The average American has no fewer than 8 insurance policies to his name. Together, these insurances cost several thousand dollars on an annual basis. A small saving on each insurance policy can quickly ensure that you have hundreds of dollars in your pocket at the end of a year. That’s great, of course, but how do you save all that money on your insurance? In this article, we give you 11 tips on how you can do that.
What insurances are There?
You can insure yourself for almost everything in the United States.
Of course, there are mandatory insurances, such as health insurance and car insurance, but you also have home insurance, home contents insurance, term life insurance, liability insurance, and travel insurance.
You can imagine that if you can save five dollars a month on each insurance, you will have extra money left over at the end of the month.
So much so that saving 5 dollars per insurance above results in an additional saving of 420 dollars on an annual basis. Not wrong.
So let’s take a quick look at how you can achieve that saving quickly and easily.
1. Check whether you need the insurance
You will save the most money in the end if you do not take out the insurance at all.
To determine whether you need insurance, it is an important condition whether you can cough up the damage yourself without insurance.
Home contents
insurance Take home contents insurance, for example. With this, you ensure the contents of your house against, for example, fire and water damage.
But suppose you got all your furniture second-hand or even for free from the internet.
Home contents insurance easily costs 8-15 dollars per month. The chance that something in your house will break is minimal, so you may have to declare something once every ten years.
This means that you have paid between 960 and 1800 dollars to the insurance.
So if you don’t have any designed furniture at home and you could easily arrange new household effects, it is worth considering not taking out insurance.
Cancellation insurance
The same applies to cancellation insurance. Suppose you book a unique world trip for a few thousand dollars.
You book this trip a few months in advance. Of course, you also invest in cancellation insurance.
But suppose you book a house in Los Angeles, and that you are already going there in 4 weeks.
Then cancellation insurance is little. Of course, it is a shame if the trip cannot go ahead, but if no one in the family is in the hospital, your relationship is good and the children are healthy, then saving on cancellation insurance can easily yield a few tens.
Of course, you should only do this if you could bear the costs of cancellation yourself.
If you then cannot leave for a year because you no longer have any money, then it is, of course, wise to spend a few dollars extra.
2. Investigate about your Uninsured
The Americans are afraid of unforeseen costs. The result? We over-insure ourselves en masse. An example is a supplementary insurance.
For example, the one for the dentist. Because many people know that some treatments at the dentist are expensive, they prefer to insure an extra 10 or even 20 dollars per month to counteract those costs.
But do you incur costs of 120 to 240 dollars per year at the dentist? Most people don’t, which makes them overpay year after year.
If you suddenly have a bill of 400 dollars after 4 years for a special procedure, many people say; “I was insured for that”.
But in the end, they paid 480 or 960 dollars in premium themselves in those 4 years. Are you still young, have you never needed surgery?
Then consider dropping your dental insurance. Of course only if you have a piggy bank where you could pay a realistic amount for the dentist.
And also pay attention to what exactly is covered in the supplementary dental insurance.
Often the most common procedures, such as the removal of wisdom teeth, still require additional costs on your part.
That is of course a shame if you already pay money for the additional dental insurance every month.
3. Do not always opt for Collective Insurance Immediately
Many large companies offer group health insurance through work. The entire family can then insure itself with one health insurer, with the premium being a few percent lower than if you were to take out the insurance yourself.
But the health insurers that carry out this type of promotion are often not the cheapest providers. They still have enough margin to deduct a few percent and also often only offer the more expensive packages.
This way you always opt for a more expensive package, which saves you a few hundred dollars per year with the whole family.
But if you had taken out these insurance policies yourself with the cheapest health insurer, you would have saved a lot more.
4. Pay the Premium Annually
Do you have a piggy bank that you don’t have to do anything with for the coming year?
Then pay off your health insurance and car insurance in one go. At the beginning of the year, you have the option to pay the premium in one go, which gives you a discount on the total amount.
The amount of the discount depends on the provider. Some health insurers and car insurers do not offer a discount.
Health insurers often give a discount of 1 or 2% on the total premium.
Do you pay a monthly healthcare premium of 125 dollars? In that case, your advantage is 30 dollars per year with a 2% discount. With car insurance, that benefit adds up faster. There are also discounts of 5% or more.
By paying these premiums in advance, you can quickly save more than 100 dollars per year. Especially if you have enough financial resources to pay in advance for an entire family.
5. Opt for continuous Travel Insurance
It doesn’t seem logical to be insured for holidays all year round when you only go away once a year.
However, it is often cheaper to take out a comprehensive travel insurance policy than a separate insurance policy.
Sometimes you are insured for less than 30 dollars per year for everything that happens on a trip, while you often already pay the same for separate travel insurance for a 14-day trip.
In general, it is often better to take out a comprehensive travel insurance policy when you go on holiday for more than 14 days a year.
6. Raise your Deductible
The word risk has a frightening effect on people. We prefer to keep as far away from it as possible. But have you never had to pay your deductible?
In that case, you could have saved more than 1,000 dollars in the past 5 years. You can indicate to your health insurer that you want to increase the deductible so that the level of your health insurance premium is reduced.
Depending on your health insurer, you can increase the amount in steps or you can increase it in one go up to the maximum amount.
7. Do not take out Package insurance
Most insurers try to be the cheapest in terms of one insurance policy. They then offer you the option to take out all your insurance policies with that provider. That seems convenient, but that’s where a lot of people go wrong.
Because although you may get a total discount of a few tens a year, you end up spending more money.
Every year it becomes clear again that taking out separate insurance policies with the various providers is the cheapest.
So take a few hours to look up the cheapest deals, because it can save you a lot of money.
8. Watch out for double coverage
Many Dutch people are double covered. For example, they have taken out glass insurance and contents insurance for their rental home, but as soon as they move to an owner-occupied home, that glass insurance is no longer necessary.
This is automatically included in the home insurance. So make sure that you are not double insured because being double insured does not mean that you can claim twice.
9. Switch regularly
Every year insurers raise their prices. This increase is mainly due to the size of the piggy bank that the insurers have at that time.
If they have reserves, the amount will increase considerably less than if the insurer sees its financial resources shrink. If a certain insurer was the cheapest last year, it does not have to be the case this year.
So feel free to switch to the cheapest provider every year. It will only take you a few minutes and sometimes save you more than 100 dollars per year.
10. Choose an Online Insurer
Offices and staff cost money. That is why insurers with beautiful and expensive offices are often more expensive compared to online insurers. Nowadays it is no longer necessary to visit us for an appointment and you can just call.
Then why pay a lot of money for something you don’t use? An online insurer sometimes even has better customer service because everything is done online and because they have to gain the trust of the customer.
If you want cheap (health) insurance, also look at insurers that are only active online.
11. Don’t take warranty insurance
You are about to buy a laptop when the seller asks if you want to extend the warranty for another year.
This means that you can return the laptop for 3 years under the warranty instead of 2 years.
This is often not a convenient move, because you pay more to the insurance than to the profit you make with it.
If the manufacturer offers the extra guarantee, this is often because the product is often very reliable.
If there are no problems that can be repaired under the warranty in the first two years, then that is often not the case in the third year.
If you apply these 11 tips, you can be sure that you will have money left over at the end of the year.
Add up your monthly savings and put them aside.
You’ll find that at the end of the year you’ll have more than enough money left over for a fun outing, new additions to your wardrobe, or even an entire vacation!
