If you have ever tried to get car insurance for someone who is younger than 25 you’ve probably been unpleasantly surprised by how expensive it is to insure a teen driver. Yes, it’s true, car insurance rates are the highest for younger drivers who are only accumulating their initial experience and there’s a reason for that. Younger drivers make up the group that file the most claims and tend to get in serious accidents more often than older drivers due to the lack of driving experience and general risk taking behavior. So, even if your young driver is perfect behind the wheel he or she will still be charged with higher rates. But do not despair because there are a few tips you may find useful for getting cheaper insurance for a teen driver:
Encourage better grades
It may seem like there’s no particular connection between car insurance and school grades. Yet, there’s a possibility to kill two birds with one stone if you manage to encourage better results from your teen at school or college. The thing is that insurance providers offer attractive discounts to good students and this can be a very effective way of lowering your teen’s auto insurance rates. The main aim is getting an average of B and higher and providing a copy of grade report periodically to the insurance provider. So you get both some cut in insurance costs and encourage the young driver to be a better student.
Shop around
Shopping around is a must regardless whom you’re buying insurance for. There are many companies on the market and they all tend to offer different rates. Why not using this to own advantage and saving some money right from the start. Of course, teen drivers will always be charged with higher premiums but after doing some comparison shopping you can actually find affordable offers. The main idea is getting as many auto insurance quotes from different providers as you can, comparing them and choosing the most competitive one. With so many quote comparison sites out there it’s not that complicated and will only take a couple of minutes.
Keep the teen under your policy
Many parents make the mistake of buying a separate policy for their young drivers once they get a car on their own. This of course leads to an increase in costs because such a policy will sometimes cost twice as much as your own policy even if it carries the same amount of coverage. So instead of buying an individual policy you should consider including your teen to your own insurance policy, even if the teen has a car of his own. By doing so you will still get a slight increase in your premiums because of adding a high risk driver but it will be cheaper than having a separate policy to cover the teen. And if you have several cars in the household you may opt for multiple vehicle discount to lower your current rates.
Get a cheaper vehicle
Getting a cheaper vehicle for a young driver may be not the most popular measure but it’s sure is effective from the insurance point of view. The more expensive is the car you’re trying to insure the higher will be auto insurance quotes. You should be especially cautious about sports vehicles, muscle cars and luxury autos since they are the most expensive to insure.