Ball State

» antique auto insurance

By China at 9:09 AM

Auto insurance is one of those things that have always baffled me. Thankfully my dad pays for mine and my sister's car insurance, but I have friends at college that pay their own and always have. I know that depending on the car you need to get different insurance, like we have a classic car that we need to have antique auto insurance on. But also I know that the more tickets you get and more accidents you get into the more you rates go up and by that logic; our family's insurance must be really high.

It seems weird to me how they decide how much your car insurance is. Do different people have completely different rates? I looked online at the website of our auto insurance carrier and they have this system set up where you answer questions and they give you a quote on what your insurance will be in you got their service. The first thing that you have to do is type in your zip code (I used my information for this experiment). Next, you have to add all of the drivers including their gender and their relationship status (married or single) and you have to include their past 5 years of history (meaning accidents or violations) and their age. So I added my dad (a single, 45 year old male) who has not had an accident in the past 5 years, me a single, 21 year old female with 2 accidents or violations in the past 5 years and my sister, a single, 18 year old female with one accident. It also gives you the choice of good student discount which both of us would qualify for. After that you add the make, model and year of all of the cars you are insuring we would have 2. Then finally they ask you if you rent or own your home, have a good history and whether or not you plan on staying with the same carrier for a long period of time. Then the magic numbers come out and you have a million plans to pick from (well more like 12).

I went and changed some of the stats like if neither my sister or I had gotten to an accident, my dad would save about 800 dollars on our car insurance (which makes me feel really bad), but it is amazing how they figure out all of these quotes based off of your life.