Tips for buying cheaper car insurance

Hey guys, you would've seen that I got my son insurance and it was ridiculous. I paid £6,900 for a 17-year-old driving a Fiesta that is a one litre. I made loads and loads of mistakes. Today, I've got Jay, who's a personal finance content creator, who's going to talk to me and explain some of the hacks with regards to getting insurance, and it's going to help you guys to not make the mistakes I did. By the way, his hat, I'm broke baby, that is his slogan. A little intro about me. I make personal finance content. It's kind of geared at young people to save and make extra money. So definitely car insurance is a topic that a lot of young people are concerned about nowadays. And from your son's experience, car insurance is very expensive. So any little tips that we can give you today to help you save, I'm going to try and run through them. For young people and for parents, obviously someone like myself, who's got burnt with my son's insurance. So it's really, really handy. So please, please check him out. Highly advised. We're going to go through some tips anyway. We're going to run through a couple of ways to save on your insurance. And I think the first one to start off with before you're even looking at insurance is try to search as less as possible. And also definitely use a private browser. So why is that? So every time you search for your car insurance, it's going to show up. And the more you search, the more desperate you could look to the insurance provider. It could bring your insurance quite up. So just quickly explain to people at home that may not know what cookies are. When you go on a website now, it will give you an option to accept cookies or essential cookies only. So everyone just clicks it. Everyone just clicks it. So when you click accept, you're actually agreeing to hand over your data while you're browsing to that website so they can track what pages you've been on, what data you've been entering. So it's definitely something that you need to be aware of when you're browsing for car insurance. Does it matter if you just hit reject? Some websites won't allow you to do certain things. If you hit reject, you can allow certain cookies. But browsing in a private browser or clearing your cookies every time would probably be best. The only cookies I want is when I'm drinking my tea. I had to put one joke in. People always talk about going to compare the market websites. What do you think about that? So it definitely is a good tool to compare quotes, but not all companies are going to be on compare the market. So sometimes it might be cheaper to phone them direct, go direct on the website and see if you can get a better quote there. Yeah. Because compare the market will put their premium on. So if it's six grand, you might go direct to get it for 5,800. So it's definitely again, research, research, reshet. Don't be like me, if you can't even say the word. If you don't know already, there's insurance groups from one to 50, and one would be the lowest to insure. So in insurance group number one, you can get a Nissan Micra Center, a Volkswagen Fox, or a Ford K8. Okay. So they're going to be the cheapest cars to insure. Yeah. It does depend on what year they are, but they would be the cheapest in insurance group number one. So my son's car's a Fiesta, but they're saying it's a popular car to be stolen. Obviously, if it's more popular to be stolen, can be driven a certain way, or boy racery, I assume that's going to increase the policy. I think that's one of the most bought cars though in the last five years. So that could be another reason why it's stolen a lot, because there's a lot of them on the road, but you definitely want to check if the car is stolen a lot, that could affect the insurance price. Okay. A lot of people talk about electric cars. They say to us, you know what? I'm going to get an electric car. It's cheaper. I can park anywhere, congestion free, et cetera. Is that the case? There's a few little factors with electric cars. So the cheapest one I found, the lowest insurance group I found was in group number nine. So it doesn't necessarily mean it's the cheapest to insure, because obviously number one would be- What car was that? That was the Smart EQ. Smart EQ. Okay. Nice car. And what litre is that? Oh, it's an electric car. It's an electric car. Cool. You can tell I'm a petrol head. But yeah, there's other benefits of electric cars. They're starting to phase it out by 2025. So that might not always be the best option, electric. I'm petrol head. Listen, back in the day, they told us diesel cars, diesel cars were the way forward, and then we went back to petrol. They're telling us electric cars, electric cars are the way forward. We're going to go back to petrol. So yeah, maybe swerve the electric cars. You also have categories if the car is involved in an accident. So back in the day, it'd be like a cat C or a cat D depending on the repair of the car. Definitely something to look out. Make sure you do your HPI check. You might think you're saving money by getting a cat D car, but it could cost you more in insurance. The insurance company doesn't know who's done the repair. So they don't know the quality of the repair. They don't know how likely it is to break down. So if you're getting a category car that has been involved in an accident, you need to really see how bad the accident was. HPI check should be able to tell you, or even someone like car vertical. We have to tell you all the details on that car. If it's had a car accident, sometimes there's pictures there as well. So you know what it costs to repair that car. So if it happens again, the insurance company are fully aware of what's happened to that car. You need to declare mods, whether it be a wrap, whether it be a body kit. I think even safety modifications, dash cam, I think you need to declare it anyway if you've got a dash cam. Okay. Which works in your favor, I assume. I've looked at a few quotes myself and it did save a little bit of money. Not always a monumental amount, but it could work in your favor. Yeah. And we talk about other mods. So tracker. Yeah. Really important to have a tracker on your car and immobilizer. Yeah. So those are key things that can help with the insurance to come down. And obviously engine mods. If you've had engine mods done and you've gone for a bit, have an accident and they check under that bonnet and it's supposed to be a two liter and you've got a five liter Hemi under there. They're going to know guys. Yeah. Trust me. Don't be too clever with it. People say that it's not always beneficial to say that you park the car on a driveway and it's actually better to park on a road, which sounds mad. Like you wouldn't think that. Why is that? With the technology for car fare, it's easier to locate where the keys are if the car's on the driveway. So if the car's parked on the road, you might not know where the house is for the car, but if it's on the driveway, then straight away, you know, that car keys is inside the house. Okay. So when they ask you, where's the car? You're better off saying on the road rather than on the driveway. Yeah. You would be better off saying or in a garage if you have one. In a garage. Okay. Another thing that people do, they put name drivers on the policy. So you have the original policy holder, which would be my son who's 