Choose Your Car Carefully

Getting car insurance for your 17 year old can be quite an endeavor. If nothing else, it can be very expensive. There are things you can do to get your teenager car insurance  cheaper than if you just stumble blindly to your agent’s office and blurt out “Johnny just turned 17, I need some insurance!”

Some of the things fall squarely on the shoulders of Johnny himself (or Jeanette, perhaps). No matter if your teen is a boy or girl, they can help you help them by doing the following to help lower their rates:

Get good grades – Almost every insurance company gives a discount for good students. This can be substantial. To qualify for a good student discount, your child should maintain at least a 3.0 (on a 4 point scale) GPA. Not only will that help them get into a better college, but it will; save you money on their insurance; possibly up to 25%, which is no small potatoes.

Drive a sensible car – Cars likely to be hot-rodded, stolen, or are expensive to repair are commensurately more expensive to insure. If you teen happens to be the one driving this can take on eve greater significance. At age 25 your insurance rates typically go down 10 – 15%, so if you want a fast car, wait until you’re 25 years old to buy it. (NOTE: Some companies are giving a larger break at 30 years old now, rather than 25)

At 17, you’ll want something like a Saturn. Both the ION and L300 have shown to be among the least expensive vehicles to insure. If plastic body panels just don’t fly for you, try a Jeep Liberty Sport, or a 2 year old Toyota Camry. While a Camry may not be what you’d like to drive, they are great cars, and they’ll save you on insurance.

Keep your deductibles high – I’ve said this in other posts, but in most cases you don’t want to turn in a minor accident to the insurance company anyway. If you do, you can kiss cheap insurance goodbye for a few years, at the least. Usually a $1,000 deductible will suffice.

Keep your driving to a minimum. – You can get better rates if you drive fewer miles. If you only use your car for transportation to work and school, you can save money too. Talk with your agent to get the details.

Make sure you shop around. - There’s nothing like comparison shopping to save money, and this is definitely true with car insurance for young people. Some companies treat young drivers with more leniency than do others, so it behooves you to check. Checking all the hundreds of different companies available can be a difficult and time consuming process. Most people have better things to do than making dozens of phone calls to check insurance rates for their children.

Thankfully, technology has an answer.  Companies such as InsureMe.com will check your specifics with dozens of companies to get the best rate for your specific situation and get you multiple quotes to choose from. Click here now to have them check how much money you can save by comparison shopping for insurance.

Getting your 17 year old car insurance is going to be expensive, but maybe it doesn’t have to be so expensive….