I also pay monthly even though I can easily afford to pay annually. But it's the psychological hit of those huge lump sum payments. They hit too hard. Feels easier to take when they are spread out.
Auto ins just doubled!
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I also pay monthly even though I can easily afford to pay annually. But it's the psychological hit of those huge lump sum payments. They hit too hard. Feels easier to take when they are spread out.
So funnel monthly payments to yourself into a vehicle "escrow" and use that to pay the annual premium. No different than how most people pay property taxes. Your car escrow could cover insurance, registration, maintenance...really anything else you would want to throw at it. Then all of those remain fixed expenses in your monthly budget.
JHZR2
Staff member
They don’t do it in NJ, they did it in dc/MD.
As I’ve said before, I’ve seen more stop signs and red light run through in the last six months of being in dc a few days a week, as I’ve seen in my whole life living in NYC and Philadelphia metro areas.
I have been shopping around right now for home and auto insurance because my current policies are up for renewal April 1st. My house is going up $700 for the year and auto is staying roughly the same but it did go up $500 last year. Both have doubled in the past three years.
I have shopped two other companies so far and one was going to be $1,300 more a year for the vehicles and about a $100 less for the house. The other company was going to save me about $344 combined a year so not much of a savings and probably not enough to make me switch.
I have no tickets or accidents on my record and I'm 58 years old. I have only made one claim on my house in the almost 33 years that I have owned it and that was in the first year of ownership.
Being retired and on a fix income, they will eventually price me out of the market, or I will have to go back to work to afford insurance. My insurance guy basically told me that we are all paying for all of the natural disasters that occur all over the country as well as all of the uninsured people out there that are involved in accidents even though when you first get insurance, it's based on your particular home and vehicles and what kind of driving record you have. There is no end in sight.
I have shopped two other companies so far and one was going to be $1,300 more a year for the vehicles and about a $100 less for the house. The other company was going to save me about $344 combined a year so not much of a savings and probably not enough to make me switch.
I have no tickets or accidents on my record and I'm 58 years old. I have only made one claim on my house in the almost 33 years that I have owned it and that was in the first year of ownership.
Being retired and on a fix income, they will eventually price me out of the market, or I will have to go back to work to afford insurance. My insurance guy basically told me that we are all paying for all of the natural disasters that occur all over the country as well as all of the uninsured people out there that are involved in accidents even though when you first get insurance, it's based on your particular home and vehicles and what kind of driving record you have. There is no end in sight.
Sure, if you make it that way. But Econ is a science that studies the distribution of scarce resources.
Smith also argued government (socialism) must provide things too big or too important for private enterprise.
Mine went up quite a bit recently at my policy renewal. They sent me a letter informing me. It's a company that just operates in WV and shouldn't be influenced by national disasters like Allstate or State Farm.
Also body shops are in short supply. Nobody wants to do that work anymore.
Doubled? Consider yourself fortunate. Has anyone mentioned this? California just quadrupled.
edyvw
$50 site donor 2025
Government =socialism? Since when?
This is real. Ex-wife got hit by a hit and run and the guy is uninsured. Cop went to his home and he just hide inside. Nothing we could do other than file claims to AAA's uninsured motorist part of the policy. They tried to deny the claim because it has to find that guy's insurance company and they send them a decline letter.... Sure that's how people are uninsured, with a company.... eventually they decided to just pay up and not raise our rates, don't let those agents and claim adjusters tell you otherwise, educate yourself before any accident.
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Sorry didn't read through the 4 pages, was there any specific component that caused the increase, or every component doubled. I unfortuntately had an accident in 2010 with a loaner car, and it didn't double, it went up by about 30% with the lizard co. upon renewal. The most surprising thing is I switched to the mayhem/hands people, and with the accident factored in, the rate was lower than the lizard co. pre accident. So good chance you can get it back or closer to what it was.
You are paying monthly with a fee, this is like having an interest on a loan you pay off over 12 month. I don't think lum sum vs monthly is better one way or another but you have to look at your interest rate on this.
$6 * 12 = 72, and $1000 over 12 month is averaged to be 6 month since some is earlier and some is later. $72/1000 = 7.2% for a 6 month loan can be cheaper than credit card but more expensive than a mortgage. It is a better investment to pay lum sum than a CD or 12 month Treasury bond but depending on your luck, may be better or worse than an index fund after tax.
If you have a $5k bill and still the same fixed $6 fee, then it is a very good deal.
Aha! I knew I would trap somebody; didn't think it would be you...
Let's see, the Army comes to mind...
Public education perhaps?
Roads we drive on?
Again, Smith argued there are some things in society that are too big or too important to be left up to markets.
