Why am I paying so much for car insurance?

Posted on November 21, 2011
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Every year in California, the auto insurance industry tries to amend the state constitution, yes, the state constitution, so that it allows car insurance companies to charge ordinary people more money on their car insurance.

That’s because many car insurance companies are constantly looking for ways to fleece their customers. As a result, the factors they use to determine rates are not always sensible? I wrote this article so that you can discover 3 reasons that insurance companies use to charge higher rates:

Your Credit Report

Insurance companies can charge you an arm and a leg if you have a low credit score on your credit report. This could be because they think that less creditworthy people are more likely to skip payments and possibly even more likely to be reckless in a car and get in an accident. Out of the fifty United States, only California, Maryland, Hawaii, and Massachusetts prohibit using credit reports to jack up car insurance rates.

Your Driving History

Whether or not you’ve been in a lot of accidents or have a lot of serious tickets affects how much you pay. This is pretty obvious, but there are ways to mitigate a bad driving record. You can usually have one accident per year or so (one each 18 months in California) hidden from insurance companies. but a lot of people don’t know that in many states, you can have one accident every year hidden from your records if you attend driving classes. In some places even parking tickets can give you a “point” (or a fraction of a point) on your driving record and make your rates go up.

Your Age, Gender and Marital Status

Growing up, you may have heard that “Boys are always a few years behind girls”. Insurance companies know this too. Young men take risks, especially if they don’t have kids or aren’t married. It could be because they are not as willing to risk themselves once they have a family, because of the old adage about men being less mature than women, but it’s likely a combination of both. How long you have been driving is also a big factor.

This is a guest post by Murray Newlands. Murray and his company Influence People do blog relations for a variety of clients.

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