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Column “The Housekeeper”
Car insurance: How you can save several hundred euros by changing
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When it comes to motor vehicle liability, you can save by checking the right box.
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Sedan. If you take out car insurance, you have to fill in many fields and check countless boxes. You get careless after a while. This can be revenged: for the final price, these ticks are much more important than choosing the cheapest provider.
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My colleagues at Finanztip simply did the math: What if someone insures their three-year-old Opel Corsa with comprehensive insurance and does everything wrong?
Starting point: secured with a great brand that advertises a lot. Monthly payment, without franchise, without workshop commitments, without restrictions on the group of drivers. The approximate mileage -and too high- is estimated at 15,000 kilometers. That costs 2,200 euros a year.
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Priceless
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If we had checked the annual payment box, accepted a deductible -300 euros for each self-inflicted damage- and a workshop commitment, then the insurance would have been a third cheaper. We would manage with 1,470 euros a year.
Many report too much mileage: they fear they will no longer be insured if they drive more miles later. (Which is not true.) If we say 5,000 kilometers less per year, here we save more than 200 euros.
The biggest difference, however, is made by the group of drivers: if possible, check “only you and your partner”. If everyone you know can use the car regularly (including novice drivers), insurance quickly doubles.
Now we are in a contribution of 620 euros. We save 72 percent of costs just because we checked the box correctly.
And only now you need to choose the provider with the best result. In our example, this resulted in a saving of another 44 percent, ie a contribution of 350 euros.
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Sure, we’ll take it with us! Even if the right brand brought more.
So my advice: switch your car insurance now and check all the boxes carefully. You must cancel the previous one at the end of November. You can put the money you save by refueling to good use.
matthew urbach He is deputy chief editor of the “Finanztip” money guide, belonging to the foundation of the same name. In the RND column “Der Haushalter” every Tuesday, he explains what consumers should pay attention to when it comes to money. Urbach gives more advice in the weekly Consumer Bulletin. All contributions from previous columns can be found here here.