The first type of car insurance will cover third party damages to your car (from a vehicular accident) up to a certain amount. You will need to pay extra if you want your car to be insured for theft. The second type of car insurance, on the other hand, gives you protection for practically any calamity under the sun – natural calamities like earthquakes and landslides and man-made ones like fires, riots, and robbery, to name a few.

In both types of insurance, however, losses are not covered when you’re driving without a valid driver’s license, or the damage occurred because of wear and tear of car parts, or electrical and mechanical failures. Damages are also not covered when they are caused by war or nuclear threats.

In any case, whatever the type of insurance, what you really want to do is to get best deal in terms of premiums. In this article, we will let you in on some secrets to getting discounted premiums for your car insurance.

Read on to find out what these secrets are.

1. Install anti-theft devices

You can increase your chances of getting discounted premiums by installing anti-car theft devices on your car if it’s not there already.

2. Insurance for two vehicles

Insurance providers will not advertise it, but sometimes the price of insuring two cars at the same can be equal to the cost of insuring one car. If you a have second car that you’re about to sell, hold on to it. Not only will you get cheaper car insurance premiums, you can also increase its selling price by insuring it.

3. Go for long-term car insurance policies

Yearly policies will always be cheaper than six-month policies if you do the math. So go ahead and take out a one-year policy.

4. Keep minimum coverage if the car will be idle

If your car is going to stay in a garage for any amount of time, keep your coverage to a minimum. It’s highly unlike for your car to meet an accident in the garage. That said, comprehensive car insurance would be enough for a car parked in a garage.

5. Be accurate about your miles

When your insurance agent asks you, make sure you give out the exact figure of your mileage as well as the exact distance that you traveled. Do not go overboard in your mileage figures unless if you want to pay extra.

6. Ask for a list of affiliated groups

Some insurance companies give discounts to affiliate groups and certain companies. You would do well to ask your insurance agent what these companies are.

7. Don’t get coverage if the car is new

New cars have comprehensive and collision insurance coverage by default. However, as your car gets older, make sure you get enough coverage.

8. Get quotes from multiple insurance providers

Get insurance quotes from at least three providers. As it is, majority of car owners lose out on a fair deal due to ignorance. Don’t commit the same mistake. Go online and search for car insurance quotes from at least three providers.

At the very least, with teenage car insurance, the cost of paying for an accident is not as costly as having no teen car insurance at all.

The key is to get the most affordable coverage that you can. You can do this by comparing quotes and getting the deal that best works for you, your budget, and your lifestyle.

A number of car insurance companies regard drivers under 25 years old as “high-risk” drivers who are more likely to encounter vehicle-related accidents. There is a high percentage of death and accidents involving vehicular situations with teenagers.

This often leads to a higher teenager auto insurance cost. But think of how much you would save. Let us say your teenager has an accident and you did not have teens car insurance. You would have to pay for the hospital fees and the damage fees from your own pocket, without any assistance from the insurance company.

But do not let this be the reason for you to get those car keys from your teenager. You can actually save money and get the teenage car insurance for him or her. And when you do, you have to remind your teenager the following guidelines.

1. Maintain a clean driving record. He or she should remember that one DWI conviction is enough to increase the insurance. What is normally a couple of hundreds of dollars could amount to thousands of dollars for three years.

2. Insurance companies provide discounts on teenage auto insurance to those who go to school full time and have a 3.0 grade point average. Insurance agents provide discounts to those who are accredited to take driver safety courses and other programs that have been qualified by the state.

3. Be an active member in the community. By joining a particular community or civic organization like Girl Scouts or Eagle Scouts, your teenage can already get discounts. Least risky teens are those who help better the community.

4. Get a safe car. Teenager auto insurance may cost you 50 percent less if your teenager is driving a safer car like a Volvo or a Honda Civic. Newer model cars that come with airbags are also less expensive because there are the safest for any teenager to drive. Expensive cars, SUVs, high performance cars, and sports cars put teenagers at a greater risk so these are more expensive.

