Why You Should Shop Around for Car Insurance Right Now
If you haven’t shopped for auto insurance recently, you might want to spend an hour or so checking out other deals. It pays to review your policy and check what’s out there.
A new survey from insuranceQuotes.com shows that 66 percent of policyholders never or only rarely check to see if they could get the same or better coverage at a better price. The average American driver has been with the same auto insurance company for 12 years, and some have stayed with the same insurer for two to three decades, or longer.
Related: 5 Ways to Lower Your Car Insurance—Right Now
Millennials age 18 to 29 and senior citizens number among those least likely to shop around for auto insurance. At least six in 10 millennials with auto insurance assume you have to wait until your renewal date to switch insurance companies. And they’re not alone: 46 percent of Americans do not know that you can switch your auto insurance company at any time.
One of the reasons auto insurance may not be a priority for consumers? Auto pay options, while convenient, could be keeping car insurance payments and rates out of sight—and out of mind. Human nature and procrastination is another. “People think that it’s a task that might be difficult and time-consuming,” says senior analyst Laura Adams, “but it could be as simple as going to a website like insurancequotes.com, putting your information in for a free quote, and getting multiple quotes back. There’s no financial risk in looking for a new rate.”
Just spending an hour once a year to compare quotes from three different companies could potentially save you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Related: A Quick Way to Save Big on Your Insurance
Experts suggest checking your car insurance rates the same way you would remember to change the oil in your car or swap the air filters in your home. Here are some tips to get started:
- Ask your current insurer if there are any company discounts you might be eligible for but don’t know about, such as the good-student discount. For college and grad students who have a B-average or better (or their parents) that could result in a significant discount.
- If you find a better deal, tell your current insurance company that you’re thinking of switching unless they can match the new offer or exceed it.
- If your current insurer refuses to negotiate, sign up for the new policy first—and then cancel the old one. “You always want to make sure you’re covered,” says Evans. “Insurance companies do not like to see a gap in coverage, and your rates could rise.”
- To get a wider variety of quotes, get online quotes from insurance company websites, consult with an independent agent, and look into companies that don’t use independent agents as well.
“Being married can cause your rate to decrease,” says Evan. “Marriage, getting good grades--these are all things that you have to self-report, which is why I recommend revisiting auto insurance at least once a year, as your life situation could change.”
Chart of the Day: Why US Fertility Rates Are Falling
U.S. fertility rates have fallen to record lows for two straight years. “Because the fertility rate subtly shapes many major issues of the day — including immigration, education, housing, the labor supply, the social safety net and support for working families — there’s a lot of concern about why today’s young adults aren’t having as many children,” Claire Cain Miller explains at The New York Times’ Upshot. “So we asked them.”
Here are some results of the Times’ survey, conducted with Morning Consult. Read the full Times story for more details.
A Record Low 47% of US Adults Say They're 'Extremely Proud' to Be American
Gallup says that, for the first time in the 18 years it’s been asking U.S. adults how proud they are to be Americans, fewer than half say they are "extremely proud." Just 47 percent now say they’re extremely proud, down from 70 percent in 2003.
Another 25 percent say they’re “very proud” — but the combined 72 percent who say they’re extremely or very proud is also the lowest Gallup has recorded. Pride levels among liberals and Democrats have plunged since 2017. Overall, 74 percent of Republicans and just 32 percent of Democrats call themselves “extremely proud” to be American.
Pfizer Has Raised Prices on 100 of Its Products
Weeks after President Trump said that drugmakers were about to implement “voluntary massive drops in prices” — reductions that have yet to materialize — Pfizer has raised prices on 100 of its products, The Financial Times’s David Crow reports:
“The increases were effective as of July 1 and in most cases were more than 9 per cent — well above the rate of inflation in the US, which is running at about 2 per cent. … Pfizer, the largest standalone drugmaker in the US, did decrease the prices of five products by between 16 per cent and 44 per cent, according to the figures.”
Crow notes that Pfizer also raised prices on many of its medicines in January, meaning that some prices have been hiked by nearly 20 percent this year. The drugmaker said that it was only changing prices on 10 percent of its medicines and that list prices did not reflect what most patients or insurers actually paid. The net price increase after rebates and discounts was expected to be in the “low single digits,” the company told the FT.
Chart of the Day: Pass-Through Tax Deductions Made Easy
The Republican tax overhaul was supposed to simplify the tax code, but most experts say it fell well short of the goal. Martin Sullivan, chief economist at Tax Analysts, tweeted out a chart of the analysis required to determine whether income qualifies for the passthrough tax deduction of 20 percent, and as you’ll see, it’s anything but simple.
A Conservative Bashes GOP Dysfunction on Spending Cuts
Brian Riedl, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, offers a blistering critique of congressional Republican’s problems cutting spending:
Since the Republicans took the House in 2011, nearly every annual budget blueprint has promised to balance the budget within a decade with anywhere from $5 trillion to $8 trillion in spending cuts. And yet, you may have noticed, the budget has not moved towards balance. This is because the budget merely sets a broad fiscal goal. To actually cut spending, Congress must follow up with specific legislation to reform Medicare, Medicaid, and all the other targeted programs. In reality, most lawmakers who pass these budgets have no intention whatsoever of cutting this spending. As soon as the budget is passed, the targets are forgotten. The spending-cut legislation is never even drafted, much less voted on.
The annual budget exercise is thus a cynical exercise in symbolism. Congress calculates how much spending must be cut over ten years to balance the budget. Then they pass legislation setting a goal of cutting that amount. Then they move on to other business. It’s like a baseball team announcing that they voted to win the next World Series, and then not showing up to play the season.
Read the full piece at National Review.