Save money on family car insurance

If you have a family, the chances are that you will welcome any opportunity to save a bit of money. For many, car insurance is a key family expense. This is particularly true if you run more than one vehicle, a vehicle in one of the higher insurance categories or if you have young people in the family who are newly qualified drivers or likely to become so shortly. Fortunately, there are ways of saving money on family car insurance. Some may take a little time and effort, but the savings can be considerable.

Tactics to try

Shop around. This is an obvious tactic but it is surprising how many people simply renew their car insurance automatically, year after year. You can use online comparison sites, but few of these will scan every single one of the available providers, and some of the bigger insurance companies do not quote anywhere but on their own sites and/or by telephone, so it can still be helpful to phone around and use more than one comparison site.

Take out more than one policy. Holding multiple insurance policies with one company can save serious money. Very often the policies need not all be for vehicles or vehicles of the same type. Many insurers will offer ‘bulk buy’ discounts if you also have home contents, buildings or other insurance with them, whilst others will give you money off for insuring more than one car. Similarly, many companies will give lower priced quotes to people wanting to insure another type of vehicle, such as a motorcycle, as well as a car. However, this type of offer does not negate the need to shop around: two policies from lower-priced insurers may still work out cheaper than a multi-vehicle or multi-policy arrangement from an expensive provider.

Pay upfront. Paying your insurance in one lump sum may be painful initially but can lead to considerable savings in the long term. Work out how much you can save in any given year by moving from monthly to annual payments, and then multiply that by the number of years that you are likely to drive for. Still not convinced? Perhaps you can make further savings by paying by cheque, direct debit or debit card rather than by credit card.

Add another (good and experienced) driver to your policy. A second named driver with an exemplary record can bring your premiums down. Of course, the opposite is likely to be true if you add your learner-driver or recently-qualified-to-drive children to your policy, so ideally they should have their own insurance. However, the often prohibitive price of this means that many parents take a temporary ‘insurance hit’ when their offspring first take to the road.

What not to do

There is more you can do to drive down family car insurance, such as driving a smaller vehicle, raising your excess and not making modifications to your car. However, some steps, such as ‘fudging’ the precise nature of your occupation, your address or the people who will actually be driving the vehicle, are to be avoided at all costs. Not only are they very likely to be discovered in the event of a claim (and thus cause it to be refused), they are also fraudulent.

This article was written for eBest Cars  by Car Finance 247. You can find more motoring advice from them here.