In addition to the other topics on meatball Thursday, Mike and I covered car insurance. I saw some info today from Clark.com which reminded me I meant to include this, oops.
Why Is My Insurance So High?
I wrote in my Get Angry post about a huge increase this year in the price of my car insurance renewal.
I did lots of shopping and asked my insurance agent to shop as well, and even though my renewal was much much higher than last year, no one else had a better deal.
How can that be?
I got lots of cryptic explanations, but after doing some reading and thinking about my experiences, I narrowed it down to a couple of things.
Repairs
Don’t blame your repair shop, blame your lawyer. Next time you drive by one of those billboards advertising “Have you been in an accident?” give them the one fingered salute.
Why, you ask?
Last year, my wife scraped against a cement barrier in a parking lot. She had a small scrape along both passenger doors.
In the old days, the repair shop would put in some bondo, sand it, paint it and call it a day. $500 tops.
I drove to my regular body shop and I got a quote for $10,000 to repair.
Yikes!
I asked if he had any bondo out back, we could probably take care of this together in under an hour.
His response was that because there have been so many lawsuits against repair shops, they’re ultra-conservative and err on the side of caution and replace v. repair.
He told me that if he repaired this and we were in a subsequent collision, we could claim that the structural integrity of the door had been compromised because he hadn’t repaired it correctly.
So, it’s too risky to fix stuff, so we replace it. My insurance company pays $9,500 more than they would have in the past. Who do you think pays for this? Not them.
Tariffs
Tariffs are a factor. While I think the nation has tariff overload and no longer knows which end is up, we’ve still got new tariffs in place that weren’t around last year that are adding to the cost of stuff.
Companies are talking about this in their quarterly earnings calls, but the market refuses to listen. Some are listening today as the market drops, but for some unknown reason, the S&P is still near all-time highs.
Anyway, tariffs matter and they’re making parts more expensive, and we’re paying for that in our rates.
Driving Habits
I’m quoting this verbatim because this one shocked me.
I agree that roads are fuller than ever. Even on weekends, it takes me an hour and 45 minutes to visit my mom. It used to regularly take an hour. If everyone’s working from home why are the highways (and golf courses) packed?
I’m sure distracted driving plays into this. It seems like every one I pass is looking down and futzing with their phone.
I don’t care how bad self-driving cars are. They can’t be worse than the average meathead on the roads today.
Wrap Up
My insurance is up over 30% from last year. Yup, I’m angry – read the post. I was hoping to stick it to my insurance company and take my business elsewhere, but that would have cost me more.
I bundle home car and umbrella insurance and my agent told me that if I changed companies, they’d likely come out and do a home inspection. Then they find a bunch of stuff you need to fix and you end up spending more than you saved.
