How to reduce car insurance costs

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While the overall costs of keeping a car are rising there are ways that smart motorists can keep the costs of running their car down. Besides researching to find the cheapest places to refuel your car and reducing your car usage, shopping around for car insurance has never been more important.

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There are other measures that motorists can take to ensure they obtain the most competitive car insurance quote:

• Insurers will usually reward you with a lower car insurance quote if you have fitted an alarm or an immobiliser or simply use a steering wheel lock. New drivers can benefit from reduced car insurance premiums by adding an older, more experience driver to their policy as a named driver.

• If you can afford to, paying your car insurance premium up front is cheaper as you avoid paying high APRs that insure charge on monthly instalments.

• Opting to increase your voluntary excess can help to reduce your premium, but remember this is the amount you will have to pay in the event of a claim.

• Make sure you can afford it. Many car insurers will offer a discount of 10% to 20% if you buy your car insurance online.

• Your car insurance company may offer you breakdown covers as an added extra, however before accepting this is worth looking around as you may find a cheaper policy elsewhere.

• Shop around for this as well as for your car insurance. Always check the small print of your breakdown insurance policy and make sure you have opted for the desired leave of cover.

• Cheaper policies may not include home cover or may require you to pay an excess on call out. If you do not have breakdown insurance then you risk paying upwards to around £60 if you need to call out a recovery service.

•There are specialist insurers who focus on targeting certain groups such as older and women drivers. However it's important to focus on the product details rather than simply the advertising message.

• By going directly to a specialist insurer, you could be ruling out other insurers in the market offering better value for money car insurance policies.

Therefore before settling for a policy provided by a specialist insurer make sure you have searched the market and compared other car insurance policies on a like for like basis.