Wednesday, September 5, 2012

6 Months of Good Conduct

Driving conduct, that is. After separating my car insurance policy, the insurance carrier has to re-evaluate me as an individual all over again which regretfully means I have to go through their 6-month probation-type period in order to determine if I am eligible for additional discounts. For those of you familiar with Progressive, that's the Snapshot program. I got 18% under my parents’ policy last time, so I’d gladly take something similar this time around.

All I know in regards to what affects your possible discount is whether you’re driving during peak-hours and how many hard stops you make (dropping 7mph in 1 second or less). While I can’t control my driving hours, I can control the hard stops. Problem is, my car is having brake issues where they are extremely noisy when applied, so I tend to brake harder if just to stop the noise. My dad and I can’t figure out what the problem is; we bought the brakes, but when we went to change them, we found out all 4 brakes are still in pretty decent condition, so we didn’t change them. I don’t want to take it to a mechanic who will just tell me to change the brakes, especially after we’ve already gone that route. I really do not trust mechanics. I’ll just have to be more careful.

I won’t bore you with the numbers and calculations. I've bored myself to near-death plenty a times, but I realized (slowly... it's only Wednesday; bear with me) that this is nothing different than all the other self-imposed good conduct or good behavior trials we put ourselves through, it being money-saving challenges, no spend months, in order to reach a goal/reward of sorts. Everything is relative, after all.

3 comments:

  1. We have Allstate, and every 6 months we go without a claim, we get a partial refund of the premiums. Usually it is about $25. Plus, they drop the deductible.

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  2. We have Progressive Auto insurance and I was thinking about doing the snapshot thing. Is that what it goes off of, how hard you brake and the times of the day you drive?

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    1. That is what the disclosure says, and that's what I found out to be last time that counted. My parents/siblings' car did not qualify, and they had too many hard stops per trip. You can even check your own driving by logging in to your account. I think it's very worth it, especially if you have multiple cars. Even if only one qualifies, that's still a decent reduction, and it pays to be extra careful for it.

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