5. Add safety features like automatic seat belts, traction control, side impact air bags and anti-lock brakes in order to reduce the accident rate of your teenager.

Above all, remind your teenager that driving is a privilege and it requires responsibilities. Lay down the ground rules for him or her. You can train your teenager in having a mature attitude whenever he or she is behind the wheel.

Your state’s car registration body will often need an engineer’s report or car inspection before you can get your vehicle on the road. Then finding insurance is a nightmare. Most insurance companies won’t insure imported vehicles. In most cases, you will find it impossible to make a comparison and save.

It’s so much easier to find car insurance online with a normal car. But for imported cars or modified cars it is important to know where to start looking.

Companies that insure modified and imported cars are either specialists in modified, unique, custom and import cars or are large insurance companies that deal in everything.

Oftentimes when you ask for a quote for imported car insurance online, you need to to wait 24 hours as each request is usually unique. Unlike simple car insurance, you can’t get live quotes.

Some insurance companies in Australia that deal in such type of special car insurances include:

Dawes (owned and underwritten by Calliden): Dawes deal in prestige, high performance and high value vehicles and high end bikes. They also insure unique workplace vehicles such as film set vehicles.

Famous (owned and underwritten by Calliden): Famous insurance high performance, grey import, and modified cars. Famous acquired Young & Cool which was a popular insurance company for young drivers with custom and modified cars.

Just Car (Underwritten by AAMI): Tailored for young drivers with modified cars, high performance cars and imported cars. These types of cars can almost be impossible to insure at almost all other companies.

LSV Lumley Special Vehicles (owned and underwritten by Wesfarmers): LSV insure classic, prestige car and special vehicles.

Shannons (owned and underwritten by the Suncorp Group): provides innovative and flexible insurance policies for the special needs of motoring enthusiasts

In addition to the above, the motoring bodies of Australia such as RACV and NRMA offer at least one, and sometimes 3, types of unique car insurance products covering most situations.

Some features that are common to unique car insurance policies are things such as salvage-and-agreed value.

Salvage means that if your car is written off, they will pay you out the agreed amount and you get to keep the wreck. So if you want you can get to work and rebuild your old car. Agreed value comes as a result of unique cars not really having a market value. Some are so rare they hardly ever for sale, therefore the insurance company will negotiate with the owner a price in case of a write-off.

Getting online car insurance for your imported or modified car is now going to be so much easier. Just make a comparison from a few of the companies above and you are well on your way to a better and cheaper imported car insurance policy.

Name of  Term Life Insurance Company

• ING ReliaStar Life Insurance Company
• American General Life
• Banner Life Insurance Company
• Transamerica Life Insurance Company
• West Coast Life Insurance Company
• Lincoln National Life Insurance Company
• ING ReliaStar Life of New York
• Genworth Life and Annuity Insurance Company
• Genworth Life Insurance Company Of NY*
• Protective Life Insurance Company

* Known as American Mayflower Life Insurance Company of New York until January 2007

I recently applied for universal life insurance. Can I purchase term in the meantime..?

..In other words, can I purchase term life insurance while awaiting confirmation of my universal policy – with the same insurance company (I know I will be approved for universal because of my good health). Please, informed answers only.

Best answer:

Answer by seaportma
Are you concerned that you might die before the UL policy is issued?

You might have provided a check for the first one or two months of premium payment, along with you application for life insurance. If so, you should have gotten a “conditional receipt”. This means that if you die before the UL policy issued, and if the insurance company would did not have a basis to reject your application for a policy, you do have a certain amount (if not the entire face amount) of life insurance.

You can apply for term insurance — but if you apply for term after you applied for the UL, you probably wouldn’t get the term policy until after you get the UL policy.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Are there life insurance companies that buy term life insurance ?

