I'm paying insurance for five cars please help get price down

[brandon05w]

I have a 04 Nissan Titan.
A 2009 Scion xB
A 2014 Grand Cherokee
A 99 Ford ranger
And a 2008 Nissan Sentra.

I'm paying $9,200 a year for insurance. The thing is two of these cars are not driven at all. And when they are, it's normally just to drive it for short trips to keep the battery charged or when perhaps another vehicle is in the shop getting serviced.

Even my vehicles that are driven almost daily are never driven over 5K a year. My Titan is a gas hog and I've probably only put 1K miles on it total in 5 years. But it's such a nice truck, I hate to get rid of it.

Anyone got any hacks to help me save some money on insurance?

Right now I have a Geico and me and my wife's driving record is spotless. Does this sound too high for what I'm driving?

I only have the basic liability on my Sentra, ranger and the Scion xB. I have full coverage on the Jeep wagoneer and the Titan. Oddly enough, full coverage is only $25 more then the liability for my other vehicles.
I'm strongly considering just taking the tags off of the vehicles (xb and Titan) and putting them under a car cover and dropping coverage. But there is occasions where I do need to drive it for a day when my other car is in the shop. But it's not really that big of a deal. I'm open for any ideas.

Update:
I played golf with my friend this morning and I was complaining about Geico's prices and he said they were high for him too and he switched to State farm and his premiums were cut in half.

So I shopped around and we found Progressive to cover us with the exact same policy for $2,900 a year. After talking to my friend and my wife, it seems like Geico systematically raises your rates 5 to 10% on every renewal. So if you've not changed your insurance in two or three years, I encourage you to shop around. I literally just saved myself over $125 a week.

 

[bioleap]

@brandon05w I mean - if you can’t afford to insure them, you can’t afford them. Why have 5 cars when 2 aren’t touched? This doesn’t even make sense. Especially that mix of vehicles.

 

[brandon05w]

@bioleap Let me try to explain it,

My son drives the Sentra, he just turned 25 and will be getting his own insurance soon and I will be removing this from my fleet.

My ranger is my work truck. I only use it for work and it's my primary driver. But it does have a lot of miles on it.

Wife drives the Jeep.

We've considered selling the Jeep. We are just not crazy about it. It's been kinda problematic and basically in my opinion these newer Jeeps wagons are junk.

I guess the reason I'm hanging on to them is for one I know the history of every one of these cars. They are reliable, well maintained and solid vehicles.

On the other hand, my daily driver has tons of miles and it wouldn't surprise me if it kicked the bucket in the short term. It's not that it's in that bad shape, it's just that it's 22 years old and has close to 300K on it.

I would probably end up just driving the Scion if my work truck kicked the bucket. I don't want to get rid of the Titan because I bought it from a friend 5 years ago at a fantastic price and my plan is to eventually buy a travel trailer and pull it with the truck. It comes with the tow package and would be perfect for this. The reality is if I was to go buy a truck with the same features it would cost me 40K nowadays. It just seems like $9200 a year for basic insurance for cars that are 10 years old or older and you're probably only driving for 20K miles combined for the whole fleet sounds excessive.

Maybe I should just go ahead and sell my truck before it craps out. Is it possible to just drop the insurance on two of these vehicles and stop driving it? Or will the DMV give me crap about it?

 

[bioleap]

@brandon05w It’s not excessive, it’s the cost. 5 vehicles and 3 drivers isn’t a typical policy.

I suppose if you want to keep paying nearly $800 a month to insure vehicles with minimal coverage (that all combined are worth a relatively small amount) plus paying your state fees… that’s a choice.

You can’t de-register and uninsure vehicles that are going to be driven. I promise, the one time you drive it “just to the shop” is the time you get in an accident. Aside from that, you can’t just add and drop insurance on owned vehicles. Most carriers require all owned vehicles be on your policy. If you don’t, you can get flagged as an uninsurable risk. You’d have to see about getting a storage only policy. And, again, that wouldn’t allow it to even be driven on the property without switching back to appropriate coverage.

Side note, if your son still resides with you, he’s still going to have to be listed on your policy. You’re obligated to have all household members on the respective policy. (And vice versa if he were to get a policy, you and your wife would need to be on his.)

As a car person, I still don’t follow the logic on keeping all these vehicles. You’ve got some of the most problematic years for 3 of them (with the Scion and Sentra being the only ones worth keeping). I’d vote this whole situation is penny wise and dollar foolish.

But in terms of insurance? You can quote around I guess.

