An unlooked for sting in the tail of any New Year is the reminder that my car insurance is due at the end of the first week of January. It's been like this for the last ten years, so I probably ought to be used to it by now, but somehow it always seems to come as a surprise. If there's a worse time of the year to get this bill, I'm not really sure what it is. Still, it is what it is.
My reminder was waiting for me when we got back from France in the last week of December. After a bit of procrastination, I had a quiet moment at work this week and finally managed to get myself motivated enough to have a quick look around and to make sure that my quote was still competitive - a tiresome but necessary task, but does anyone really get excited by trying to compare the excesses on different policies and working out if a courtesy car and breakdown cover are included or not? really? I doubt it (clue: if the policy is cheap...then almost certainly nothing like that is included).
Anyway. Even though I have something daft like ten years "No Claims" discount, the quote I had was competitive. Extortionate..... but as good as anything I was going to get, so I decided to just get it done and forget about it for another year. I picked up the phone to do the deal, and realised that one significant factor has changed since I last renewed my car insurance: the name of my second driver has changed, as has my relationship to her. Well, I like to think it hasn't changed at all since my marriage, but apparently they see these things differently in insurance land, so I thought I'd better get it changed. I mentioned this to the nice Indian man who was handling my call, and he was very quickly able to do the necessary.
And you know what?
Being married reduced my quote by something like £35. After nine years with the same person listed on my insurance as my second driver and without a single claim to my name, I've no idea why this small change makes any particular difference now. Still, I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth, am I? Thirty-five quid is thirty-five quid, right?
I'm not saying that a slight reduction in your car insurance premium is a good reason for getting married, but it's certainly worth bearing in mind, innit.
Mark Cavendish: Spoty lifetime award
4 days ago
I once saved an insane amount of money by putting my mother on my car insurance. Maybe it's just a surname thing.
ReplyDeleteIf their reasoning is at all like the reasoning here, your rate went down because being married represents stability (to the insurance people's way of thinking), which in turn means that you're less likely to get into accidents, etc.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on discovering another perk to marriage. *G*