Friday, September 5, 2008

Graduating Soon? What about Car Insurance?

After four years of classes, parties, studying, roommates, grades, and loans, you’re finally ready to graduate. You’re as prepared as you can be to start the rest of your life. Or are you? Consider what you know about car insurance, and about how to get a cheap car insurance rate.

There are a number of things car insurance can do to help you through the post-graduation years.


Car Insurance Protects You.
Besides the fact that the law requires it, you really do want car insurance. State mandated car insurance refers to liability insurance—property and bodily injury. This type of car insurance will protect you if you damage a car, person, or property (like a mailbox). Certain types of car insurance can also protect you from uninsured or underinsured drivers who hit you in your car or as a pedestrian. If you’ve just come off your parents’ health insurance and haven’t gotten your own yet, this could be very important.

Car Insurance Can Protect Your Car.
You’ve made sure your coverage is high enough to protect you from personal liability in case you cause an accident, but that’s not all car insurance does. You can also buy two types of car insurance that will help protect your car. Collision insurance pays for damages to your car from accidents you cause, and comprehensive insurance pays for damages to your car from things like theft, storms, and vandalism. If you total your car in an accident you cause, you’ll be glad you have collision or comprehensive car insurance.

Now that you’ve reviewed why you want cheap car insurance, you’ll need to look at your options. You may think that staying on your parents’ car insurance policy is the cheapest option, but you may be surprised to find that it’s not. Here are some things to consider:

You Have Coverage Options.
You may have higher coverages and lower deductibles than you need under your parents’ policy. Besides the fact that you’ll get a discount for already being insured, you can lower your costs by changing your options. Because your car may cost less and your assets are probably lower than your parents’, you can get cheaper car insurance rates by increasing your deductible and lowering your coverages a little.

You Can Save Money.
Most students don’t have many assets, so you can probably just buy small coverage amounts for now. However, keep in mind that many state minimum limits won’t even cover you fully if you damage a new car. The only way to know how much you can save is by shopping around and comparing car insurance rates from as many different companies as possible. One of the easiest ways to do this is by using our free online car insurance quotes tool. You can compare rates from 15 top car insurance companies at once. It’s easier and faster than most other ways of shopping for car insurance.

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