$2000/year sounds right if you live in NJ and have a son. $140/year as threeks said? In my dreams. And people wonder why we all escape NJ as soon as we can?
But I digress–we also were able to get a college rate for our kids and were able to insure them at a significant reduction.
^^^ Yeah, I pay less to insure 4 cars in NC than my brother pays to insure one in MA. I can’t imagine how parents in high car insurance states can ever afford to add their kids!
We live in CT which is not a low insurance rate state. The cost to add DS to our policy took our breath away. The cost to add DD was minuscule. More than 15 years ago…but still…
But yes…you need to know the market prices. When DS used one of our cars in NC during grad school, the costs for that car dropped significantly because that is where the car was garaged. Our insurance company allowed this…some don’t.
We switched our car insurance company after our D got her official license because the old one (even though we were with this company for over 20 years) wanted to charge extra $1,000/half year for my D’s coverage. We sent a letter to the insurer explaining that our D was going to a college 600+ miles away and would not drive for the next few years (even in summer or winter break), but the insurer would not budge or gave good student/infrequent driver discount.
We had to find a more premium oriented insurer, but its policy was to cover the car and not just the driver (although each car has to have a primary driver associates with), so each house members and even infrequent guests can use the car and be covered. So unless, we bought another car with our D designated as the primary diver, she was not going to charge extra for being a driver’s license owner. We ended up paying a couple hundreds more each half year for the premium insurance company’s policy and allowed our D to drive during the breaks. The difference was about $1,500/year difference. Now I receive monthly our old insurer’s junk mail to ask us to go back with discounts, but I just dump them into the recycle bin.
Good lord, some of these premiums. We only paid 190/mo to insure 5 cars in Ohio.
$3300 a year to insure an 07 Camry and an 09 Murano in south Florida. It’s nuts here.
Florida drivers are terrible- no wonder rates are high (Tampa for 6 years now). You sometimes wonder if cars have turn signals based on how little people use them. And so much more. I bet all of the up north east coast drivers who come here either were bad drivers or left their rules behind… Plus immigrants. I could go on and on about pet peeves.
What? You’re saying that our smaller friends, or to use your term, “little people”, use turn signals differently than taller folks? How size-ist of you!
I think I’m hilarious. Please forgive me if I’m mistaken.
Talk about crazy, live in Louisiana and pay over 14K a year for insurance with 2 teenage drivers… and yes have priced shopped companies. Ours was actually a little higher until daughter took her car to another state for college this year, so even if they take a car, if the other state has lower car insurance premiums than your home, you may save some money by calling insurance company and discussing it
Our company had a suspend option when D was away at school. She was still a permitted driver for short visits home. Only time I had to reactivate completely was one summer she had a job in town.
“little people” never entered my mind. Gotta love our English language. Little = seldom to be proper I guess (those A’s in English were a long time ago).
Definitely check with your insurance agent about the gone far away to school college kid discounts. You want him to be able to be covered when home for breaks.
Yes, GEICO has an option if the college your kid attends is more than 100 miles away. Basically, lower premium and the kid can drive when home during holidays without reactivating the insurance.
My kids were each at school more than 100 miles away. I kept them on even though they never drove my car (it’s a manual, so one can’t drive it and the other had another option when visiting). I just took one off and saved $100/yr. The other will come off in Jan as she’s graduating next week and moving away. Hoping that’s another $100!
I heard an argument to keep the kids on the insurance under the discounted 150 miles away from home exception: when it’s time for the kids to apply for car insurance on their own, the previous record of no accident will help them with premium. Don’t know if true though.