Top 7 Ways to Get Affordable Teen Driver Insurance
It’s not impossible to find affordable young driver motor insurance, just as it’s not impossible to find young drivers that aren’t a terror behind the wheel. It’s a matter of convincing your provider that they won’t be putting themselves at risk by extending your young driver car insurance coverage, while taking all the necessary steps to make the most of the available discounts that are out there. These are 7 of the most effective ways of doing that.
- Keep your kid on the straight and narrow. Insurance companies offer “good student discounts” to teenage drivers that maintain a B or higher grade point average. Ask about this when comparing young driver car insurance quotes.
- Consider raising your deductible. This is only a good idea if you have the means of coming up with your deductible if and when the time comes to exercise your insurance—hopefully that’ll never come to pass, but you can’t approach car insurance like you would a game of craps. Raising your deductible will dramatically lower your premiums and could make paying for young driver motor insurance a little easier than you were led to believe was possible.
- Choose your teenager’s vehicle carefully. Placing great importance on the first four words of that sentence is what makes all the difference: choose your teenager’s vehicle. Most young drivers, if left to their own devices and with the capacity to afford any vehicle they could, would probably pick something that would drive your insurance premiums through the roof. Ensure this doesn’t happen by insisting that you’re involved. Keep this in mind: used cars are generally cheaper to insure than new cars, but if they lack certain safety features like air bags and anti-lock brakes, you could be putting savings ahead of safety.
- Ask about a low mileage discount. With the likelihood that your teenage driver will be using his or her license to drive back and forth to school, they could qualify for low mileage savings.
- Enroll your teenager in a driver’s ed class. In addition to the learning they receive at school, you could score your kid some bonus points with your car insurance company if they take supplemental classes that focus on defensive driving and driving safety.
- Help them establish credit. Insurance companies view customers with good credit scores as lower risks, but no credit is often seen as bad credit. Consider getting a secondary credit card in your teenager’s name to help them establish their credit file, but only do so if you’re confident in their ability to spend responsibly on things like gas and necessary car maintenance.
- Ask your insurance company how they assign drivers. Some insurance companies automatically assign the highest risk person in your household (your teenager) to the highest cost car to insure. If your teenage driver doesn’t have his or her own vehicle, you may be able to get around this by helping them purchase their own and having them assigned specifically to that car.
