NYT: Welcome to the Era of the $20,000 Family Car Insurance Bill

Parent Cafe
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“Have several children, a driveway full of cars and a few moving violations?”

Yep, now THAT’s a scenario that the typical American family faces on a regular basis. You know, having enough money to pay for cars for every one of your four under 20 kids, besides each of you having your own car.

Of course, to make sure that we understand that this is an issue that the American Middle Class will relate to, they mention "One Long Island father I spoke to this week had three young men in the mix, expensive cars, an accident on the household ledger and a moving violation, too. "

Because after all, what American family with three male children DOESN’T own “Expensive cars” for each child and parent, and have a moving violation or two, amirite?

I’m sorry, but the amount of privilege that oozes from that article is absolutely breathtaking. It should be enshrined next to the articles about families of three who are whining about how difficult their lives are trying to scrape by on a measly $250,000 a year salary.

I mean, insurance companies are out of control, but the people who are suffering aren’t families who are wealthy enough to afford expensive cars for each of their three or four kids.

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Yes, we are mostly ultra polite drivers. At a four way stop…you go, no you go, now we’ll all sit and wait. :rofl: Funniest thing was in a crowded Whole Foods parking lot, two drivers arriving at the same time for one spot, playing rock, paper, scissors for the spot. :blush:

But I do think that car theft is increasing the rates.

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Also, catalytic converter theft is likely to be also increasing rates since the damage done by the thefts can be considerably higher than just having to replace the converter. Rodents sometimes also like nibbling on the eco-friendly parts that cars are made of nowadays and can also require expensive repairs, especially in more wooded areas.

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We had 2 young male drivers and a very low speed collision soon after first driver got license. Our insurance went up to about $6K when both were on it, and that was 10 years ago. We bought our son a used Scion, not realizing that because it was a 2 door, it was considered a sports car. The insurance on that car alone, was $2800, and he had a perfect driving record.

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A Scion tC is not actually that sporty, but probably attracts risky drivers because it looks sporty. Attracting risky drivers results in higher insurance losses.

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Yes! That is so true! A family with multiple kids where each kid has their own car to drive? That IS a major priviledge and it’s also technically a choice too. Parents are NOT required to buy or provide a seperate car for their kids to drive.

Also, if my kids got any tickets/moving violations, they were required to pay for that themselves. If they couldn’t pay for it in full at the time, H and I would loan them the money and they’d have to pay us back. If they got more than 1 ticket/moving violation a year, they lost the priviledge of driving for 3 weeks. Any more tickets/moving violations than that in a year, you loose the priviledge of driving for 6 months. If they wanted to avoid loosing the priviledge of driving, they could pay for all gas, registration, insurance and maitenance for their cars. If they’re old enough and responsible enough to drive, they are old enough to know the rules of the road. And if they got a DUI, they loose the privilege to drive indefinitely (as long as H and I are helping to pay for the car and everything that goes with it).

If it was an accident that wasn’t their fault, they would not have to pay for it.

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Not required, but sometimes it’s necessary. This summer I had 3 of my kids home for the summer, 1 had several jobs, 1 had an internship 55 minutes away, 1 had a clinical 3 days a week, 12 hours a day. We had gotten away with only having 4 cars in the past for 5, but it wasn’t easy. I have my vehicle, H has his, and the kids can use our extra ones. They can own a car when they buy a car (the 2 oldest live elsewhere and purchased their vehicles).

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True, but it’s still a privilege. And it may be necessary, but there are families that can’t afford some necessities and they make do.

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I had that with a car, it was in storage in the garage (wasn’t driving it because it was winter, it is a convertible, a camry solara) and rodents invaded the garage. Chewed the wiring, shorted out fuel injectors, ECU went…cost like 15 k to fix (insurance paid for it fortunately).

Had another car gets its catalytic converters sawed off. It was my station car, an old odyssey van, and it just wasn’t worth replacing the exhaust system as much as I loved that car (had like 245 k on it).

