I saved $250 with 21st Century auto insurance

OK, car insurance is not really a technical subject, but it is Labor Day, so I figure I could veer from electrical engineering since this is a bonus post anyway. My car insurance is coming up in a couple days. This year I sat down and really tried to do a fair comparison of my coverage, if only because I am paying over 700 bucks for just myself, and I have never had an accident in my life. The first thing I did was document the proposed policy that my current carrier, Met-Life, wanted to give me. One thing I have done this last year is up my coverage way beyond the California minimums of $15k/$30k. There are two good reasons for you to this as well. First, engineers are high-dollar people that tend to have a lot of stuff. The other reason is that if there is half-a-million at stake, your insurance company will send in the good lawyers and protect you. If they have $15k in the game, well, heck, that’s less than a week’s worth of lawyer fees, so they will just payout the $15k and then the other lawyer will come after your house, your tools, and your 6 Harley Sportsters.

Insurance is not pre-payment of costs. Insurance is protection of your assets. Say that over and over to yourself twenty times. The same goes for health insurance but that is a rant for a different holiday. The reason you have insurance is so that if you injure someone, they can’t take your house and vehicles, and all that stuff. I am a tech guy with lots and lots of stuff, including some easy-to-get stuff like stocks and savings. Lawyers love to sue you for those liquid assets. So they will have to sue me for a lot, over half a million, before it is my money, and that is why I am pretty sure the lawyers at my insurance company will work darn hard to keep it way under $500k, since that first $500k is their money.

Protection of assets is one of the issues that folks just don’t get about poor people and insurance. See, by definition, poor people have no assets. So they would be stupid to get insurance- I mean what for? They rent, they drive crappy old cars, and they have no savings. Since debtor’s prison went out of fashion a couple hundred years ago, there is really no reason for a poor person to have car (or health) insurance. We engineers, on the other hand need to protect all that old test equipment and our gardening implements, so I encourage you all to really load up on the coverage. It is also why I started adding uninsured motorist’s coverage this last year.

OK, sorry to bury the lede, but here is the chart I came up with for my situation:

• BI=bodily injury, PD=property damage, UM=uninsured motorists, Coll=Collision, Comp=comprehensive, ded=deductable. Some companies did not break out individual costs, so the cells are merged for that situation. Rental car reimbursement declined for all policies, I do have two cars.

The far-away best deal is 21^st Century. The sad fact is, that is what I had, but when I worked for Reed Elsevier last year, they were all about how much I could save using Met Life. Well, let me tell you, Met Life are as nice a bunch of people as you will ever work with, but they seem stuck in the 19^th century. I started my quote online last year-but they would not let me put in my old 1974 Chevy Van. This turned out to be a nightmare. When I called- well, they acted like the internet quote was from a different company-they flat-out told me it was a different department. So after a lot of misery, and needing to get the coverage working the next day, we cancelled the internet policy and started a new one. I trusted them to add my van, which I thought would be a minor expense. Wrongo. Bless Met-Life’s heart; they do break out the costs. That old 1974 Chevy van I put 300 miles a year going to the flea market adds $300 a year to my cost. I got a phone quote from Amica and that was the deal there too. What shocked me was that Progressive, who I have my 6 Sportsters with, also seems to really sock it to me on liability of two vehicles. But I can only drive one at a time.

I think I know what is going on here. We have this screwy system where we really don’t insure drivers, we insure vehicles, so the actuaries at Met Life and Amica and Progressive think-”Ha, he has two vehicles, so he probably has some unlicensed underage teen girlfriend with a drinking problem who is really using that other vehicle.”  In other words, Met-Life and Amica and Progressive all think I am lying when I swear in writing that I put 300 miles a year on my van and 2000 on my Honda Accord and that I am the only driver. It is my 6 motorcycles that get all the mileage, probably the balance of the 10,000 miles a year that most average American drivers rack up every year.

So now you see why Geico and 21^st century are better deals, neither of them seems to sock me so hard for having a rarely-used vehicle. Now Geico did come in quite a bit higher, I assume because they have to pay for all those funny green lizard advertisements. I love seeing R. Lee Ermey throwing a Kleenex box at the mamby-pamby patient as much as the next guy, but not so much I want to pay $166 a year for the privilege. Another factor in my prejudice against Geico, is that the name of the company stands for “Government Employees Insurance Company” and sorry to go all libertarian on you, especially since Geico is owned by finance king Warren Buffet, but I just don’t want to share a policy with all those government employees. Finally, I had a pal tell me that once you get a Geico policy, they send you little questionnaires every 6 months but don’t tell you that if you don’t fill them out and turn them back in, they raise your rates. That may be BS, especially in this day and age and especially in view of how much booze my buddy would consume, but let’s just say cavemen and green lizards just aren’t my thing.

Now, 21^st Century has its own sordid past. When I joined it was AIG; yeah the rip-off looter’s haven of the Wall-Street criminal class. Then they split it off and absorbed it into 21^st Century when AIG tanked. Now, ultra-respectable Farmers has bought 21^st Century. This is the best of all worlds. Turns out the car insurance people at AIG where the honest decent mom-and-pop profitable division. They were the cash-cow that the AIG looters used to finance all their criminal shenanigans. So it was a real blessing that they got spun off, probably since some regulator or that Spitzer guy felt it might actually serve the public interest to keep the car insurance part of AIG alive. So I always thought 21^st Century was pretty respectable all by themselves, but now that they are part of Farmers, you can be sure they will be around next year. Since I already told you I like to get really high coverage, I suspect they will be sure to treat me well if I get in an accident, and for all I know, they treat everybody well, even guys with California minimum insurance. And as a bonus, the 21^st Century policy comes with free roadside assistance, so that is a goodly piece of mind, especially when I  am putting the 300 miles on the 1974 Chevy van. The one thing I really loved about their online quote system was the little “info” icon next to each coverage type, so I could get a little closer to understanding what $3500 uninsured motorist property damage is, and why I can’t get it if I already have collision on the car.

I assume if you have teen kids or accidents or a DUI you will get ripped off no matter what. I also assume that car insurance is like health insurance. You can get good deals until the first accident or sickness, and then you pay through the nose ‘til you die. But if you have a good record, and have a second older vehicle like I do, I would advise you to go online and do a quote with 21^st Century. What they lack in funny advertisements, they make up for in low prices. I can tell you that when I did my online quote, I just used a 1981 Chevy Van instead of 1974 since 1981 was as old as the form went, and the phone quote I got later (on Saturday of Labor Day weekend no less) was 2 dollars more. You can get a pretty good idea of your costs without having to talk to any live human beings, something most engineers seem to like. Be aware their on-line quote is for 6 months, so you have to double like I did in the chart above to get the yearly cost.

A shout-out to AAA, they mailed me a quote for $444, but that was only for the Honda Accord. I am pretty sure they will be much higher if I put the old van on, but I will let you know if I am wrong.

I should also shout-out to Amica, who had a person to give me phone quote on that same Labor Day weekend Saturday. There are other externalities here– both Amica and others say they can give you a better deal if you write your home and auto in the same place, but 15% off 700 bucks is only $105 and that is a long way from the $250 I save with 21^st Century. Next year I will investigate the angles of combining car and house insurance and let you know what I find. Also, 21^st Century has a deal with Foremost Insurance for motorcycles, so I will be sure to check with them versus my existing Progressive account. Finally, Farmers was right in buying 21^st Century, since I will now compare a Farmer’s policy for my home versus the SafeCo policy I now carry.

And a big Thanks to Valencia over at 21st Century who was so nice and cheerful on Labor Day Saturday as she got my policy started. I see why California named a city after her.