I have a extra term life insurance policy on me and I am wanting to get out of debt and have money too. I have seen some commercials in the passed that buy Insurance policies from people for a part of the face amount of the policy but I can not remember what company that do’s that. so that is my question.

Best answer:

Answer by bud68
Term life insurance policies have no cash value. It’s like auto insurance – you pay a fixed premium for a set term of coverage.

Add your own answer in the comments!

A life insurance company depends a great deal on reputation and as a result they try to write language in their policies that will stand up to any type of legal scrutiny.

Some of the provisions included in your guaranteed term life insurance policy are as follows:

1) A guaranteed level or decreasing death benefit. This depends on the type of policy chosen.

2) Guaranteed payment upon death, free of income taxes. As long as the law remains as it is this is one of the more attractive benefits of the so called “guaranteed term life insurance policies”.

3) A guaranteed premium for a specific period of time. Some premiums increase after a certain number of years but even the increase is guaranteed.

4) Your term life insurance policy also guarantees that you can reinstate it should it end up in a state of lapse because of nonpayment of premiums. If your health changes you may need to prove insurability all over again. The policy must be reinstated within a certain period of time as stated in the contract itself.

5) Guaranteed term life insurance policies also cannot be taken away from you as long as you pay the premiums. If you own a 10 year term policy it can only be terminated by you within the 10 year period. The insurance company cannot terminate it.

6) Your guaranteed term life insurance policy assures you that if you should die by suicide within a certain number of years, usually two, the proceeds of the policy will be limited to the premiums paid plus interest. After the 2 year period if you should die a suicide the full death benefit will be paid. They force anyone thinking of this to wait at least 2 years. The result is that a person thinking of suicide usually changes his or her mind by that time.

7) If you should elect that your family receive an income instead of a lump sum your life insurance policy can also guarantee this income for life or for a specific period of time.

On the more personal side your life insurance policy can guarantee that your loved ones will always have food to eat, a roof over their heads and clothing to wear. The fact is that your term life insurance policy can guarantee that the lifestyles of the ones you leave behind will change very little, if any at all. This is the true power of your guaranteed term life insurance policy.

9) The businessman can be certain that if a key employee died suddenly the company could go on with their daily business without missing a beat. Your guaranteed term life insurance policy would be used as a kind of buffer while the company readjusts.

10) If a partner or stock holder of a business should die your life insurance policy can be used to provide sufficient cash to buy out the stock, or shares, from the survivors of the deceased. The business will go on and everyone will be aptly compensated.

Your guaranteed term life insurance policy can be an awesome tool. If you own such a policy, for the right amount, you can relax.

But before we tell you the why term life insurance is more valuable, it’s important to understand how different it is from whole life insurance.

The basic difference between term life insurance and whole life insurance is this: A term policy is pure life coverage only. When the insured person dies, the insurance policy pays the death benefit to the named beneficiary. Term life insurance varies from one year to 30 years.

Whole life insurance, on the other hand, combines a term policy with an investment component. The investment could be in bonds and money-market instruments or stocks. Over time, the policy builds cash value that you can loan against. The three most common types of whole life insurance are traditional whole life policies, universal life insurance and variable life insurance.

Whole Life Insurance: Do Not Expect High Returns on the Investment Part

Whole life insurance is expensive: You’re paying not only for insurance but also for the investment portion. That extra cost would have been worth it if these policies were a good investment vehicle. But usually they aren’t. And that’s why insurance agents like to call them retirement plans, emphasizing “forced savings” instead of “good investment.”

Apart from the fact that there are many better ways to save for retirement, whole life insurance policies come with high fees and commissions, which sometimes lop off as much as (3) three percentage points from the annual return. On top of that, there are up-front (but hidden) commissions, typically 100% of your first year’s premium. Worse, it’s often impossible to tell what the return on the investment will be, and how much of what you pay goes toward the insurance and how much toward the investment.

Term Life Insurance: Where the Value Is

To get a real sense of the value of term life insurance, let’s compare a term policy and a universal life policy.

