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Save three times on car insurance

2022-10-01T05:42:28.085Z


Choosing the right tariff for car insurance is much cheaper. How it works and what you should consider.


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Traffic accident: With the right insurance, protection is not too expensive

Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / dpa

Of the hefty bills most households pay in the fall, auto insurance is one of the biggest.

48.5 million registered cars drive on Germany's roads.

And here, as with almost any insurance, you can often save a lot.

From the right protection to the right insurer to special questions about your new electric car.

And this fall you can even benefit twice from a few tricks, several hundred euros are in it.

The most important tips at a glance:

1. Have fewer kilometers rewarded now

The auto insurer survey was short and sweet: If your customer drives significantly fewer miles this year than they announced last year, can he or she get money back?

The answer from 29 auto insurers was a simple yes.

So if you only drove 10,000 kilometers this year because you changed jobs, used the 9-euro ticket or simply drove your car less for other reasons: Contact your insurance company and share take this with you.

Take a picture of your mileage with your cell phone, use the customer portal or simply send the whole thing by e-mail and ask for confirmation.

If necessary, send a registered mail.

It's really worth it: Because 5,000 kilometers more in terms of mileage costs an average of 15 percent more.

A small note: If you have been with the insurer for a long time and have regularly stated too few kilometers in the past, leave it alone and get your mileage in order first.

2. Pay less in the future

Many drivers can save even more by checking the insurance cover for 2023, which they will soon have to take out, for savings opportunities.

Several strategy building blocks help.

First of all: choose the right protection!

This certainly includes the question of whether you still want to insure your car with comprehensive insurance, i.e. also want to insure all damage that you cause to your own car.

In the event of major damage, that's convenient.

In addition, it is often advisable if the car is new and you may still be paying the installments at the bank.

But when the box gets older, you no longer need fully comprehensive insurance.

Only liability insurance is obligatory for your car, because - according to the legislator - a car is a dangerous object with which you endanger others and you have to be insured for that.

In between there is also the partially comprehensive insurance, which does not pay if you drive into a bollard or tree, but does pay if the wild boar runs in front of your car in autumn or a branch from the street tree smashes the car roof in an autumn storm.

The logic in both cases: your vehicle is damaged, but you are not to blame.

Most people know what protection to choose.

More attention is therefore required for the specific contract for 2023.

  • I have already addressed

    the question of

    kilometers above.

    If you drive fewer kilometers, you have to pay significantly less for the insurance.

  • If you and your partner

    drive the car alone

    , it is much cheaper than if the two children who have just flown out are still driving the car.

    Deregister your children with the insurer or do not even register with the new one.

    The key word is driver group.

    A novice driver in the group of drivers doubles the price of the insurance on average.

  • Paying for car insurance

    in one go

    costs an average of nine percent less than paying in monthly installments.

    In individual cases, the costs for installments are much higher.

    The reason for these surcharges: the one who pays in installments is statistically the worse driver.

    This rate surcharge for car insurers is so outrageous anyway that it would even be cheaper to take out an overdraft facility with 20 percent interest.

    Of course, I don't recommend that either.

  • Choose a

    tariff with workshop

    commitment in the comprehensive insurance .

    In the event of an accident, the insurer will then recommend a workshop list.

    This pays off for the insurer, who can better control the costs.

    The prices for maintenance and repairs have risen significantly in recent years, by 30 percent since 2015. This is shown by figures from the Federal Statistical Office.

    Insurers therefore grant customers who are tied to a workshop substantial discounts averaging eleven percent.

  • Finally, in the event of an accident, you should agree on a

    deductible

    of 300 euros for fully comprehensive insurance and 150 euros for partially comprehensive insurance.

With these five measures alone, you can significantly reduce the cost of your car insurance.

For a fictitious Opel Corsa driver, my colleagues from Finanztip have calculated savings of around 70 percent if he optimizes his contract - from not so clever 2200 euros to 625 euros.

The owner was 49 years old and had insured his 2019 Opel Corsa with comprehensive insurance from a large German provider.

If the aforementioned Corsa driver then switches to the right, inexpensive insurer this fall, there is a saving of 44 percent compared to the industry average, i.e. costs between 300 and 400 euros in the end.

To emulate the Corsa driver,

According to our financial tip comparison, you should use portals such as Check24 or Verivox and also visit the HUK24 website.

In recent years, it was often very cheap and not represented on the portals.

My Finanztip colleagues will be watching the price war for you over the next two months.

3. Insure the e-car cheaply

Elsewhere, the price war is already in full swing: for e-cars.

Insurance coverage there is quite expensive.

Firstly, because they are often expensive new cars, but secondly, there is also damage that costs a lot of money with electric vehicles, for example if a marten gnaws at your wiring harness.

This happened to cars 200,000 times in the past year.

This is annoying and expensive, even with petrol or diesel cars.

In the case of e-cars, however, the damage often exceeds 10,000 euros - and will be even more expensive in 2022 because many cable harnesses are produced in Ukraine and supplies have suffered from the war.

If you take out an inexpensive fully comprehensive contract, damage to the wiring harness is often only 3000 euros.

Too little.

Your strategy should be this: Split the supply.

You can often choose the inexpensive contract variant and buy additional protection for the wiring harness, such as a protection letter.

Individual insurers such as Axa have already announced that you can do this.

And don't be fooled by a service that many insurers now offer for your e-car.

They promise the vehicle owner to pick up the so-called GHG premium.

This is a bonus that you are entitled to because you do not pollute the environment with CO2 emissions when driving your car.

The service is great, as is the payment of 300 to 400 euros per year, but because your insurer offers you the service, it is not automatically inexpensive.

Many other insurers and companies will also help you collect the GHG money.

Hopefully, these tips will land you in the best of insurance worlds.

You have the right protection, the GHG premium, and with the surcharge for the wiring harness it is not as expensive as the luxury variant for insurance cover, which includes the expensive wiring harness protection anyway.

Now again in short form:

In

October

you get back part of the insurance premium for 2022.

In

November

they check the insurance cover for 2023 and take out cheaper.

And as an

EV driver

, you get the GHG premium and protection for your wiring harness without having to choose the deluxe option.

I wish you success!

Source: spiegel

All business articles on 2022-10-01

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