17 years old. And then I would add myself or his mum or someone else that lives in the household. What's the benefit of doing that? Usually it can get your insurance cheaper because you have an experienced driver on the policy. Some people do say using a female as the name driver could be cheaper. That's not sexist at all, is it? It's not me saying that. That's not on you, but we're just saying. I personally would always put the young driver as the main driver just because they pick up their no claims. If they're a second driver or third driver, they're not actually getting no claims in a year, two, three years time. They've benefited nowhere. I've already got my policy. So for me to be a second driver, it doesn't affect me in the slightest. Also, if you're the main driver on the policy, you always need to let it be known. Otherwise it's known as fronting. You always need to declare if you are the main user of the car. And if you're the main driver, you need to use the car the majority of the time. Excess is the initial amount of money that you have to pay before the insurance kicks in and says, okay, we'll pay the rest. So the higher the excess, the less risk you are of claiming. So the insurance don't mind you having a higher excess. For you, I'd advise you having a lower excess. That way then, you know what I mean? If you do claim, you don't mind saying, I'm going to pay the first £200 and the insurance can pay the next £3,000 or £4,000. But there is a hack. I'd put the maximum excess, whether it be £1,000, £2,000, which brings your policy down. Look for something called excess protection. It's like an insurance for your excess. That will cover you in the case of you having an accident and claiming. So you will not have to pay your excess, the £2,000 for an example. Not all insurance companies do that, but it is a real cool hack and it saves you having to pay a big excess. Plus it brings your insurance down. So a lot of people like to pay monthly because it just might be better for cashflow or maybe they can't afford to pay all upfront. If you do have access and you've built your credit, where you have a 0% interest credit card, it could be cheaper if your insurance provider allows it to pay it all on your credit card and then pay the credit card off monthly. Especially if you've got 0% interest, that way over the 12 months, you're not going to be paying any interest. Plus you're going to benefit of the savings of the upfront. As a young person as well, you don't have access to all that cash. You need to be thinking what you can afford monthly. So in personal finance, we always say you need an emergency fund. So you need to make sure that you're managing your finances correctly when you're doing your insurance, you're paying it all upfront and you're going to be struggling, then you need to look into that. Yeah. I learned this the hard way. I went online and I was like, I need a policy today. Do not do that. That was a massive error on my behalf. Yeah. So there's been a lot of research on this. When is the best time to start your policy? The closer it is to when you want to start your policy, people find that the insurance is actually way more expensive. Martin Lewis has done multiple searches and he's found between three to four weeks are the best times to start your policy. The reason is, is if you need a policy today, they know that you're desperate to get insurance and they're going to charge you whatever premium. If you put it, I need to start it in two weeks time or three weeks time or four weeks time, the policy is a lot less. So to definitely make sure that you're fully aware of when you want to insure the car. So make sure you put it in advance two or three weeks time. So Andreas has got a black box in his car. All kids do not want a black box in their car. It monitors his speed. It monitors his mileage. It monitors how he's driving. If accelerates really fast or if he slams on his brakes, he hates it. However, I think it is essential and they do say, obviously it needs to be charged and they send you notifications all the time. One thing I did notice with the black box is they do check the mileage. So if you say you're only going to do 5,000 miles a year, that black box knows whether you're on target to do that for the year. And if you're going to do 10,000, trust me, by the time you've done 2,000, they're going to know you're well ahead of the days. And they're going to be like, you know what your policy is now going to go up. If you haven't got a black box, theoretically you can get away with it, but a black box will catch you out. Be truthful with the amount of mileage you're going to do in the first place. Obviously don't speed. We talked off camera that the black box saved up to 40% on the policy. So it's definitely worth it if you're going to save that much on a policy, but yeah, make sure you're driving within the realms of the black box. Yeah. When I spoke to my guys at Snap Insurance, they did say to me that certain insurance companies, if you have a black box, and let's say you go over up the speed by one or two miles an hour, they give you a strike. And if you get three strikes, they'll cancel your insurance. And if you've got a cancellation on your insurance, that works really badly against you when you go to get another policy. Yeah. It's being smart. If you know that you're likely to maybe go one mile over the speed limit, maybe the speed limit black box is not the one for you. So I definitely don't want to speed in black box. Because you don't want to get your policy canceled and that'd be worse than paying the extra in the first place. Yeah. Nightmare. So let's talk about multi-insurance policies. Okay. So if you're a dad, you've got the wife, you've got the kids, you've got the dog, you've got everyone. Just put it all together. Yeah. I guess it's like a bulk discount, you could say. So the company's rewarding you for being loyal to them and doing all your insurance through them. And you might be able to save that way. So let's talk about renewals. Yeah. So if you've had internet or phone contract before, you've probably done this. So when it comes to renewing your contract with them, normally people will phone up and say, I've got offered a cheaper contract somewhere else. Can you do the same or can you do cheaper? And you can do the same with your car insurance. So they might offer you a lower quote just to keep you as a customer. There is always movement, guys. Don't always think that is the fixed price. You can always negotiate. So always try. A massive no-no on insurance is do not lie. If you get caught lying, you've got no insurance anyway. You have accident and you need to claim you've just spent your money and it's ridiculous to do that. What sort of lies do people say? People lie about their occupation. People lie about where they live, how much mileage they're doing. And like you said, if you're not even going to get paid out for your insurance, what was the point of having the policy? So you should always be truthful on your policy. Definitely. So that is the end of this insurance hack. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you learn and hope you don't get burned like I did. Jay, I appreciate you coming down, man. Thanks for having me. Check out Jay. Check out all his stuff. Really, really cool content. And he goes, bye. I'm broke, baby. Later.