How to Buy CAR INSURANCE

Say this guy in the blue car is you, right? You just got back from trader Joe's. It's been a good day. You're getting ready to get out of the parking lot, right? You back out and you're about to leave and what? Oh, boom.

The scary thing is that it's very possible that that could be you. The whole car insurance industry is built off of this one statistic that effectively the average driver will file a claim for a collision once every 18 years. Obviously, this does not apply to my grandma in New York who basically never drives, but it does apply to pretty much the average driver. If you drive a decent amount, it probably applies to you as well. The process is pretty simple.

The first thing we're gonna do is basically identify the one to two best providers. Step two is basically understand the seven areas of insurance coverage. And then step three, get the two quotes, compare and buy. And in this video, I'm also gonna cover some extra pro tips that I found really useful. Okay, first things first, when you're buying car insurance, please set up a fake email. When I filled out quotes, pretty much the day of, I just got unrelenting spam. And thank God I had set up a fake email because if I hadn't, they would just constantly be sending my real email all of this information. A lot of these companies will aggregate the data that you give them in the insurance quote
and they'll basically oftentimes sell that data to other providers, marketing agencies. The service i use to mask my email is called 33 mail it's free you can also use the gmail trick, which is basically you add a plus symbol and then any any word and it'll still send email to your email. So if i have, if my email is neha gmail.com and i type in neha plus allstate gmail.com it'll send to my actual email. The next tip is pretty similar. You want to mask your phone number. If you don't already use Google Voice, check it out. It's basically an app that can forward text messages or phone calls to your actual phone without revealing your own phone number. That's super free. I use it all the time.

This was actually a mistake that I ended up making. I didn't do this. I gave all of the insurance companies I was considering my real address. And then the day after, literally the day after I got mail from Geico, And then like I got more mail two days later, I got mail from the other one. So it was, and they just have my address forever now. The next tip is to basically provide a slightly fake address when you're searching and getting quotes. Typically car insurance companies are discriminating based off of your neighborhood. A common example is in Detroit. If you live in Detroit proper, your premium is gonna be two times the premium of if you lived in the suburbs of Detroit. And the reason is because
theft and robbery is apparently more common in the city, and so insurers basically charge higher premiums for that. So when you're searching, you don't want to give your address to five different companies, but you still want an accurate quote. Let's say you live on one Ralph Court and the end of your street is 10 Ralph Court. You can give them 11 Ralph Court, which isn't a real address, but will still get you the accurate quote without giving your address out to five different providers when you're searching. Now, when you finalized on a provider, you're ready to legally sign up with them. Obviously make sure you're giving them your real legal address. It's pretty easy to just, it's pretty easy to go back and give them your real legal address.

All you have to do is just fill out a fresh form, a fresh insurance quote, and have your real legal address there. Okay, so there are basically two considerations to think about when you are looking at car insurance. So obviously we want to optimize on price. And we also want to optimize on customer satisfaction with claims. So you don't want to be in the scenario where you've paid for car insurance for months and months and months, you get into a crash and you are owed money and they come back and they say, hey, we are actually denying your claim. That is probably the worst scenario to be in. So the recommendation there is prioritize customer satisfaction with claims. How do we do that?

On the screen, I have two links. The first one is a lot of phenomenal data about which providers are the cheapest based off of your region, right? So I happen to have California there, but you can just substitute your state into that link. And that'll give you just a ton of amazing data for what the best price is for different conditions. The second link there is basically a standard industry survey to find the best service amongst insurance companies. If you are looking for the simplest, most pain-free process, you're just like, Neha, I want to get done with this as soon as possible. just hop to that second link with customer service and pick one or two of the top ones and get quotes from them.

If you are like me and you want to just optimize the crap out of everything and get the best price with the best customer service, what I'd recommend and what I did myself was I got the two cheapest ones from that price link and then I got the two best service ones. That way I could get a sense of, okay, what is the cheapest I'm ever going to get? And then how much am I paying more for customer satisfaction? and then I was able to kind of pick between that. Turns out that the ones in my state that had good customer satisfaction were also the cheapest, so that worked out. So one of the biggest myths about car insurance is that there is just one thing called car insurance.

In fact, there's actually seven different components of car insurance, and it's really important that you understand all of them because you're gonna have to put in how much coverage you want for each one. So I have a separate video basically explaining all of the different coverages from top to bottom, It is the video that I wish I had before getting insurance because I had to spend an egregious like amount of time trying to research it. My whole process top to bottom was like 30 hours. That like one 10 minute video will save you a ton of time. So when you're searching for insurance, you're gonna see some of these terms come up over and over again. So there's first minimum coverage, which is just the minimum amount that a state says that you're required to have.

