How can I improve my auto insurance score?
Move to a small town in an insurance friendly state. - Certian states like Florida are considered high risk for doing business for insurance companies.   Get a (relatively)new midsize sedan in white, tan, or brown.  These colors are the least likely to get stolen and the modern midsized sedan is considered the safest vehicles to drive. Drive less than 100 miles a month - The less you drive the less likely you are to be involved in an accident Go 9 years with no claims, tickets, or late payments and maintain a valid drivers license and Insurance. Drivers who go for long periods with out incident are more likely to be safe drivers. Have an income in upper middle class.  Drivers in this bracket tend to be statistically safer drivers and are the least likely to be involved in fraud. Auto Insurance score is in no way related to your driving habits, instead it is based on your credit usage.  You are often punished for having more than one or two hard inquires in a year and they also frown upon having many lines of credit even though that helps your credit utilization. As a recent college grad who switched to his own car insurance, many of the things I did myself are reflected here. The #1 thing I did was find out what coverages I had, what coverages some friends of mine had (car enthusiasts mostly - they're the most informed on this stuff), and then figured out what kind of coverages I wanted. From there, I went around getting quotes from anyone and everyone and eventually built out a sizeable spreadsheet that made it obvious which company was going to offer me the best rate at a given coverage level. Something else to remember - not all insurance companies look at past accidents and violations (speeding, etc) the same. In my search, I found some have a 3-year scope on accidents and violations, while others were as much as 5 years. So, if your driving record isn't a shining example (mine isn't perfect), you could potentially save money by considering insurance through a company that will see fewer violations/incidents than another because of the size of their scope. I ended up saving $25/mo by choosing a company that had a 3-year scope, which was on the cusp of when my last violation/incident occurred. Insurance companies will also give out discounts for younger drivers based on GPA average. If you have kids and they maintain a high GPA, you might be able to get a discount there. Not all companies offer it, so if they do it's worth finding out how much it is
Answer all of their questions honestly and as accurately as you can, but don't stress too much about it.  If you don't know the answer to something, ask the insurance agent what it means; that's what they're there for.  (If you're doing this online, email the support, or the 'live chat' feature many of them have.  Or, don't do it online, if you feel better having an agent in person; nowadays, most of the major insurers are similar on price so it's not a massive savings to skip the agent.) As far as whether it's important to pick a specific insurer - that's really your call.  Read reviews, understanding that folks with bad experiences are more likely to write reviews than the 90% of folks who get no benefit from homeowner's insurance. You need to make the decision as to how important reputation and ease of claims process is versus price. That's why there are multiple insurers, after all - you can decide how important it is to you. It sounds like you would prefer a simpler claims process, so perhaps you should go with someone who is known for an easier claims process (understanding that no insurer is always going to agree with every claimant 100%). If you're wealthy why do you think they wouldn't sue you for the money you owed?? And, as sunk818 says, credit scores can influence insurance costs.  While you could self-insure your home you generally can't self-insure when it comes to liability coverage on a car. Agree with the comment, 760 is a good score. The average score is less than 700 and average score for your age group is even lower.  (Source: https://www.creditkarma.com/trends/age)   Just keep paying your credit card bills on time. You could also ask for increases in your credit limits on your existing credit cards, which may increase your score, but could decrease it in the short term depending on how your credit card company looks at your credit history in the process.  (Source: http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2014/06/27/3-ways-to-increase-your-credit-card-spending-limit) Pay it off. If you do so, you have the liberty to drop or reduce a portion of your collision auto insurance coverage (keeping uninsured motorist). This could potentially save you a lot more than 20 bucks over the next six months. First, you need to be aware that the credit score reported by Mint is Equifax Credit Score. Equifax Credit Score, like FICO, Vantagescore, and others, is based on a proprietary formula that is not publicly available.  Every score is calculated with a different formula, and can vary from each other widely.  Lenders almost exclusively only use FICO scores, so the score number you have is likely different than the score lenders will use. Second, understand that the advice you see from places like Mint and Credit Karma will almost always tell you that you don't have enough credit card accounts.  The reason for this is that they make their money by referring customers to credit card applications.  They have a financial interest in telling you that you need more credit cards. Finally, realize that credit score is just a number, and is only useful for a limited number of things.  Higher is better to a point, and after that, you get no benefit from increasing your score.   My advice to you is this: Don't stress out about your credit score, especially a free score reported by Credit Karma or Mint.  If you really have a desire to find out your score, you can pay FICO to get your actual score, but it's not cheap.  You can also sometimes get your FICO score by applying for a loan and asking the lender.  I last saw my FICO scores (there were three, one from each credit bureau) when I applied for a mortgage a couple of years ago, and the mortgage rep gave them to me for free.  But honestly, knowing your score doesn't do much for you, as the best way to increase it is to simply make your payments on time and wait. Don't give in to bad conventional advice from places that are funded by the financial services industry.  The thing that makes your credit score go up is a long history of paying your bills on time.  Despite what you commonly read about credit scores, I'm not convinced that you can radically boost your scores by having lots of open credit card accounts.  