4 Quick Tips: Getting Cheaper Insurance On Your First Car

If you thought the cost of your driving lessons were high, wait until you start pricing up insurance for your first car! Insurers view young and inexperienced drivers as most likely to end up making a claim because their inexperience and youth can make them liable to get into more scrapes and accidents. And didn't you know us young crowd engage in street racing, all the time. It’s one of the few forms of discrimination that is still legal – and it’s only that way because the insurance companies have got the statistics behind them to back up their reasoning.

The fact of the matter is that if you’re young (under 21) then you’re around three times more likely to be involved in an accident.

So how can you get a cheap car insurance quote if you’re young and inexperienced?

1. Choose your car carefully. Cars are sorted into different insurance groups depending on things like engine capacity. Those groups typically range from one to fifty, with the cars in the lower groups being less expensive to insure. If you’ve got your heart set on a two-litre engine boy racer in bright red with alloy wheels, white dials and a spoiler, chances are you’ll pay far more than you would if you opted for a 1.1-litre engine contained in a cheap little run-around.

1. If your car is very cheap, then opt for Third Party, Fire and Theft. If you have an accident and it’s your fault, this policy won’t pay out for your car if it gets damaged or written off, but it will pay for the other party’s car and any injuries. It will also pay out if your car is set alight or set on fire. Consider whether you could afford to buy a new car if yours was written off – then compare the cost of doing so with the cost of taking out a fully-comprehensive policy. It's Economics, baby!

2. Add a Named Driver to the policy. Depending on who that named driver is, it could reduce your premium or add to it! If you add a dependable driver, who has a clean driving record and no prior claims, your premium should go down. If you are the main policyholder, you will start to build up No-Claims Bonus which equals cash savings. Cha-ching!

3. Be added as a Named Driver on someone else’s policy. That would make their policy more expensive, but probably less expensive than your policy would be with them as a Named Driver. The downside to this is that you wouldn’t accrue any No-Claims Bonus, so even if you drove carefully for five years or more without an accident, insurance companies wouldn’t recognise that time when you applied for a policy in your own name – they would treat you as a new driver (albeit a slightly older one than you are the moment). Note, though, that if you are the vehicle’s registered keeper, you need to be the main policyholder.

So there you have it, four down and dirty methods for getting cheaper insurance. Which will make you weep far less upon checking your monthly bank account statements.