The Car Insurance Epidemic: Tips to Beat Renewal Prices

Introduction

We have a car insurance epidemic going on at the moment. Now, with the increase in the cost of living all across the world, the UK is particularly bad, but I’m told it’s the same almost anywhere in the world. Car insurance seems to be one of the things that’s been hit the hardest. Most of people with an extra year of no claims bonus and an extra year of driving experience, their insurance renewal had gone up more than 100% compared to last year.

So, what I thought I’d do is put together a list of the top things that helped people beat their renewal price and get cheap car insurance. Whether you’ve been driving 10, 15 years and you’re looking to renew your insurance, or you’re literally getting your first car, these tips will be beneficial to all of you.

Now, I want to be very, very clear: This blog will not give you any tips that are illegal or incorrect. There’s no fronting here. I’m not going to be talking about insuring the car in your mom’s name and then putting yourself as a named driver or any of this kind of thing. I’m going to give you legitimate tips to decrease your insurance while making sure that you actually have correct cover on the car you’re driving.

During this blog, I am actually going to give direct examples of quotes using these tips so you can see that the tips do actually work. I’ve got a baseline example here. You’ve got a 21-year-old looking to insure a white Vauxhall Corsa 1.2 at an address in London. This is basically the worst-case scenario, and I’m going to tell you that you can reduce this premium heavily.

Top Tips to Reduce Car Insurance Premiums

1) Your Start Date

My first tip, and I can’t believe more people don’t know about this, is the fact that you need to set your insurance start date 21 days in the future. This is just an anecdote, but what I found is, for whatever reason, insurance that starts on a Sunday seems to be cheaper. Set your start date for your insurance 21 days in the future at the nearest Sunday that’s after 21 days. There’s a very clear reason for this: it’s because if you’re setting your insurance to start tomorrow, that means you have to have insurance. You’re desperate for insurance. Insurers know this, and they increase the cost of the insurance based on how desperate you are.

This is our original baseline, and literally all we’re going to do is come to here to a Sunday that’s about 4 weeks in the future. If you think in terms of percentages, we’ve reduced the price by 33%. Now, if your insurance quote is a reasonable, let’s say £800, you’ve just slashed your price down to £550. Apply this everywhere. This tip.

2) Choose an Unusual Car

• Honestly, this is my favorite tip
• It’s especially useful for those insuring their first car
• Additionally, if you’re flexible about what car you drive or you’re shopping for a new one, this can help too
• What you need to do is find an unusual car
• Although it might sound strange, there’s solid logic behind it
• Since insurance is based on statistics,
  • If you’re trying to insure a Vauxhall Corsa 1.2,
  • You’re competing with possibly half a million others insuring the same model—same specs, color, and trim
• Therefore, these common cars like Vauxhall Corsas, Ford Fiestas, Volkswagen Golfs, and Volkswagen Polos
  • Tend to be more expensive to insure
  • Because they’re the most frequently crashed
  • And they’re the most common on the road
• So, the strategy is to find an unusual car
• For example, during my first legitimate year of driving:
  • I bought a Honda Civic for £400
  • But when I tried to insure it, the quote was £3,500
  • Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford the insurance
  • As a result, the car ended up just sitting around

Experience with Renault Twingo GT:

My first legitimate year of insurance, I realized this trick, and I found a very unusual car. I found a Renault Twingo GT. It was a 1.2, it had a little baby turbo, made 100 horsepower, and in London, I got an insurance price of £1,200 on my first year with my license with no no-claims bonus in Warrington of all places. So find an unusual car. If you want a family car, maybe look into a Citroen C4. If you’re a 30-year-old dude, don’t get the Ford Mondeo. Look for something strange, maybe an older Jaguar saloon car. You’d be surprised. Even with the bigger engine, they’re often cheaper to insure.

Most importantly:

If you’re that young driver looking for their first car, just find something weird that not many people are driving because there won’t be as many insurance statistics, and therefore your insurance will be cheaper. If you wanted the absolute cheapest insurance and you just wanted to get on the road, a Peugeot 108 still with the same 1-liter engine, £2,700. That is actually kind of a reasonable price in today’s world for your first car, and this hasn’t even got a named driver on it .

Now, say you didn’t want to drive a Peugeot 108. You wanted something a little bit more fun, a convertible Mazda MX5. A 21-year-old in London in the worst area can insure this for £4,800. And again, this is without even doing all the other little tweaks like adding a named driver and all the other stuff I’m going to mention in this blog. Compare that to £5,800 for a Vauxhall Corsa. Now, I’m not recommending anybody go and actually pay this to drive around in a 1.8 MX5. I’m just showing you what a huge difference it can make. And if you extrapolate this towards your own situation, you can realize that actually, you could drive a much nicer car for less money.

3) Add a Named Driver

This one I love because people think this is so exclusive to new drivers, but it’s really not. Add a named driver to your policy. It doesn’t matter who it is. It can be your mom, your dad, your spouse, your boss from work, a friend—anybody that’s got a long history of driving and could reasonably drive your car at some point in the next year. This is completely legal, and you will find it will slash your insurance cost. Because for whatever reason, when more people use a car, generally, people are a bit more sensible with the car.

4) Rephrase Your Job Title

Again, it can really work for literally anybody that’s looking to insure a car. It doesn’t have to be the young driver. That is to rephrase your job. So, say, for example I will share my experience, there was a while back I was an operations manager. I worked for a tech company. So what I did is, rather than putting down operations manager tech, which had really high insurance premiums for whatever reason—I guess tech guys crash cars—I changed it to operations manager computer services. And for whatever reason, I remember that reduced my insurance premium by like 25%. I think it went down from £1,600 to £1,200. Huge saving for no reason. Tech and computer services is the same thing, but people just put down tech and then they miss out on huge savings on their car insurance.

5) Use Incognito Mode

Now, I’ve got one more, and this one is a game-changer. Make a new email address, install a brand new browser, clear all your cookies, go in incognito mode, and make a new account on the comparison website or insurance website that you’re looking to get a quote on. There is a history of your details on these websites, so they know when you’re going to be looking to buy car insurance. Just do absolutely everything you can to have a fresh slate because it will give a cheaper premium.

Conclusion

I pretty much guarantee one of these tips will reduce your premium if you do it correctly. Maximum points go to somebody who combines all the points together because they’re really designed to all work together. If you can find a way to add all of these different points together, you will maximize how much you reduce your insurance by without doing anything illegal.