At the time I applied for my last mortgage, I only had 2 open credit cards (still true), and the oldest open account was about 1.5 years old.  The average of my 3 scores was just over 800.  But I've been paying my bills on time for at least 20 years now.  Only get credit cards that you actually want, and close the ones you don't want. "Here's what you do without, on the negative side, just for balance: A bill: When I last had comprehensive insurance, it cost something like 3-4% of the value of the car per annum.  (Obviously ymmv enormously but I think that's somewhere near the middle of the range and I'm not especially risky.)  So, compared to the total depreciation and running costs of the car, it's actually fairly substantial.  Over the say 10 years I might keep that car, it adds up to a fair slice of what it will take to buy a replacement. Financial crisis costs: I don't know about you, but my insurance went up something like 30% in recent years, despite the value-insured and the risk going down, said by the insurer to be due to market turmoil.  So, at least hundreds of dollars is just kind of frictional loss, and I'd rather not pay it. Wrangling with the insurer: if you have insurance and a loss, you have to persuade them to pay out, perhaps document the original conditions or the fault, perhaps argue about whether their payment is fair.  I've done this for small (non-automotive) claims, and it added up to more hassle than the incident itself.  Obviously all insurers will claim they're friendly to deal with but until you actually have a big claim you never know. Moral hazard: I know I'm solely responsible for not having my car crashed or stolen.  Somehow that just feels better. Free riders: I've seen people ""fudge"" their insurance claims so that things that shouldn't have been covered were claimed to be.  You might have too.  Buy insurance and you're paying for them. Choice: Insurers are typically going to make the decision for you about whether a claim is repairable or not, and in my experience are reluctant or refuse to just give you the cash amount of the claim. (See also, moral hazard.)  Do it yourself and you can choose whether to live with it, make a smaller or larger repair, or replace the whole vehicle with a second hand one or a brand new one, or indeed perhaps do without a vehicle. A distraction: Hopefully by the time you've been working for a while, a vehicle is not a really large fraction of your net worth.  If you lose 10% of your net worth it's not really nice but - well, you could easily have lost that off the value of your house or your retirement portfolio in recent years.  What you actually need to insure is genuinely serious risks that would seriously change your life if they were lost, such as your ability to work.  For about the same cost as insuring a $x car, you can insure against $x income every year for the rest of your life, and I think it's far more important. If I have a write-off accident but walk away I'll be perfectly happy. And, obviously, liability insurance is important, because being hit for $millions of liabilities could also have a serious impact.   Coverage for mechanical failures: If your 8yo car needs a new transmission, insurance isn't going to help, yet it may cost more than the typical minor collision.  Save the money yourself and you can manage those costs out of the same bucket. Flexibility: If you save up to replace your car, but some other crisis occurs, you can choose to put the money towards that.  If you have car insurance but you have a family medical thing it's no help. I think the bottom line is: insure against costs you couldn't cope with by yourself.  There are people who need a car but can just barely afford it, but if you're fortunate enough not to be in that case you don't really need comprehensive insurance." "There's not a single answer here, as the premium you pay for car insurance depends on multiple factors, including (but not limited to): All these factors contribute to the likelihood of getting into an accident, and the expected damage from an accident.  So just having an accident and making a claim will likely raise your premium (all else being equal), but whether or not it will be cheaper in the long run depends (obviously) on how much your premium goes up, which cannot determined without all of the facts.  Your agent could tell you how much it would go up, but even making such an inquiry would likely be noted on your insurance record, and may cause your premium to go up (although probably not by as much). However, the point of insurance is to reduce the out-of-pocket expenses from future accidents, so the question to ask is: How likely am I to have another accident, and if I do, can I pay cash for it or will I need to offset some cost with an insurance claim.  Do you risk making a claim and having your rates go up by more than $700 over the next 3-4 years (the rough time it takes for a ""surcharge"" to expire)?  Or do you just pay for the repair out-of-pocket and keep your premiums lower?" The best thing you can do is shop around, and tell your current company that you're shopping.   I had been with GEICO for years and recently discovered (while shopping for renter's insurance) that AllState offered the same coverage for a few hundred dollars less.  When I called GEICO to cancel, they offered me an additional discount (for being a member of a credit union) that I hadn't received before.  I still switched, but was sad that I hadn't been getting that extra discount just because I never asked if there were other discounts I might qualify for. This article by ChristianPF talks about some changes you can make to reduce auto insurance costs. Buy a modest vehicle with a manageable payment.  Keep the payment low enough ($200-300/month) to keep your DTI (Debt-To-Income) ratio clear.  The short-term ding to your credit for new credit should disappear in 3-6 months (your time horizon).  Having a mix of credit is part of the credit scoring model, so having an installment loan is not a bad thing.  Relax. Some proportion of the costs of a policy have little to no relationship to miles driven.  Think of costs of underwriting, and more especially sales/marketing/client acquisition costs (auto insurance isn't in the same league as non-term life insurance (where the commissions and other selling expenses typically exceed the first year's worth of premiums), but the funny TV ads and/or agent commissions aren't free), as well as general business overhead. Also, as noted by quid, some proportion of claim risk isn't correlated to distance covered (think theft, flood, fire, etc.). There are also differences in the miles that are likely to be driven by a non-commercial/vehicle-for-hire driver who puts 25k miles a year vs. one who puts 7k per year.  