14 Extreme ways to lower your car insurance premiums
Everyone has advice these days on lowering your car insurance costs. Even your mother’s blog has a list of the “10 standard ways to reduce your premiums”. So let’s break the mold and take a more imaginative look at saving some dough.
Here are some radical new methods you may not have considered using to lower your premiums and keep them low.
- Become a full-time blogger. Work from home and classify your vehicle as “recreational” to reduce your rates. Even carpooling or telecommuting a couple days each week might warrant a reduction in rates based upon lower annual mileage.
- Build a lair and establish a secret identity. Or just be careful giving out your social security number. Identity theft will hurt your credit score. And your credit score not only affects your premiums, but also your financing.
- Take remedial math. Students with good grades can qualify for discounts, so why not make it easier on yourself?
- Wrap your car in bubble paper. Or just tell your agent about your air-bags, ABS brakes, and other safety devices to get a lower rate.
- Hire a limo, take a cab, or invite your wet-blanket colleague out with the boys. Just make sure that someone sober drives you home and you don’t get a DUI or your rates will skyrocket.
- Drink less soda. While it’s illegal for carriers to charge extra for most disabilities, some conditions like diabetes, epilepsy, and certain heart conditions are excluded and may negatively affect rates.
- Buy the insurance company. Or if you don’t have a couple billion laying around, just get all your policies from the same company to take advantage of multi-policy discounts.
- Rob a convenience store. Legal implications aside, if you can scrounge up the cash to pay your premiums 6 months in advance, you’ll probably get a better rate than monthly payments.
- Get married. Yup, single people pay more.
- Get a sex change (men only). Ladies are less aggressive and considered less likely to be in an accident.
- Move to Conrad, IA (population 1600). You’ll pay much less in rural areas than you would in the city. Less people equals less chance of a fender-bender.
- Become a teacher, doctor, or scientist. Based on broad stereotypes, some occupations will cause you to have lower premiums due to a perceived lower risk. Oddly enough, some high premium professions are lawyers, comedians, and bee-keepers.
- Wait to drive until you’re over 25…over 55 is even better. It’s simple, rates go down as you get older. Going to prison or being in a coma might help pass the time, but I’ve never tried either so I can’t say for sure.
- Call in a bomb threat. Ok, please don’t do that. But definitely get competitive insurance quotes and then threaten to switch providers. Insurance agents have the ability to negotiate and will often cut you a deal. If not, just go ahead and change your provider. Even if you leave in the middle of a policy period, insurance carriers are required to give you a pro-rated refund.
Got any other creative ways to lower your premiums?
