For almost two years, on the first of the month, I sent my dad $95 with the memo "Corolla." This June, for the first time, there was no Corolla payment to my dad. Instead, a $131 charge came out of my new bills account with my name on the policy. It felt like getting my own mailbox key, a little thrilling and a little expensive.
I moved into my Evanston studio on June 1. A car is generally insured where it's parked overnight, and mine now lives in a back-lot spot behind my building instead of in my parents' driveway in Wilmette. So it had to come off their policy and go onto one of my own. I started shopping in early May so there'd be no gap, and the new policy started the same day I picked up the keys.
What I asked for in every quote
The first thing I learned is that quotes are only comparable if you ask for the same coverage each time. So I wrote one line in my notes app and typed it into every form:
- Liability: 100/300, meaning $100,000 per person and $300,000 per accident for injuries, plus property damage. The same limits my dad has always carried.
- Uninsured and underinsured motorist coverage at the same limits.
- Comprehensive with a $500 deductible.
- Collision, which I priced at both a $500 and a $1,000 deductible.
Illinois requires liability and uninsured motorist coverage, and the legal minimums are much lower than 100/300. I went higher because the minimum is really just the price of being legal. A single bad accident with a newer car on Sheridan Road could blow through it fast, and then the rest would be my problem.
The four quotes
I got them from three places: my dad's insurer, which quoted me a policy of my own; a big national insurer online; and an independent agent in Skokie who checked a couple of companies for me. Same car, same coverage, same me.
The four monthly prices came back at $131, $152, $167 and $198. Those are all for a 2012 Corolla with about 128,000 miles. I'll never fully understand why one company thinks I'm worth $67 a month more than another one does, but that's the whole reason to shop. Quoting didn't hurt my credit, since the checks they ran were soft ones, and my score came out of May exactly where it started.
The $131 quote came through the independent agent. A couple of things helped me everywhere: no accidents or tickets, and the years I'd spent listed on my parents' policy, which counted as continuous insurance history. I'm 26 now, too, which apparently matters to the people who set prices.
The deductible I raised
On my dad's policy, my collision deductible was $500. For my own policy, I raised it to $1,000. On the winning quote, that took the price from about $145 to $131, a savings of $14 a month, or $168 a year.
The way I thought about it: if I crash, the higher deductible costs me an extra $500. I'd break even on that bet after about three years without a collision claim. My emergency fund is $6,325 right now, after the leftover money from my move went in, so an extra $500 one day would hurt, but it wouldn't be a crisis.
I kept comprehensive at $500. In a city, that's the coverage for theft, vandalism and a tree branch in a storm, and the price difference for raising it was tiny.
Keeping collision at all was the big question. My Corolla is old, and a lot of people drop collision on older cars because the payout gets small compared to the premium. My car's worth roughly $5,000 today.
I kept it, for one simple reason. If I wrecked this car tomorrow, I couldn't replace it from savings without draining most of my emergency fund, and I need a car to get to work in Skokie and to my two pet-sitting clients in Wilmette on weekends. Collision is what keeps one bad afternoon from turning into a much worse year. I wrote down a rule in the club sheet: when the emergency fund is big enough that losing the car wouldn't empty it, I'll price the policy without collision again.
That's my reasoning for my situation, not advice. I'm not a licensed anything. I'm a billing specialist who now has two insurance policies on her own.
My dad's $95 is gone. My new $131 is in. So car insurance went up $36 a month, which I'd planned for in the first apartment budget, along with the $50 parking spot. My mom said it was "a very grown-up number." My dad asked for the declarations page so he could read it. He found nothing wrong, which he seemed almost disappointed about. The PDF is in the folder.
