Mistake #9 Not exploiting opportunities to reduce costs where you are expecting expensive car insurance - for example, young drivers insurance
The following groups can expect to pay more for their car insurance: young drivers, new drivers, drivers with previous driving convictions, those living in inner city areas with high car crime rates, those with high car insurance group cars, and those without a no claims bonus.When you are anticipating costly cover, it makes sense to be as pragmatic as possible in terms of what you really must have in your car insurance cover. This is not a situation for adding in 'extras' you could manage without. It is a situation to embrace the 'no frills' types of policies that are otherwise better avoided. This is because to not do so adds hugely to the cost of your cover which is not the case for those that are cheaper to insure.
Clearly use of a price comparison site to get car insurance makes sense but there is much more besides that can be done. In the case of a young driver, for example, all of the following measures should be considered, putting in place as many as possible.
The young driver should buy a car insurance group one car like a Corsa and avoid doing anything to it that could make it more expensive to insure such as, for instance, adding alloy wheels.
As well as going for 'no frills' cover, he may choose to increase the voluntary excess. He can reduce his risk and therefore the cost of car insurance by passing the advanced drivers test, although obviously there is a cost to training and taking this test.
If he adds a second driver that's over 25 this may reduce costs too. Security improvements to the car and where it is parked are also important. Aim for off-road and preferably garage storage overnight.
As briefly outlined above, there is often much more that can be done in addition to simply comparing quotes to reduce the cost of car insurance.
