Car Insurance

[cancer]

[SIZE=1]Okay, I'm only seventeen years old, and I have my own car and want to get insurance on it. However, everywhere I look costs around 250 dollars a month. Does anyone know of any insurance agencies that are really cheap, or any ways to lower insurance significantly?[/SIZE]

[eleanor]

[color=dimgray] Taking a driver's course gets you 20% off on car insurance (in most places), but the course itself it about $500. And just the fact that you're 17 will make the insurance company raise prices, seeing as teenagers are just more prone to getting into accidents.

Don't know a specific insurance quotes, though. [/color]

[Roxie Faye]

[color=#9933ff]What insurance company do your parents have? Friends? Ask around and see how much they're paying.

And you're right - there's absolutely no way you should be paying $250 for car insurance a month. I'm 17 (female), and I live in New Jersey (yeah, that place where you all think we're bad drivers, we're not- We're just agressive. MA is the place with the Massholes, I tell you. But insurance thinks we're bad, and subsequently we have high insurance), and I don't even pay that much - $800 for six months.

I'm sorry I couldn't be of more help to you (I don't know a lot about car insurance. ><). But ask around - parents, friends, school kids (teachers, mebbe). I'm sure not everyone is paying as much as the quote you're getting.[/color]

[Rachmaninoff]

Others have already mentioned it but your best bet is looking around. Also, if you are still living with your parents, if they are willing to do so, being on their insurance would lower your rates quite a bit. Something I did when I was still living at home. It cut my insurance by nearly 70% since they take the fact that you are a teenager and a guy as well to charge outrageous prices.

Other than that, the only other option would be to look at your coverage and cut out as much as possible. If you have an older car with little to no value, then simple liability coverage may be all that you need. If you have good insurance, then higher medical coverage isn't needed either since other insurance will pick up the bill after the car insurance is used up in an accident.

Hopefully one of those will make it possible for you to get that rate dropped since when I lived with my parents I was only paying about $300 for six months of coverage and on my own about $700 for every six months, though now that I'm no longer a teenager that too dropped the rates and I pay even less.

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Like Rachmaninoff said, getting in under your parents' insurance is usually a handy way of lowering the cost of it, though in Ireland being a named driver if it's the same thing won't lower your own premium as much as it would if you were driving under your own. Maybe it's different though where you are.

Getting your full license as opposed to applying with a provisional or learners license if another way to do it, if you haven't already, usually knocks at least 20% off a quote.

Certain insurance companies are willing to lower the premium if you attend a training course of theirs, I'm not sure what the cost is, although I'm pretty sure that it's lower than $500 as that would negate any point in attending. Of course then you're stuck with that company until other premiums lower enough to offer an alternative.

One little thing though, neither your insurance, nor the insurance of anyone who's replied here is even remotely [i]high[/i] compared to the rip-off going on in Ireland. Most quotes I've got for a full licensed male driver of nineteen with a small 1.2 litre car have been over ?1500, which is near enough $2000.[/SIZE]