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When I was a teenager, my parents taught me to shop around for auto insurance. When shopping, insurance agents informed us by phone.
A few years later, while I was combining auto insurance with my husband, I found myself in conflict with my mother-in-law at the time. I had to prove to him that USAA's fares were really cheaper than those at State Farm. To do this, I had to familiarize myself with the first page of my policy, often called the declaration page or dec.
I went through each policy, comparing coverage premiums and making phone calls to get quotes when specific line items did not match. I was able to win the argument, proving that USAA was really the cheapest of the two.
Understand your responsibilities
I no longer have access to politics that I had stuck at the time, but I have the dec page of this semi-recent policy.
As you can see, the first part of my contract covered the responsibilities I could incur as a motorist. For bodily injury, we had $ 50,000 coverage for each person who could sue us, up to $ 100,000 per account. If you use your finger to draw a line across the line, you will find that this part of our policy cost us $ 75.62 for our first vehicle and $ 63.02 for the second. Our property damage liability coverage included $ 50,000 coverage for $ 92.96 on the first vehicle and $ 79.97 on the second vehicle.
Part B of the policy covers the benefits that we might have needed if we had been injured in an accident, with fairly simple language. The same is true for the "Part C" coverage of uninsured and underinsured motorists.
Understand your coverage limits and compare premiums on different fonts
If I used this decompression page to compare strategies today, I would check the coverage limits in the first column and make sure they were the same for all strategies. I would then check the premiums in the same line, comparing them to the premiums offered for the same coverage of the other policy.
On this particular policy, my decomposition page is turned into decomposition pages, and then on page two. That's where I find the coverage of physical damage. The first part of this coverage includes multi-risk insurance, against which you can possibly make a claim if your vehicle has been vandalized, stolen or otherwise caused damage without being involved in a collision.
If you are struck by another car, you will file a claim against the collision loss portion of your contract. You will notice that these two covers are accompanied by a "D" and then a number. This number represents the deductible for which you would be held responsible before the start of the insurance. On this policy, the deductible is $ 250 for global claims and $ 500 for collision claims.
We have chosen to pay for this policy the repayment of rent, towage and labor, although this is a cover that may be totally absent from your own declaration page. The availability of coverage and even mandatory coverage requirements set out by law may vary depending on your state of residence.
At the bottom of this page you will find the full biannual premium. But we have not finished yet.
Review your discounts and see which insurers offer which offers
On the next page of the policy, I can find various discounts that I receive. In this policy, discounts are already taken into account in the total premiums listed on page dec. Therefore, the total premium after rebate was $ 1,079.75. It's a good idea to check your discounts to make sure you get everything you are entitled to. If you qualify for a discount from an insurer, why do not you do it at another? This is a question that should be asked of an insurance agent because the discounts obviously save money.
If you do not understand your statement page, call the insurance company.
USAA and most other insurers encountered as part of my work in the areas of personal finance and insurance make the breaking down pages of your auto font extremely easy to read and understand once you know what you watch. It was not my experience with State Farm while sitting in my mother-in-law's kitchen, leaning on paper documents. Instead of clearly labeling the cover stories, each title such as "collision" or "full" was written in a numbered code.
I had to call State Farm to get a representative to guide me in translating this code, which allowed me to unequivocally prove that his rates were higher. Now that you know how to read a dec page, you can do the same.
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