Daily Money Hack » Insurance

Shop Around for Insurance

DMH — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 10:51:16 +0000

This hack is one of the oldest in the book – if you want to get the best price on something, shop around. If you’re hiring a contractor to do some home improvement work on your house, request bids from at least three different companies. If you’re going to buy new furniture, shop around at a few different stores. Not only will you get a good sense of what the market price for something is, you also get an idea of who you would like to work with and what types of styles you like.

The same thing extends to insurance. With insurance, shopping around is easy because you can do a lot of the work at your computer. You don’t need to drive around to different furniture stores and you won’t need to set up quote meetings with contractors. One of the places I usually get quotes from, for insurance anyway, is a place called NetQuote.

With financial products, it’s very difficult to know what place is reputable and what is just a fly by night shop happy to sell your sensitive information to the highest bidder. With a company like NetQuote, you enter in a few pieces of information and you get several quotes right then and there. You can easily compare it to what you’re paying right now and make a decision. They will get quotes from some of the biggest insurance names like Allstate, Farmers, Nationwide, Liberty Mutual, and Progressive. They have quotes for auto insurance, homeowners and renters insurance, health insurance, life insurance and even business insurance. They have the whole gamut.

Another nice “feature” I’ve learned is that I don’t get a lot of phone or email spam after I get a quote. When you go with a less reputable place, they will sell you as a lead to whomever will buy an insurance lead. That’s why you get a million phone calls after you request a mortgage quote and why your email is packed with emails from agents. I’ve only done it once or twice with NetQuote but I never got pounded with solicitations.

If you’ve used them before, I’d love to hear your experience.

COBRA Health Insurance Hack: Pay Only If Needed

DMH — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:11:13 +0000

If you recently left your job, either voluntarily or involuntarily, you probably received documentation related to COBRA health insurance. COBRA stands for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) of 1985 and requires that your employer extend health coverage to you for a period of time. Here’s a brief introduction to COBRA health insurance.

What’s the COBRA Health Insurance Hack? You have 60 days to decide whether you want COBRA health insurance or not and if you do, the coverage applies retroactively to when you left your job. This gives you a 60 day window to look for more insurance, compare costs, and ultimately decide what you want. This also gives you a 60 day time period of essentially “free” insurance. How is it free?

If you need insurance in that time, simply elect COBRA insurance and you’re covered. If you didn’t need it, don’t elect coverage until after the 60 days and you won’t have paid a penny. You basically only pay for insurance if you need it in that two month window!

That’s the COBRA health insurance hack.

State Farm Customers File Taxes For Free

DMH — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:39:39 +0000

If you hare a StateFarm.com customer, you can file your 2007 federal income taxes online through TurboTax absolutely free. It’s a service that Intuit, the makers of TurboTax, are providing and it’s a promotional offer they’ve had since at least last year. To take advantage of this, log into your account and look underneath the “Additional Links” header on the left side of your My Account page. There, you should see a link that will direct you to the free offer. The only “negative” is that you always have to log into your StateFarm.com account before you can access that link, but you can save your progress.

Shop Around For Auto Insurance

DMH — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:54:15 +0000

There are a ton of auto insurance comparison sites out there, such as Kanetix, where you can compare the rates from many auto insurance companies just by offering up some of your information (such as your driving history, car make and model, etc., nothing personal like social security number or anything). It really pays to take a few minutes every six months or a year to see if you can get a better price on your insurance.

One caveat, there are companies that give perks and discounts for sticking around longer and you would be forgoing that so keep that in mind. If you don’t know if your insurer does that, give them a call and ask!

Don’t Get Rental Car Insurance

DMH — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 15:04:48 +0000

Before you get the damage waiver and liability waiver insurance coverage for that rental car from Enterprise or Avis or Dollar or Budget or whomever, check to see that you don’t already have that type of insurance for rental cars. Most auto insurance companies will cover rentals car if you are the driver at the time of an incident. If your auto insurance doesn’t already cover you, then oftentimes the credit card you use will offer auto insurance for free or for a cheaper price than the rental company (here’s an article on American Express’ car rental insurance program).

So, check your primary car insurance or your credit card first, then consider paying extra for the rental car insurance form the rental car company itself.