Today, many of us are under pressure to try and manage down our day-to-day living expenses. That understandably might lead us to start searching for cheap car insurance.

A caveat

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with that intention, it’s important to keep in mind a sometimes painful fact.

While the cost of your insurance policy may seem to be the big driving motivation when you’re actually purchasing it, should you subsequently need to make a claim, what will suddenly become critically important is just what your policy covers. In fact, you may suddenly see that as being far more important to you than how much money you might or might not have saved initially.

So, we respectfully recommend that you don’t lose sight of the fact that searching for cheap car insurance that’s suitable for you is a quite different thing to setting out to find the cheapest insurance you can. The former is typically the wiser approach.

Also, remember that what you consider to be cheap car insurance may not be the same for someone else – it all depends on what your insurance needs are.

Keeping your costs down

Even so, for most car owners, there are certain steps that might help to typically reduce your premium:

• keep a clean licence. Motoring convictions will usually increase the price of your cover significantly;

• by way of the same logic, try to avoid including people on your policy who have convictions on their licence;

• although it might seem unjust, the reality of life is that very young or inexperienced drivers will also typically push up your costs if you try to include them on your policy (read our Young Drivers’ Insurance Guide for more information);

• if you can, garage or park your car off road overnight. This typically reduces the risks of theft, accidental damage and vandalism and it’s something that will appeal to your policy provider;

• whatever the temptations may be, if keeping your policy costs down is important to you, it’s worth avoiding those big, powerful and prestige vehicles. As a very general rule of thumb, the bigger the engine of your vehicle and the faster it goes, the higher your premium is likely to be;
• some insurance providers are also distinctly uneasy about customisations and ‘unease’ in insurance circles usually translates into ‘higher costs’. Once you move the specification of your vehicle away from the manufacturer’s standard, the higher the risk perceptions of the insurance policy’s providers may be;

• the use of authorized and approved anti-theft security devices on your car might also result in discounts;

• you could consider taking a higher voluntary excess on the policy to get cheap car insurance;

• it may be a smart idea to avoid making small value claims on your policy. That’s because they may remove your no claims discount. The risk here is that the sums you will lose in terms of paying a higher premium may well outweigh the minor cost of the damage you claim for;

• your motor insurance costs might also be reduced if you are able to keep your annual mileage down. This is based upon the statistical reality that the more you use your car in the year, the higher the chances are that you’ll be involved in some sort of accident that subsequently results in a claim;

• if you have a relatively low value vehicle, it might be more cost effective for you to consider only third party, fire and theft insurance as opposed to fully comprehensive cover, which is typically more expensive.

Let us help

Of course, this is one of our specialist areas and we are very keen to assist you in finding a cost-effective solution for your particular requirements. Not only can offer cover for all your motor insurance needs, but for those people who find getting cover tricky, we specialise in offering what we believe is cost-effective insurance for younger and convicted drivers as well as owners of performance and modified cars.

So, rather than set off simply hoping to find the cheapest policy, speak to us and let us help you towards a suitable and financially attractive car insurance solution.