Say a 40-year-old nonsmoking male has a choice between a $250,000 Met Life universal policy with a $3,000 annual premium, and renewable term life coverage with a 20-year fixed premium of $350 for the same coverage amount.

At the end of one year, the whole life universal policy, assuming it paid 5.7% per year, tax-deferred, would have a cash value of exactly zero (cash value is the amount you would get back if you canceled the policy). But say he had instead invested $2,650 (the difference between $3,000 and $350) in a no-load mutual fund that averaged a total return of 10% annually. At the end of the first year, he’d have $2,841, accounting for taxes on the earnings at a 28% rate. At the end of 10 years, he would have accumulated more than $46,000 in after-tax savings in the mutual fund. Over the same period, the cash value of the policy would have climbed only to $31,819. That’s a whopping $14,181 dollar difference in investment returns.

James Hunt, actuary for the Consumer Federation of America, who has analyzed thousands of policies, notes that whole life policies hardly ever yield a reasonable return unless held for 20 years or more. So if you buy one, be prepared to pay long into the future.

Caveat on Term Life

That’s not to say that whole life insurance is always a bad idea. Wealthy people can use whole life in their estate planning by setting up an insurance trust that will pay their estate taxes from the proceeds of the policy.

Also, if you’re starting a family in your late 40s or 50s, whole life insurance is at least worth considering.

Premiums for term insurance are only downright cheap for healthy people up to 50 years old. After that age, the premiums start to get progressively more expensive. Also, beyond 60 years old, you may have no alternative but to buy whole life insurance. Most companies simply won’t sell term life insurance to people over 65 years old.

Now since children do not contribuite to a household income. Why would there be life insurance? Besides the funeral costs, their death would not impact a family financially, would it? I just saw a commercial for one, and it got me wondering. I am only 16, so no rude comments if I have the point of life insurance all wrong here.

Best answer:

Answer by BagsofSand
You are on point. I just heard Dave Ramsey – financial talk show host – mention this very thing. He just said only get enough to pay for funeral expenses as they can be expensive.

Give your answer to this question below!

• How much alcohol do you drink and how regularly?
• Have you ever been convicted for a DUI charge?

Your answers will affect how much you pay for life insurance. That said, underwriting for life insurance is more of an art than a science, and there is no consensus or consistency among the different life insurance companies in dealing with the answer to either of the two questions, especially the first.

Yes, excessive drinking is associated with a shorter life expectancy, but there is no agreement on what is excessive. Is it one drink a day, or two, or is it six? There is also the point to consider that moderate drinking has been known to increase life expectancy by a few years and cut down both heart attack and stroke.

Of course, having a DUI on your record – unless it was many, many years ago – is likely to disqualify you for the best life insurance rating class. If it was recent, and if there have been multiple DUI charges in recent years, you will be required to pay even more.

Be accurate as possible on your life insurance application about your alcohol consumption because your policy can easily be rescinded if any inaccuracies are discovered, which often happens after a claim is made.

Alcohol does not usually stay in the blood for more than 24 hours (hopefully you weren’t drinking when the nurse comes by to do the paramed exam). Alcohol use, however, can be suggested by the presence of elevated liver enzymes, which can be tested for. Elevated liver enzymes can be an indicator of more than occasional drinking. If you are found to have elevated liver enzymes, several things may happen as a result:

• You will not be issued a policy.
• Your application will be postponed until the cause is pinpointed.
• You will be issued a policy but you will be required to pay extra premium.

If you end up with a higher-than-expected life insurance rate because of something alcohol-related, remember that your rates can go down over time if you are able to furnish evidence that you have addressed the problem

If you drink moderately, like a glass of wine a day, is unlikely to affect your rates with most insurers unless you have elevated liver enzymes. If your alcohol consumption is more than moderate, with a little diligence and hard work, it should be possible to get an excellent rate on life insurance if this is your only issue.