The former is generally going to be doing more driving at higher speeds on less-congested freeways while the latter will be doing more of their driving on crowded urban roads.  The former pattern generally has a lower expected value of claims both due to having fewer cars per road-mile, fewer intersections and driveways, and also having any given collision be more likely to result in a fatality (paralysis or other lifetime disability claims are generally going to exceed what the insurer would pay out on a fatality). One that isn't typically mentioned: move. Rates are often higher in certain zip codes where there are more accidents and/or thefts. I cut my insurance nearly in half by moving. If you're looking at moving anyway, it's worth considering. "&gt; Let's just say the insurance industry knows a lot more about underwriting than you do.  I'm sorry, but that is a meaningless statement. I work in insurance (first as a consultant, before 'retiring' to work in insurance distribution a few years ago), and I know that our industry frequently uses flawed or outdated methodologies due to the simple fact that insurance companies are very conservative and *very* resistant to change when it comes to changes to their core business. Unless you can show a direct, negative impact on the bottom line caused by the currently used method, you are unlikely to make any changes at all. In this case, if the entire US car insurance industry is using the same flawed system, it won't affect a single company if they also stick to it.   Until 1996, before the current system was introduced, insurance companies in Germany used to rate liability insurance for cars (almost) exclusively by engine power output. The industry had known that this method was fundamentally flawed since at least the late 1980s (comprehensive and partial coverage had been rated by the 'new' system for a few years at this point, which had also taken years to work out), but it took additional years of planning, negotiations and cooperation by the entire industry to change to the new system for liability.   So please, do not ever assume that ""the insurance companies are the experts, they know what they are doing!"". It might very well be the case that they are stuck with flawed/outdated systems simply because there is no sufficiently strong impulse to change what they do.   The current Tesla rate adjustment situation is a wonderful example of this - it apparantly took AAA *5 years* since the Model S first came out to realise that their initial estimate was wrong (it seems unlikely that the accident rate or repair costs have suddenly changed over the last year) and take appropriate actions. By late 2013, there were easily enough Teslas on the road (about 20,000) to get realiable data, yet nothing happened for nearly another 4 years." The length of time you have established credit does improve your credit score in the long run. As long as you can avoid paying interest, you might see if you can get a card with cash back rewards. I have one from Citi that sends me a $50 check every so often when I have enough rewards built up. "I assume there is a large amount of competition. Ask yourself: ""What makes you better or different from other drivers?"" If you have an answer, then make it more obvious to customers. If you do not have an answer, then make yourself better or different from other drivers and let customers know.  Example: In Chiang Mai, you can get delicious street food just about anywhere. How do you separate yourself in a sea of strong competitors? One lady started wearing a cowboy hat, it was different. People take notice and remember the hat. People only remember the 'cowboy hat lady.' Now you can type into Google ""cowboy hat lady"" and her food stand comes up." "There is an economic, a social and a psychological side to the decision whether to buy insurance or not, and if yes, which one. Economically, as you say already in your question, an insurance is on average  a net loss for the insured.  The key word here is ""average"". If you know that there are many cancer cases in your family buy health insurance by all means; it's a sound investment. If you are a reckless driver make sure you have extensive coverage on your liability insurance. But absent such extra risks: Independently of somebody's wealth insurance should be limited to covering catastrophic events.  What is often overlooked is that the insurance by all means should really cover those catastrophic events. For example the car liability minimums in many states are not sufficient. The typical upper middle class person could probably pay the 15k/30k/10k required in Arizona with a loan on their house; but a really catastrophic accident is simply not covered and would totally ruin that person and their family.  Insuring petty damage is a common mistake: economically speaking, all insurances should have deductibles which are as high as one could afford to pay without feeling too much pain.  That ""pain"" qualification has an economical and a social aspect. Of course any risk which materialized is an economical damage of some kind; perhaps now I can't buy the PS4, or the diamond ring, or the car, or the house, or the island which had caught my eye. I could probably do all these things, just perhaps without some extras, even if I had paid for insurance; so if I don't want to live with the risk to lose that possibility I better buy insurance. Another economical aspect is that the money may not be available without selling assets, possibly on short notice and hence not for the best price. Then an insurance fee takes the role of paying for a permanent  backup credit line (and should not be more expensive than that).  The social aspect is that even events which wouldn't strictly ruin a person might still force them to, say, sell their Manhattan penthouse (no more parties!) or cancel their country club membership. That is a social pain which is probably to be avoided. Another socioeconomic aspect is that you may have a relationship to the person selling you the insurance. Perhaps he buys his car at your dealership? Perhaps he is your golf buddy? Then the insurance may be a good investment. It is only borderline bad to begin with; any benefits move the line into the profit zone. The psychological aspect is that an insurance buys peace of mind, and that often seems to be the most important benefit. A dart hits the flat screen? Hey, it was insured.  Junior totals the Ferrari? Hey, it was insured. Even if the house burns down having fire insurance will be a consolation."