So on the screen, I have California's, each state has a different amount. Then there's, of course, full coverage, which is just sort of a broad term which refers to having extra protection. And extra protection means that you're paying more to have a higher coverage limit. What's a coverage limit? A coverage limit is just the amount of money that an insurance company would pay out in the event of an accident. On the screen here, I have 250k for injury death to one person. That's an example of full coverage, but if that number was 300k, that would also be full coverage. I remember when I was Looking for insurance, I was like, oh man, like I want full coverage. Which level is that? Well, there's no particular level.

It's just sort of, if you have generous limits, that's like a broad term. Full coverage is the broad term for that. Premium is just how much you pay per month. Car insurance quote is that 15 minute online form you get to get that estimate. Let's say we're in a scenario and you hit a $200,000 Tesla and the police come and they determine that it's your fault and you cause trouble. $20,000 worth of property damage. Let's say you have minimum coverage of $5,000 for property damage. What that means is that the insurance company is gonna pay out $5,000 and $5,000 only. And you are responsible for the rest of the damages, which in this case is $15,000. So you have to pay that out of pocket.

And if you don't, the Tesla owners can sue you for that amount. At that point, the courts would decide how much you would owe. Typically it would actually be more than that 15K because it was brought to court. now let's say it's like reversed and this, you know, Tesla hits you and the police determine that it's their fault and they cause 20 000 worth of damage. Well, then they are responsible for paying all of the damage. They're responsible paying 20k for your damage and they have to pay for their car's damage. In that previous scenario scenario one you have to pay for your car's damage. Hopefully at this point, you are seeing that it is really, really, really important to have insurance. This is not where you want to skimp out on.

And here's the other thing. All of this hinges on who the police determine is at fault. Remember that video that you watched in the beginning? Let's take a look at it one more time. We have this guy who's coming out of his car. Remember, the police are not going to have access to this building footage. They're just going to be talking to the black car and the blue car. And realistically, what ended up happening in this particular scenario was that both cars were determined to be equally at fault, which is nuts. And we're gonna talk about what you can do to protect yourself from police coming up with different determinations. We have a few tips coming up. This is where insurance is so important, is if a car like that ramps into you and for whatever reason, it was deemed to be both at fault, you need to have something there so you're not paying out of pocket from your savings for all of that damage.

So on this screen, I have here my personal coverage choices for car insurance. Now, I have this because it's something that I think is really useful to kind of get a sense of what to pick when you are choosing. Just a quick disclaimer is that this only applies to medium and high cost cities. So I happen to live in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, where people are driving fancy cars. That means that my risk and liability is a lot higher if I injure one of those people or if I hit their car. If you're in somewhere that's much cheaper, probably really don't need this level of coverage. So this is my magical slide. And I just basically send this to all of my family members, friends, right now, you guys, because I really want this to help you.

This is sort of a breakdown of what to pick for each of the coverage limits. Okay, just some more tips. Cancellation fees. You might want to check these before you sign up. Reddit trick. Something that I've found immensely helpful throughout life has been if I have any kind of question and I want to get a first order look at it. What I'll do is i'll just ask the question and put in Reddit. And then i read through those responses, get a understanding, and then i'll go and fact check it on a more verified google site. That is something you should definitely do with car insurance. If you're not sure about some nuance about your policy, just drop it on there. See what happens.
Umbrella insurance is also something that you might want to think about if you are a high net worth individual. Basically what this does is it adds extra coverage beyond your car insurance limits so that if someone does sue you for more money, you'd be protected. Finally, dash cam. This is so important. In that video, if that blue car had had dash cam proof that that black car just rammed into it, it could have saved a lot of money. So this is an investment that I highly recommend. It's like 40 to 100 bucks. You can even get packages of front and rear dash cams. That's actually what I got. It is so important. You can basically show the police your footage and say, hey, actually, I have proof that I was not at fault.

and that'll save you a ton of money and save you from increased insurance premiums from the police wrongly saying that it was your fault. So at this point, you are pretty much ready to get one or two quotes from the best companies. I think it's really important to understand what factors increase and decrease your premiums, and then also kind of how to fill out the forms that you get the best rate. What are the things that you can do to reduce your premium? So I tried to include all of that information into this video and it was just way too long. So I just kind of cut them up into different videos. It's in this playlist. It'll probably save you at least 100 to 200 bucks per year.

If there are any takeaways from this, it is number one, get your privacy shield up when you're filling out these forms. Number two, do not skimp out on insurance. It is the most important thing you can buy. Last thing is just that magical slide that has kind of all the coverage that I recommend to my family. Really, you can use that to kind of get a sense of coverage limits. I had no idea about any of this going in, and so I know I would have found that really helpful to have as a reference. And then finally, get a dash cam. Get that proof. Hopefully this was helpful. If it was, just drop a quick yes in the comments, and if not, totally understand.

Just tell me what I can improve on. Tell me what kind of stuff you want me to talk about or have questions on and i'll do it. If anything here was really helpful, it would mean a ton if you could just click subscribe and like. These videos take a really long time and it really, really helps us so much.

I am not an investment or insurance advisor. All opinions are mine alone. The content is for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, insurance, financial, or other advice.

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