Maintaining Cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance

No one wants to shell out tons of money for something they think they’ll never use, so finding cheap Tennessee AutoInsurance is a common undertaking for most drivers. Unfortunately, most people wait until an outrageous insurance bill arrives before beginning their search for cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance. While a detailed comparison will temporarily halt the search for cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance, several steps throughout the year can nearly eliminate the need for cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance shopping. 

Steps To Keep Your Cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance Cheap:

Watch your mileage. Cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates often include rate reductions for low annual mileage. Take steps to control your vehicle’s mileage whenever possible and update your vehicle’s mileage details with your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance carrier each policy term. This will ensure your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates include any available reductions for low mileage.

File claims only when necessary. It’s easy to expect your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy to cover every dent, scratch and incident. However, if you use your policy for every incident, your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance will quickly turn to expensive Tennessee Auto Insurance. With multiple claims in your history, it’s unlikely that you’ll find a cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy replacement, even after comparing the rates of multiple cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance carriers. Reserve your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance claims for serious accidents, personal injury claims and physical damage claims that are at least twice your deductible.

Announce your affiliations. Life’s changes can impact your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates. This includes new memberships and affiliations. Be sure to inform your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance carrier of any new memberships or affiliations you enter into during your policy term, as these affiliations may provide additional discounts for your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy.

Update your occupation. Your occupation may also impact your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates. Some occupations often more highly rated than other positions. If you change occupations during your policy term, be sure to update the details with your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance carrier. The new position may result in a reduction to your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy rate.

Increase your deductibles. It’s no mystery that higher physical damage deductibles result in lower insurance premiums. If your situation allows, increase your deductibles to reduce your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates.

Raise your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy liability limits. Drivers often select state minimum liability limits in efforts to maintain cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates. Minimum liability limits often expose drivers, and their cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance companies, to higher risks. Raise your liability limits to keep your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates low.

Add more products. Discounts are the key to maintaining cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance rates. Not only will you find savings with discounts, you may find saving by insuring multiple products under your cheap Tennessee AutoInsurance carrier, such as homeowner’s and life insurance policies.

Stick around and renew your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy. It’s easy to give up on your cheap Tennessee Auto Insurance policy once you find a rate that is even cheaper. However, carriers show customers who remain loyal great discounts for their longevity.  

We’re Moving In Together, But Are We Covered? Insurance Answers for Unmarried Couples

According to statistics from the National Survey of Family Growth, over the past 30 years more and more people live with someone with whom they have a relationship with prior to or instead of getting married- including about half of all men and women under 44 in the most recently available data. No matter the reason, living with your partner when you aren’t married can present some unique (but not impossible!) challenges to making sure you both have the right insurance coverage to protect your belongings and your liability.

Do you both own your home/condo?

If you purchase your home together, it makes the most sense to obtain a single insurance policy with both you and your partner as “named insureds” on it, since you both have a financial/legal interest in the home.

Did one of you move into a home owned by the other?

In cases like this it probably makes the most sense to each maintain a separate policy. If one of you doesn’t have financial or legal interest in the home, most insurance companies won’t allow that person to be added to the existing policy as “Named Insured.” One possible alternative would be to add the person to the policy using a tool known as an endorsement, but even using the Additional Insured endorsement, the person who is added may not have all of their property and contents covered. Therefore, if only one of you owns the home, the best option to make sure each partner has coverage is to obtain separate policies. 

What about our cars? We each own our own and have our own auto insurance policies?

While you’ll have coverage for using each other’s cars the one potential gap in coverage would be if you maintained different coverage limits. Some personal auto policies may exclude some coverage for vehicles you drive that you don’t own but are “furnished or available for your regular use,” a description that would most likely fit your partners vehicle.

Suppose you have higher limits on your car than your partner does on theirs. While you would have some coverage under your partner’s policy when driving their car, it would be for those lower limits of coverage than you might have on your own car. If you each have your own cars and policies, you could consider maintaining the same liability limits on both vehicles.

What if I own a car and my partner doesn’t?

In this scenario your partner could drive your car and have coverage, but if you were to rent a car on a vacation, your partner wouldn’t have coverage if they were to drive it, unless they purchased separate rental car coverage. Another option would be for your partner to obtain a “Named Non-Owner” insurance policy that would allow them to drive your vehicle with their own coverage.

What about the car we own together?