I also notice a lot of things are not always guaranteed on the insurance pricing.
1) My home and auto being from separate companies are actually significantly cheaper than from the same company. Some just don't want to be in both industries and some were not very good at both.
2) You may find some companies count different things than others and you end up in different risk pool in different companies. I was quoted more expensive most of the time in Gecko than BBB, because Gecko think of many way to make you higher risk than BBB being more lenient.
3) BBB doesn't want to insure my home somehow and their rate was at one point almost double vs the liquid metal company, the difference is so big that the BBB agent even called me to check if it is a typo. On the other hand in one condo the non-conservative insurance company ended up being cheaper than nation narrow because .... they don't count the public area or structural part of the condo being not a construction cost they need to cover and treat it like a single family home....
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It's really bad in PA. In Phila I've mentioned the quintuple whammy--no license, no reggie, no inspection, no insurance, limo tints, all ok--not allowed to stop someone for those.
In the suburbs, bad. My buddy was driving his mom's car and got sideswiped by an unlicensed driver where the vehicle was you guessed it not registered not insured not inspected and had limo tints. the other person simply drove away after the police took a report. My buddy was screaming and livid. The cop said, "We don't do anything about those violations today. You can pursue it civilly if you want to." What did he mean when he said today, did they do something yesterday? I know when I was in college my buddy's parents' car had an expired tag in NY from MASS. It was towed away.
In those places I would only drive throwaway cars than good cars with good insurances.
When I came to the US as a teenager I wonder why everyone use horrible BIC pens than the better one like Pilots and Zebra from Japan, until I realized most are given away as near free and just left in public places for people to grab at work, so they have to keep them just .... not that good but still ok ....
edyvw
$50 site donor 2025
You did not trap anyone.
That does not equate to socialism. Socialism, at its core, means owning means of production. The US does not own companies. Closest to socialism would be bailing out GM and Chrysler. Even nationalization in the case of war or other emergencies does not really equate to socialism. Smith did not argue that. Smith argued that the state must provide security (military) for capitalism to flourish. Public education and roads are basically an evolution of his theory of capitalism.
It is a completely different thing that 99% of people think socialism is everything the state does: you can't drive drunk: socialism. You must obey the speed limit: socialism. You must pay taxes: socialism.
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From my understanding it's just very complicated but there are a few main factors.
The biggest one is, IMO, that for both home and auto insurance, the more expensive it is to resolve a claim, the more the insurance will have to cost for them to still make a profit. I don't know much about homes, but from the research and articles and data out there, in the past decade, prices of everything (both materials and labor) have gone up significantly. When it comes to cars, it's the same thing - parts and labor have gone way up. And, the cars themselves have got more complicated and more expensive to repair.
For example, let's compare my previous car, a 2017 Bolt, to my new car, a 2024 Prologue. Let's say an accident damages the front bumper, a wheel and tire, the windshield, and the side mirror. I have no idea if that's a realistic scenario but it's easy to compare.
Bolt: front bumper is just a bumper, windshield is just a windshield, it was a 17" wheel, tires were fairly cheap (and you could replace two to match), and the mirror's a mirror.
Prologue: front bumper has radar sensors. Windshield has a front facing camera for driver assistance which will need calibration, wheels are 19" so cost a bit more, tires are vastly more expensive and it's AWD so they need to all match so now you're buying four tires. Oh and the mirror has a blind spot thingy so I bet that adds to the price. It's also a lease and Honda leasing requires OEM parts to be used. On a used Bolt I financed the insurance company could have used aftermarket parts.
Now you can see why insurance for the Bolt was about $200/mo while insurance for the Prologue is almost $300/mo. In the end, I bet any repair on the Prologue would be 2x to 4x as much as the Bolt (plus it is also worth about 4x as much if they had to total it), so it's actually a better value to insure overall.
And for car insurance specifically, the amount of people without insurance is another huge problem. If an unlicensed, uninsured, illegal immigrant crashes into my car, and totals it, my insurance company will pay it, but who are they going to go after? The lease buyout is like $40K on my car, let's say that's how much it would cost them. And that's assuming I have no medical issues or anything. Now, if that same driver was properly insured... well, they'd be out nothing because the other persons insurance would end up paying for it. We need to enforce our laws which require insurance. A guy without insurance crashed into my buddy's Corvette and was like "omg I have no insurance what do we do" so my buddy called the cops. They refused to come because nobody was hurt! In my mind, anyone pulled over or encountered in an accident that doesn't have insurance and/or license needs to be cited, have their license suspended if they have one, and have their vehicle impounded until they can provide a valid drivers license and proof of insurance. This would overall lower the cost of insurance for everyone.
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