibles. The self employed business person has those concerns too, and a whole lot more. Like how to pay a premium that’s the size of a house payment but isn’t subsidized by an employer. Or even whether or not he can get any coverage at all.

There’s a lot of debate on health care, but we should expect no true reform and certainly no salvation in the foreseeable future. All of the schemes being devised center on how to maintain funding mechanisms to support the current over-priced system, or to trim “administrative costs” at the fringes. None of them get to the core of the issue, which is that the efforts at greater funding have lead to a system of perpetually higher costs

At some point, the healthcare system will blow up—a la the mortgage meltdown—and then perhaps crisis will break the cost spiral in a way that decades of putting tape and glue on the status quo couldn’t. In the meantime, what do you do to deal with what has become for the self-employed, an almost malicious system?
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