If you own a car together but aren’t married the easiest thing to do is make sure that you obtain a “Joint Ownership Coverage” endorsement.

Good thing you have another partner…

Discuss your situation with a ReduceMyInsurance.Net Independent Insurance Agent. While being married resolves many of these issues in a more direct way, the great thing about having a ReduceMyInsurance.Net agent is that they have the ability to represent different insurance companies, so that they can work with you to obtain the insurance coverage that fit your needs and your lifestyle now and into the future as life changes.

5 Weird Auto Insurance Claims: You'll Have to Read It to Believe It

Car Safety Pictures

Oops, accidentally drove into the garage? Not even close to the craziest claim that insurance companies have received. 

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Most of the time, car insurance claims are humdrum affairs involving fender benders or storm damage. Once in a while, police reports might contain a funny sentence or two regarding accident-scene kerfuffles. (The picture of an angry granny swatting a young punk over the head with her purse comes to mind.)

Truly bizarre claims, however, are rare and elusive. Some have become the stuff of legend. If you Google "weird insurance claim," you'll find multiple improbable rumors involving wrecks caused by drivers ogling naked pedestrians, windshields damaged in squirrel nut attacks, and even one report by a driver who claimed his windscreen melted when a plane crash-landed nearby and burst into flames.

Claims with legitimate sources are harder to come by, but we've unearthed a few for your amusement. Here are 5 genuine, real-deal, truly off-the-wall insurance claims that you'll have to read to believe. First up, a mattress that caused a three-car pile-up.

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humdrum affairs involving fender benders or storm damage. Once in a while, police reports might contain a funny sentence or two regarding accident-scene kerfuffles. (The picture of an angry granny swatting a young punk over the head with her purse comes to mind.)

Truly bizarre claims, however, are rare and elusive. Some have become the stuff of legend. If you Google "weird insurance claim," you'll find multiple improbable rumors involving wrecks caused by drivers ogling naked pedestrians, windshields damaged in squirrel nut attacks, and even one report by a driver who claimed his windscreen melted when a plane crash-landed nearby and burst into flames.

Claims with legitimate sources are harder to come by, but we've unearthed a few for your amusement. Here are 5 genuine, real-deal, truly off-the-wall insurance claims that you'll have to read to believe. First up, a mattress that caused a three-car pile-up.

In December 2011, Seattle news outlets reported a bizarre story involving a mattress and a three-car pile-up. Apparently, a couple -- a man and a woman -- had failed to tie their mattress securely to the top of their SUV. As they were driving on I-5, the mattress loosed itself from its moorings and landed in the middle of the highway, causing a three-way crash.

As two good Samaritans stopped to help, the female driver hopped back into her SUV and fled the scene, leaving her male passenger to deal with the aftermath. Shortly thereafter, one of the good Samaritans also left. A few miles down the road, however, he spied a man's head "bobbing around in the backseat." It turned out to be the male passenger from the mattress incident, who had stowed away, hoping to escape the accident scene undetected [source: Komo News]!

As ludicrous and laughable as that police report must have been, the three innocent passersby whose cars were damaged in the accident were probably not amused. To protect yourself from liability in crazy incidents like this one, be sure to invest in uninsured motorist coverage.

Next up, we introduce one at-fault driver whose incredible misfortune resulted in three separate insurance claims.

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Sometimes, life really is stranger than fiction.

Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Remember the Three Stooges? The characters Larry, Moe and Curly were a trio of none-too-bright gentleman who were always getting themselves into improbable scrapes. Known for their gut-busting slapstick, the Three Stooges perfected the art of chain-reaction physical comedy: Moe would slap Larry, who would fall backward into Curly, who would stumble into the stove, causing his pants to catch on fire, causing Moe to slap down the flames, causing Curly to slap Moe and so on.

Our next weird insurance claim reads like it was hand-crafted to be performed by the Stooges; unfortunately for the shamefaced driver, it was not. As the driver reported on his insurance claim, he was involved in a minor rear-end collision in which he smashed the taillight of a car ahead. He then reversed slightly so that he could survey the damage, but in a stroke of ill luck, he hit the front bumper of the driver behind him. Then, when he opened his door to exit his vehicle, he knocked down a passing cyclist! While those who witnessed the accident were probably in stitches by the time it was over, we imagine the unfortunate driver was less than amused.

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Tim Hyland, president of Block and Hyland Inc., recalls a hail storm back in the 1990s that caused a "hail" of a lot of insurance claims. Among them was one rather suspicious claim for heavy hail damage to a car. When the adjuster inspected the damage, he was skeptical that hail could have caused the perfectly symmetrical, round divots that peppered the entire surface of the damaged car.