 

[brandon05w]

@bioleap As a car person you should get it. These cars have value beyond their retail. I have kids, they will need cars down the road. Reliable cars. I'd rather give them a car that I know is reliable then have them go to a used car place and get ripped off, or worse go to a new car place and really get ripped off. Like I said I have a truck with close to 300,000 mi on it. Sooner rather than later, I'll probably be replacing that truck with something from my driveway. These cars have all been maintained and are in excellent mechanical shape. I'd hate to sell my vehicles and then a year from now be forced to go on the market blind and pick up a used vehicle of unknown background and gamble. Clearly Geico were ripping me off. I went to Progressive and they wrote me the same policy for all five cars for a grand total of $2,600 a year. I've previously stated it was $2,900, that was incorrect it is $1,300 every 6 months.
So clearly it was excessive.

 

[former32%C2%B0mason]

@brandon05w It sounds like you just have some vehicles that you can't afford. Sell one or two of them. There you go.

 

[brandon05w]

@former32%C2%B0mason The thing about it is, I really don't want to get rid of them. As these are very good cars with a known history. The Scion xB is the only car I've ever bought brand new and is in great shape. The Titan only has 66,000 original miles and is absolutely loaded. My Ford truck that I drive every day has almost 300,000 miles on it but still runs great and gets 22 miles to the gallon, but if it was to blow up in the next 3 months it wouldn't be a huge surprise and then I'll be buying another car if I got rid of the Titan and the xB.

I was hoping some could help me figure out a way to cut my insurance down.

 

[former32%C2%B0mason]

@brandon05w All you can do is work with an agent to find quotes from other companies. You may find something cheaper, you may not.

If these vehicles are really that important to you, you will have to make sacrifices elsewhere to be able to pay for owning them.

 

[sharpya88]

@brandon05w Sell two or three of them.

 

[brandon05w]

@sharpya88 That's what my wife keeps telling me. She wants me to get rid of my truck. I told her to get rid of her Jeep.

 

[sharpya88]

@brandon05w Great idea!

Most carriers also have a surcharge for more cars to drivers, so you should see what the premium would look like without them on the policy.

 

[emmanuelle7]

@brandon05w Call your insurer and ask them to run the numbers on what your policy would cost if you got rid of a couple of vehicles. Try different combinations of vehicles, so you can see which ones are driving the cost. Then you and your wife can have a better informed decision on which cars to get rid of, if that's the best route to save some money.

Second, do you really need full coverage on the Titan? What's the replacement value of a twenty year old Nissan truck right now? I normally don't advocate for liability-only coverage but there is a point where it just doesn't make any sense.

Third, consider putting some of your vehicles in a comprehensive-only storage status. The thing is, if you do this, you absolutely cannot drive them unless you call your insurer to restore liability coverage and make sure you have printed confirmation of the new coverage. You also need to make sure your family (especially your son) even thinks about looking at the car, let alone driving it.

 

[wenura]

@brandon05w Sell on cars, shop around, sign up for smart phone app, or turn in tags.

 

[brandon05w]

I'm wondering if I did turn in my tags, how hard and expensive would it be to get a tag back on it?

 

[a43]

@brandon05w Keep shopping other insurance companies for a better rate. 9200 for a year with your fleet seems extreme, unless someone in your family has a colored driving history.

 

[brandon05w]

@a43 Clean driving records all of us. I just switched to Progressive at $2,900 for the year for all five vehicles.

This is more like it. I was strongly considering just throwing tarps over two of the cars and turning in the tags.

 

[a43]

@brandon05w Yeah lol there’s no way an insurance company could justify charging almost the value of your vehicles combined per year just to protect them up to their value if something happened. Glad to hear you found a better (or just a realistic) set up.

 

[luis512]

@brandon05w We had Geico for over thirty years. Spent about a week on and off getting quotes and are now saving almost $1,500.00 every six months. That $300 monthly almost pays for a car.

Geico is great, but the longer you have them it seems like the more they take you for granted. Shop around.

 

[brandon05w]

@luis512 That is exactly who we have. Geico is charging me $9,200 a year. I just switched today to progressive at 2900 a year.
I'm just irritated I waited so long. But my wife was paying it and I was not aware until yesterday when I had a fit. It seems like every annual renewal they we're raising our rate 5 to 10% every year. Fast forward 10 years and here we are paying $9,200 a year.

Guys if you have not changed your insurance in 3 years I encourage you today to shop around. I cannot believe how much I was overpaying.

 

[luis512]

@brandon05w Amazing, isn’t it?

It seemed like everything I tried to lower my rate with Geico backfired. Dropped a driver? Rate went down, then went up even more. Dropped full coverage from one car? Rate dropped, then went up even more. I think the final straw was going from three vehicles to two, seeing my 6 month rate drop almost a grand, then the next renewal would’ve cost about an extra $1,400.

Edit- Forgot to mention how I was able to raise my coverage and still got a lower rate by switching. I could’ve saved even more if I just matched Geico’s policy, but I bought a better policy for less.