Not news. A story, told the way I'd tell a friend.
The renewal notice shows up, and the price is a little higher than last year, same as the year before. You think about calling around, then you picture the afternoon it would take, so you pay it and get on with your day. MoneyTalksNews reports that car insurance switching hit a record this year, and yet nearly 87% of drivers didn't shop around at all. The article says the numbers come from a J.D. Power report done with TransUnion: in the third quarter, 13.2% of drivers shopped and 5.1% switched.
Here's the rest of the story. This fall I let AI do the asking. I pulled out the declarations pages for my homeowners policy and my car policy, marked out the policy numbers and anything else sensitive, and had ChatGPT write a personal email to each of six agencies asking for a like-for-like price. I read the first one, then let it send the rest. That was about 30 minutes of my time. Five of the six came back and the price wasn't a whole lot different. One, a national company, came back about $2,000 a year lower for my home and car insurance together, for the same coverage. I switched.
I can't tell you there's $2,000 waiting for you. Five out of six told me I was already paying about what everybody else would charge, and that's worth knowing, too. Like-for-like is the whole point, because a lower price for less coverage isn't a saving. And line up the new policy's start date before you cancel the old one, so there's never a day without coverage.
What I'd do this week: find my declarations page, put it where I can find it again, and look at the renewal date on it. Once the page is in my hand, the asking can wait for a quiet half hour.
Sources:
MoneyTalksNews: https://www.moneytalksnews.com/car-insurance-switching-hit-a-record-this-year-yet-nearly-of-drivers-still-didnt-shop-around/
The full story, free every weekday: https://www.yourmoneyactually.com/?utm_source=yma_podcast
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