Hyland's company rejected the claim, telling the claimant that clearly, the vehicle had been purposefully damaged, not by hail, but by a ball-peen hammer. Hyland figured the client would be so embarrassed at being caught in an obvious attempt at insurance fraud that he would simply drop the entire matter. Instead, the man filed a police report claiming that an unknown assailant had beaten his car with a ball-peen hammer! The client then filed a new insurance claim, and this time, because they couldn't prove that the client had inflicted the damage himself, Hyland's company was forced to pay the claim.

This incident was sneaky and purposeful, but our next weird insurance claim was a random shot in the dark, literally. Intrigued? Read on.

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Imagine having to write "accidentally shot my own truck" on insurance forms!

iStockphoto/Thinkstock

Ron Hettler of Hettler Insurance Agency vividly remembers a claim from his first year in the business. A client of his was driving around in his pickup truck and had his shotgun riding, well, shotgun. Arriving at his destination, the client grabbed his gun and hopped out of the cab. Unfortunately, he lost his grip and the gun discharged. The client wasn't sure if he'd fired the gun while grabbing for it or if it went off by itself as it hit the ground.

The gun was loaded with buckshot and while thankfully, the man was uninjured, the truck's interior wasn't as fortunate. The entire cab of the truck -- headliner, seat covers and dashboard -- had suffered extensive damage. Luckily, the client had comprehensive (also called OTC, orOther Than Collision) insurance. As Hettler says, comprehensive insurance "is very broad and covers many weird incidents," including, apparently, shooting your own pickup truck [source: Hettler].

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In 1974, Michelle Squires of Chattaroy, Washington, drove her beloved "hippie van" to an upholstery shop to have a fold-down bed installed in the back. The van then disappeared from the shop's lot and Squires, broken-hearted, filed a claim with her insurance company, Allstate. They reimbursed her roughly $600 for the vehicle, which was about what she'd paid for it.

Fast-forward 35 years when U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials in Los Angeles recovered a perfectly restored, still-running VW minibus from a shipping container bound for the Netherlands. They ran theVIN (vehicle identification) number and discovered it was the same vehicle that had been stolen from Squires back in 1974.

Now owned by Allstate, the minibus is worth about $25,000. Squires is hopeful that she can come to terms with her insurer and get her minibus back. One can only imagine the stories it would tell if it could talk!

If you've got a weird insurance tale to tell, we'd love to hear it. Leave us a comment, and find more great links and lots more information in the next section.

How To Reduce Your Auto Insurance Premium by as much as 40%

Adjusting Your Auto Insurance Policy
An auto insurance policy is not a static line of coverage. Oh sure, it can be, but it really shouldn’t be. After
all your life changes, as do the medical and liability expenses that can accompany an accident.
This means that you must make an effort at least annually to make adjustments to your auto insurance
policy in order to ensure that it is as effective and accurate as you need it to be.

Annual Auto Insurance Adjustments to Consider
Adjust your average annual miles driven: Your insurer needs to know about how many miles
you drive per year in order to assess what kind of risk you pose to them. Every year, make sure
you report any major changes to them.

Take advantage of applicable discounts: You can get discounts when you add anti-theft devices to your car, such as alarms and steering wheel locking devices.  And don’t forget the discounts you get for taking defensive driving classes. Every year before you renew, consider which of these discounts you might now qualify for.

Add uninsured motorist coverage: If you don’t already have uninsured or underinsured
motorist coverage, then you need to consider adding it to your policy. Without it, you could be
stuck with some major bills after an accident with an uninsured or underinsured motorist.

Adjust your limits: Your limits might be fine for your risk exposure this year, but next year the
rising cost of medical care and changes in your driving habits could mean that you need to
increase your limits to help reduce your exposure. In addition, cars and other personal property
are only getting more expensive. Just another reason keeping a tight rein on your limits is so
important.

Change your deductibles: As the years go by, your ability to support your current deductible
may change. In lean years, you might have fewer savings to commit to a deductible, and as you
pay off debt you might find you have more disposable income to put toward that responsibility.
Keeping your deductible at an accurate level for your budget will help to control your risk
exposure and your premium.

The next time your auto insurance policy is getting ready to renew, remember these points and update
your policy so that it works with your current life—not the one you had when you originally took out the
policy.