Keeping Your Car Insured after You Lost Your Job

Posted by, David Brenner

In order to drive your car legally, you need car insurance, so unless you intend to sell your car and become a full-time pedestrian and public transit guru, you probably want to keep at least minimal car insurance. But there is a good chance you can scale back your policy temporarily, and maybe even permanently in some cases.

Most states require liability insurance, although many people choose comprehensive in order to be better covered. As a last resort you could go back to the minimum amount of auto insurance, but looking at your policy and what portions you use and don’t use might make that unnecessary. Here are some questions you can ask yourself that might lead to finding lower rates.

Who’s on Your Policy?

Many times people will actually forget to take people off of their insurance policy who no longer drive their car, such as college students. If your son or daughter is away at school and never drives your car anymore, there is no reason to keep them on your policy. Just make sure that if you do take them off, they don’t drive your car on weekends or breaks when they are home. Having unauthorized drivers driving your car can void your policy. If they are still driving your car, and really need to be, you can look at their driving and school record. If they haven’t had an accident or are getting good grades, you may be able to get your rate reduced. Also, if there is someone on your policy who might be driving your rates up due to an accident or even a DUI, you may want to consider removing them your policy, especially if driving your car isn’t necessary for them to do.

Eliminate Bells and Whistles

Insurance agents tend to sell insurance, and in doing so they may have pointed out a few “must haves” when you were picking out your policy. Personal injury protection may be one of those things, but there is a good chance that you or your spouse may have other insurance or can get less expensive coverage, such as a life or health insurance policy, that will still cover you in case of personal injury even if that injury occurs somewhere other than in your car. There’s no need for double coverage. Towing insurance may also be something you can eliminate by instead opting to join Triple A, who will be able to better serve you in the event that your car breaks down or you are stranded.

Choosing a higher deductible may also be an option that could reduce your car insurance rate to a manageable level. While the thought of having to pay more in the event of an accident may seem overwhelming, it may be better than not being able to afford your insurance at all.

How Much Are You Driving?

If you are doing a lot of driving in your search for a job, it’s possible that being out of a job may have you driving more than ever, but if you are finding that your car stays in your garage a lot more while you are scrounging up bus change in order to save money, you might be due for a reduction in your auto insurance rate. Insurance companies often have lower rates for those who don’t drive their cars in excess of a certain number of miles.

Have You Been Good?

Has it been a long time since you’ve been involved in an accident or had any type of traffic ticket? Are you a student with good grades? Did you turn 25 or older? Are you parking your car in a garage or in a safer zip code than you used to? Checking on all of these things and more may make it possible for your auto insurance company to reduce your rate.

Shop Around – and Let Your Current Insurance Company Know About It

Looking around for quotes from other providers will often find you a lower rate than what you are paying. Let your current provider know what’s been offered and there’s a good chance they will match it, beat it, or at least reduce your rate. There’s nothing like threatening to reduce or eliminate your coverage to motivate an insurance company to suddenly find some secret discount that no one seemed to know about.

Keep Your Nose Clean

As in many situations, your best defense is a good offense. Drive safely and sober. Don’t speed. Don’t park illegally. Wear your seatbelt and make sure everyone else in the car does too. You also want to make sure you are being truthful and forthright with your insurance company. Don’t tell them you only drive 100 miles a month if you are driving 1,000. Getting caught in what may seem like a harmless white lie could void your policy.

This guest post was written and provided by freelance writer David Brenner who works with Hartford Auto Insurance for people who have lost their jobs.

Saving Money with Smartphone Internet Use

Posted by, Simon Drew

Mobile phones have not just increased their technological prowess and abilities in recent years as they have also increased in price. Although phone contracts have always been costly, and in many ways there are now much cheaper options available, there are also many more ways that you can run up large bills when using a phone.

Several years back all you really needed to worry about was how much time you spent talking and perhaps how many SMS messages you sent. But now with smartphones increasingly becoming the most common means of accessing the internet they have opened up a whole new world of costs to look out for.

For starters, while most modern smartphones will come with some form of internet connectivity, most often through 3G or Wi-Fi, the phone or iPhone contract you use will not necessarily come with any internet support. This does not matter when using a Wi-Fi connection, as this is free to connect to with any phone, but when using 3G services you may be charged.

Where 3G is available the network/carrier will often provide some form of data allowance for using the connection. And here is one of the main problems. It is easy to keep track of how many minutes you spend talking or how many messages you send, but keeping track of your internet usage is not so easy when it is measured in megabytes rather than time.

You may be provided with 100MB of data allowance, but is this enough? Is it too much? How does 100MB translate into everyday usage? When using the internet at home or at work we are not typically aware of how much data is being transferred in the process, and so measuring an allowance in this way can be confusing for many people, particularly people taking out their first phone contract.

If you don’t pick enough data allowance then you may end up paying some steep additional fees each month. Pick too much and you may be unnecessarily paying too much for your contract, when you could save money by picking a cheaper contract with less data allowance.

While there are some tools available online to help you determine how much data allowance you may need there are also some other points worth considering. Firstly, many smartphones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry’s and those running Android now come with app stores, where you can download and install your own apps to customize your phone. In some instances these apps may have access to the internet, and may be sending and receiving data that you are not aware of.

These may be only small nuggets of data, but over time this small trickle can develop into a significant proportion of your monthly data allowance. Such apps that may do this could include things like the Android Facebook wallpaper widget that will constantly be updating itself with new status updates from your online friends. One way to avoid apps and widgets such as these eating away at your data allowance is to turn off 3G support when not in use, and simply rely on Wi-Fi connections where available.

So if you are able to connect to a Wi-Fi connection, either at home, work or via an open hotspot in public, then this should always be preferred to using your 3G data allowance. As well as saving you money in the long run Wi-Fi connections will offer much faster connection speeds than 3G is able to, and so is a better option for connecting from your phone anyway. New 4G connections should go some way to improving mobile connection speeds when Wi-Fi is not available, but much of the advice regarding 3G still applies to 4th Generation connections.