Early Retirement Extreme Forums

My car insurance for liability only with State Farm was $350 every six months. I just switched cars for something similar only newer with a smaller engine and the bill went up by $140 every six months. I got a quote from Progressive through their website and the total bill for six months for the same coverage was $150. That's 1/3 the price. Is State Farm that expensive or is Progressive bad?

I plan to get a few other quotes too. I'd like to save money but it's also not worth paying for insurance that isn't going to cover me if there is a collision.

Its not unusual to get a big discount for changing companies. The basic business model for car insurance is to lure new customers in with low rates and then jack them up as time goes on and hope the returning customer just pays the bill and doesn't bother to shop around. It works for the most part, which is why they all do it.

My rate with Geico is ~190 every 6 months for two vehicles, so 85/car. Been that way for the past 5 years. Should be cutting that in half soon....

Not sure if their advertisements still run the same but progressive used to be big on showing you their rates and their competitors rates. My understanding is they did this as a form of customer selection, if your driving record made you seem like someone who would need to file claims the price would be high and if that scared you off that was fine by them. So if you fit the pedigree of their low risk stable of customers that could explain the low price.

I think the pricing policies for insurance companies are so different and complex that they can vary wildly depending on your circumstances. When I had a car I received a huge discount by checking all the prices. No difference in quality. Since I always had cheap cars I also cut costs by having only third party insurance.

Turns out I wasn't reading my state farm bill carefully. I have comp and collision and towing and rental car company coverage. When I got a progressive quote I had none of those things, and I was using a lower estimate of my miles driven per year and progressive defaults to much lower coverage limits than state farm.

Also, progressives quotes include a one time $50 off discount. Once it was an apples to apples comparison state farm was within $20 of progressive so I stayed with state farm.

Gilberto de Piento wrote:My car insurance for liability only with State Farm was $350 every six months.

For another comparison, mine is about $300/6 mo for enhanced liability with All State, but a) I've also agreed to constant monitoring with their Drivewise tech and b) I live in a big city.

This was a pretty good MMM post on insurance generally: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/06/ ... d-at-math/