slamboard

With fuel costs breaking new records everyday, lots of people are considering curtailing their driving. For some people, this may involve putting a car into storage for months or longer. I was considering it and I realized that there are probably a few things that I should do to the car if I want it to stay in the condition that it is in. Here are a few links with helpful information:

Mothballing your car

AAA has advice that seems to cater to people with really nice cars.

After moving in 2005, we went carless for a whole year. It can be done. I consider my 1990 Skoda to be a time saving device. It is not a necessity and it is not a part of my identity.

Assessing insurance products involves more than just comparing prices. That cheap car insurance might seem like a great deal when you buy it, but what if you have a collision and come to find that your insurance company is anything but helpful? I actually had someone run into me when I was leaving my insurance company’s office, having just paid my premium in person. After I followed the proper procedure with regard to exchanging information, I walked back into the office and asked about my situation. They said it must be my fault. When you are entering a street from a driveway and crossing in front of oncoming traffic it is automatically your fault.

The details of the situation were that there were two lanes of traffic and that an oncoming car in each direction had stopped to allow me to enter the road. As I proceeded, I saw a car veer around the stopped car in the nearest lane. I stopped short and the car skimmed across my front bumper. There was negligible damage to my car, but there was severe body damage to two doors and a quarter panel on the oncoming car.

The rest of the story is comprised of a phone call that evening where the driver informed me that her estranged husband had let the insurance lapse on the car she was operating and that she would therefore prefer to drop any claims. It is illegal to drive without insurance, so she had little choice. The police had not been at the scene and no third parties had suffered property damage so we were able to drop the matter.

You have the option to go without home insurance, although it is almost always a condition of borrowing. Going without life insurance is very foolish as it is the one insurable adversity that we are 100% certain to experience eventually.

Bonded is a word that is applied to many people and entities in many different contexts. When someone says “My word is my bond”…it is safe to assume that they are not bonded.

A commercial bond that is applied to someone like a car salesman guarantee the their performance of specific obligations that are listed on the bond. I asked myself why anyone would care whether their car salesperson was bonded. I looked on the Internet and found my answer in about 60 seconds. There have actually been a number of cases of identity theft involving personnel at car dealers who were given IDs when people took test drives or leased cars. Websites that are set up to advise people about how to guard against identity theft specifically tell consumers to ask whether the persons who are given access to their information are bonded.

I haven’t seen any statistics. I expect that a lot of car dealers are not bonded. If an unbonded car dealer is reading this post, or reading the identity theft sites or even getting asked by potential customers about bonding…the may be wondering about how to get bonded. The answer to that question varies a great deal in different industries and in different locations. Typical steps involve passing some kind of test, meeting various financial requirements, establishing your industry experience, providing evidence of a clean criminal records, and obtaining a surety bond. Bonding is in some respects a form of insurance.

The coverage that an individual or family can receive from the Kaiser Insurance Company includes things like doctor visits, maternity care, prenatal care, hospital care, physical, vision, and hearing exams, prescription drugs, surgery and emergency services.

Residents in California and several other states can now go online to get a fast, free insurance quote from Kaiser healthcare. This insurance company is part of the biggest HMO in the country. No matter where you live, you should check out the pricing and coverage that would apply to you. Be proactive about your healthcare situation. The online quote calculators have separate categories for individual, family and group insurance.

The stated purpose of the WebHealthPolicy website is to help consumers make an informed choice about their health insurance. They are registered with the online BBB. I always check those badges these days after seeing a few that do not actually link to BBBonline.org.

It looks like it could be a very useful site for anyone who is shopping for health insurance for their family. The sites compares both individual and family plans. There is no medical exam required and they have a relatively quick approval process.

I think the best thing about this kind of site is that the functionality allows a consumer to take the set amount that they can afford to pay for insurance and find out what kind of coverage they can get from the different providers. Doing that kind of comparison on your own can make your head hurt.

Getting started with the process at WebHealthPolicy is easy. You fill out a simple form and then wait for the quotes to come to you. You then compare what could be as many as five quotes. There is no fee to eceive these quotes and there are no obligations.

Calling the membership with MaternitySavings.com Pregnant Insurance is a bit of an over simplification. Basically the MaternityCard has a monthly membership fee and it entitled you to a comprehensive maternity program. All aspects of your maternity care is covered.

What you are essentially doing is joining a group of health care consumers that are represented by the Maternity Savings company. You benefit from their buying power, industry relationships and oversight. they guarantee that they will save you money.

You will save at least the cost of the yearly membership or they will pay you the difference and $200. They also extend the benefits for twelve more months free of charge. Keep in mind that they are also working to assure the highest quality of care.

Here is what I got from a Ford press release:

“Travelers, one of the largest providers of personal insurance products in the United States, offers hybrid drivers in the states of California, New Jersey, Texas, New York, Maryland, Florida, Kentucky, Georgia and Washington discounts of up to 10 percent on certain coverages. The company estimates their hybrid policy business grew 200 percent in 2006.”

I think it is too soon for this insurer to base this decision on a large volume of statistics. I am willing to guess that there are two things at play. The individual insurance company wants to get a disproportionate share of a growth market, and they also are making the assumption that these drivers are more responsible than the average driver. This is like the opposite of the old story about them charging higher premiums for red cars. I am off to see if that old story was true…

I have another confession to make. I was the owner of a wooden house for about four years without ever buying house insurance. It had wood burning stoves in it. I suppose that, since it did not burn down while I owned it, I technically saved myself hundreds or even thousands of dollars. It really wasn’t a smart risk.

It is against the law to drive a car without some amount of car insurance in most places. I have always complied with these laws. I once had a collision with a lady who was not insured. I was nice enough to pretend that the accident had never happened. The only damage to my car was to the bumper and license plate holder.

I have varied the amount of life insurance that I hold based on how risky my life is. If I was foolish enough to think that there was no risk of me dying tomorrow, I would probably go without insurance.

Check out www.ThriftyScot.co.uk for interesting advice about insurance.

When you think about it, just about any time you buy something online, there is less overhead associated with that sale than if you had walked into an office. It does cost thousands to build a commercial website, but it costs hundreds of thousands if not millions to put up a building.

It’s nice to see that a lot of online offers for services are starting to pass some of the savings on to the customer. CIS motor insurance is 10% less online. This is on top of the fact that they are already a lower priced alternative to much of their competition. This is because of the No Claim Discount and an Introductory Discount that they are offering to new clients. To save on pixels, I am going to type the word FREE only once and then tell you what you can get: courtesy car, 24-hour Emergency Helpline in the event of a breakdown, Europe-wide cover, uninsured loss recovery service, Legal Advice Helpline. You get all that without paying extra. I like the idea of Europe wide coverage .

Only the very foolish drive without Auto insurance. Well, to be honest, there are also forgetful people, and reckless people. Unfortunately, many of these reckless people are not wreckless.

Car insurance quotes can be obtained online from a variety of sources these days. Going for the cheapest coverage, a plan that only meets the legally mandated minimum, may not be in your best interests. I learned on at least one occasion that being careful isn’t enough to avoid getting into an accident, and having an insurance provider with good customer service can be worth every extra penny.

Of course some people have very high premiums because of a bad driving record. these people often have to go with a provider that specializes in taking on high risk drivers at a high premium and the only way to keep your cost down as a driver is to minimize the coverage to what it required by law.