I searched but didn’t see any recent posts about car insurance. My insurance carrier is USAA and I have had a great experience with them for many years now. I have two teen drivers that will both be away at school and will not have a car. I just got a quote and the difference between a regular teen driver on policy and the “away at school” discount is negligible. I assumed the difference would be much greater since they will only be driving for the summer and a couple of weeks when the schools have break. Do other insurance companies have better rates? Maybe it’s time to shop around…
Did you ask if they have a “good student” discount? That might cut off a bit too.
I think if they are more than 50 miles away some insurance companies will let you “take” them off for the school year. Our son isn’t 50 miles away plus he has a car so it wouldn’t work for us.
It may have to do with how many cars you have at home. Every car has to have a driver assigned to it. An example would explain it best:
Let’s say it’s just two parents and one child. If there are two cars, a parent is assigned as the driver for each car. When the child goes off to college (if it’s far enough away) then you should get a steep discount on your insurance. However if you have three cars, then the third car will have the child as the assigned driver (yes, he’s far away and not driving it), and your rates won’t change much.
Are you sure? we have USAA & our kids are on the ‘student’ plan for buttons. But, as in @AsleepAtTheWheel’s post, we only have 2 cars, so they are secondary drivers.
@happymomof1 Yes, they are both currently insured with USAA and have that discount and the discount for attending a Driver Training course.
They are both at schools over 100 miles away and not listed as primary driver on any of the cars - we have three. I just realized when I got my renewal info that I never changed their status (they both went away in the Fall) so they are covered as if they were still home and driving. When I just input that they were attending school over 100 miles away the “discount” is only about 15% which doesn’t make any sense. FYI, I have been insured with USAA for over 30 years and haven’t had an auto claim in over a decade so I am puzzled why the rate isn’t lower.
What does this mean?
I know some people with Mercury insurance, take their kids off the policies while they are at school, and add them back on when they are home. Geico doesn’t charge if the student is over 150 miles away at school
Our kids got the away at school discount as well. It was about $200 a year per kid…but every penny counts.
The discount is only on certain fees, not on things like the collision on the car etc. If you already have a low rate, there may not be a lot lower to go. When I origina,ly was looking for insurance, to add them as team drivers on my one, 12 year old car, would have taken me from $700 per year to over $3000! I moved and took them off. They did NOT drive my car because they werent covered. Period. Then I switched to liberty mutual and now for all 3, with them away at school, it’s about $1000 per yea4. Can’t tell how much of a discount because it is a different state, but I’m happy with it.
I did one of those computer chips for a discount and I saved 14%, but it wasn’t like $140, it was only 14% of certain fees, so like about $50 per year.
Ours decreased about 300 per year when they went away to school, Liberty Mutual.
Amica didn’t offer much of a discount, either. I think it depends on the company.
It may depend on the state. I just moved from MN to Washington state, and insurance (even with my kid away at school) is astronomical (in my opinion) in Washington. More than double what I paid for the two of us with the same car (just 1) and kid far away at school. Ugh.
We have Geico, and both our kids were over 100 miles away (I think that was the Geico magic number) at school and I think it was a fairly sizable reduction.
I also received a sizable deduction with GEICO after my son went off to school. Agree with @momof3sons that 100 miles was the threshold. I cannot recall the size of the deduction, but I was very pleasantly surprised.
We just switched to Allstate last year. Our car insurance is much lower for similar coverage; the agent said it was because they did not require a primary driver assigned to every car, so our D away at school thousands of miles away was not assigned to a car. It was a big difference in price for our 3 cars.
Sorry- for buttons meaning for very little! But then our whole premium isn’t very big either.
Some companies are 150 miles away. My daughter is 152 miles away! The other is 2000,so she just squeaked in too
I have two young male drivers and we pay a ridiculous amount for car insurance.
When one sone went away (300+ miles) we got a couple hundred dollar break
We thought of taking him off and putting him back on when he came home, but we never actually did it.
Thanks for the responses. I am still gathering quotes, but Geico’s rate is 1/2 of what I am currently paying - same liability, deductibles, etc. Obviously, insurance carriers are not all the same in how they handle students away at school. I think this is an area where it pays to shop around and compare.