If you have a car, you have to have car insurance. This is NOT an option as many think. Getting caught without it, you risk getting a ticket that would cost more than the monthly payments. 

There are many ways to lower your insurance, such as getting rid of what you don’t need, or changing companies. However, here I’m going to show you three ways for you to decrease your car insurance bill by up to 20% which many don’t think about.

Let’s take a look.

Take the 6-Hour Defensive Driving Course

Back in April 2021, the defensive driving course credit I had expired. That meant I was no longer getting the benefit of that beautiful 10% discount off my insurance. I knew it was coming, but unfortunately, I never took the time out to retake the course, so when my insurance renewed in June my rates went up (it tends to always go up in the summer months so I didn’t really pay much attention to it).

It just so happened that at that time I was working on reducing my overall expenses. I had spent some time going over my budget, getting rid of subscriptions and other services I wasn’t using in an effort to keep more of my money in my bank account. 

So to spend less money on my car insurance, I spent $23.95 on an online defensive driving course, which New York was allowing since we were in a pandemic. I took the 6-hour course and I passed it with flying colors. Now I qualified to take off that 10% yet again and that is the first thing I did.

After you successfully complete the exam, you just have to wait a couple of days for the defensive driving company to send the records to the DMV and to send you your certificate. Once you have that certificate you notify your car insurance company. I simply took a picture of it and sent it to them while I was on the phone and they applied for my discount right away. Ya’ll, that was $111.30 off my insurance over a six-month period. That doesn’t seem like a lot but let’s keep moving.

Get an updated credit report and clean it up

The second thing you should do is get an updated credit report. Believe it or not, many insurers use your credit score to determine how much your insurance will be. I know what you are going to say – what does my credit score have to do with my driving? The answer is – NOTHING. Yet companies use it to ascertain whether or not you are responsible. Crazy, right?

The lower your credit, the higher your bill could be, so taking a look at your credit report can help you make decisions on what to do. Make sure the report is accurate. If you see errors, dispute them with the credit reporting agencies and make the companies confirm the information they provided.

You can also make agreements with the creditor to “Pay for Delete”. This is where old tradelines are paid according to a written agreement between you and the companies you owe. They will delete a negative tradeline in exchange for full payment. This can increase your credit score fast.

If you’ve been following my Youtube channel, you know that I have been working for the last year on increasing my credit score. I’ve done everything I’ve said above and it has worked for me. 

Automate your payments properly

The third thing I did, and I suggest that you all do, is go through your bills. One of the things I didn’t realize was I was causing myself to pay more money than necessary because my insurance bill was automatically paid from my debit card. Geico charges a $5 per month fee if you use a debit card. I don’t understand why, since they don’t have to pay the charge fee. *SHRUGS*

Let me just say this, Geico customer service is the best. I called and explained that my bills seem to be about $30 higher than it was stated on the premium. The rep explained to me that I was paying a $5 per month fee I wasn’t even aware of. So what I did was I switched my auto-pay to checking instead of my debit card so now I only pay a #1 dollar transaction fee every time I pay. That’s $6 instead of $30 over a 6-month period.

Taking just a few steps can really make a difference in your car insurance expenses. With everything I did above, I was able to drop my insurance by $135.30 for the 6-month period (270.60 for the year). It’s not a huge amount, but that’s less money you’re giving to someone else and more you can either invest, save or spend.

Think about other insurance policies you may have – home and medical. Are there ways to reduce those expenses? You never know until you look.

If you’d like to watch my original video about cutting your car insurance, click here.

-Irene