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Insurance rates reflect a lot of things these days. Even with liability insurance only it can be expensive. One of the big problems is with insurance becoming expensive the number of drivers without insurance increases, which causes liability in the uninsured driver pools. Things like car theft rate, the density of the roads (NJ is a very densely populated state where people drive a lot,), car theft, all play a role in it. The other big factor that is hitting is car loss due to storms, the hurricanes, tornadoes, big thunderstorms are causing issues. Florida is being hit with that big time, it is loss due to storms. And yeah young drivers has become crazy. When I learned to drive I was listed as a part time driver, and though it added to the bill a significant bit as a young male driver, it wasn’t that crazy. Now it adds a lot, and for a young man until they hit 25 it is staggering what they have to pay. I had an old volvo c 1985 when I graduated from college, and with my wife and I, only liability, it was like 900 a year (and we lived in a city area). Today I can only imagine.

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Since my kids are paying for their education, they need to work (the one doing clinicals doesn’t get paid but can’t graduate without them). They’re probably some the least privileged kids on CC.

ETA my math is wrong, we actually have 4 vehicles for 5 of us, this summer my niece lived here as well and she had a car, which helped. The summer before we had 3 vehicles for 5 people, that was a bit of a nightmare getting folks to work.

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For many people in many places you need a car to get around, it isn’t a luxury, if a kid is living at home and going to college (or working) , parents working,it is not a luxury at all, it is the way most areas are set up. Where I live and was commuting into the city, I could theoretically have walked to the train station (would be about a 35 minute walk), but if you add that to a nearly 2 hour commute at times without the walk, it would have really been difficult, especially in bad weather (riding a bike sounds great, but you don’t know the roads to the train station, not set up for bike riding at all, or even walking).

Young people have always been prohibitively expensive (boys more than girls), and it is one case where the law allows age discrimination (funny part it doesn’t as far as I know with older drivers, who are higher risk as well) because they have the statistics that back up the risk numbers. Unfortunately even liability only insurance is expensive for young drivers, because of the risk of them being liable for an accident to someone else.

There are ways to reduce the bill, there is a lot of information out there about cars that are going to have lower rates, that have to do with theft (if you have comprehensive or collision), ease of repair after an accident (Teslas are bad for example, because of the way the battery pack is installed, if you get into an accident from what I have read, the battery pack is often DOA, which is like a 15-20k bill alone). Cars with high powered engines or certain luxury brands are going to be higher.

Liability only, even with a policy with relatively high coverage , will be the cheapest. Basically have a car that if the damage is minor, you can pay to repair it , and is old enough that likely if you have a bigger one the company would total it anyway. Newer cars it makes sense to have comprehensive and collision, and if you have a loan you have to have it, but if you can get away with a good older car it can save you a lot.

The other factor is where you live, if you live in a city or a densely populated area, rates are going to be higher.

There is no easy answer to this, insurance companies are a lot more risk averse these days, and they want to make money out of the insurance pool (in prior decades, they used to make money by investing the float, the policy money that isn 't needed to pay off claims, if they broke even on the pool itself or even lost modest amounts, they didn’t care; in the last 10-20 years their model is making money off the actual premiums as much as posible and investments are just gravy on top of that.

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Actually a job in the city is much easier to get to without a car, my daughter really wanted an internship in manhattan (to be young again…), but her best offer was in the suburbs. Fortunately my niece’s was in the city so we had some use of her vehicle. The kids’ cars are a 2007 civic and a 2012 accord, both bought used, just liability, $1500 deductible on all cars.

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We never had 4 cars. But there was a time that we had 3 cars (two of them quite old). I was fortunate being able to carpool to work with hubby. That enabled the high school kid (at a magnet school 10 miles from home) and the college commuter kid to transport themselves. It was so much easier to do the carpool communication with hubby than to try to coordinate with kid schedules.

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