Rio Rancho New Mexico Car Insurance Buying Tips You Aren’t Supposed to Know

Having to pay for overpriced car insurance can empty your personal savings and force you to make sacrifices. Comparing price quotes is free and is an excellent way to cut your insurance bill. Big companies like Allstate, Progressive and GEICO all claim big savings, bombarding you with ads and it can be hard to ignore the flying pigs and cute green geckos and effectively compare rates to find the best deal.

If you have a current car insurance policy or need a new policy, you will benefit by learning to shop for the lowest rates and still get good coverage. Choosing the best insurance company for you in Rio Rancho is quite easy. New Mexico drivers just need to know the tricks to find the lowest price online.

These discounts can lower your rates

Properly insuring your vehicles can get expensive, but discounts can save money and there are some available that you may not even be aware of. Larger premium reductions will be automatically applied when you complete an application, but lesser-known reductions have to be asked about before being credited. If you don’t get every credit possible, you’re paying more than you need to.

• Anti-lock Brakes – Vehicles with anti-lock braking systems can reduce accidents and earn discounts up to 10%.
• Driver’s Ed – Have your child successfully complete driver’s ed class in school.
• Auto/Home Discount – If you insure your home and vehicles with the same company you could get a discount of approximately 10% to 15%.
• Life Insurance – Select insurance companies reward you with a break if you buy life insurance from them.
• Passive Restraints and Air Bags – Cars that have air bags or automatic seat belts can receive discounts of 20% or more.

Keep in mind that most credits do not apply to the overall cost of the policy. Most only reduce specific coverage prices like physical damage coverage or medical payments. Just because it seems like you could get a free car insurance policy, you won’t be that lucky. Any qualifying discounts will bring down the cost of coverage.

To choose insurance companies with discount car insurance rates in New Mexico, follow this link.

Low Cost Rio Rancho Car Insurance

Performing a rate comparison is a ton of work if you don’t know the fastest way to get free quotes. You can waste hours talking about coverages with insurance companies in Rio Rancho, or you can utilize online quotes to achieve your goal.

Many of the larger companies take part in a program that enables customers to submit one quote, and at least one company can give them a price for coverage. This prevents consumers from doing quote forms for every car insurance company.

To participate in this free quote system, click here to open in new window.

The only downside to doing it this way is that consumers can’t choose which companies to get quotes from. So if you want to choose specific providers for rate comparison, we have a listing of companies who write car insurance in New Mexico. View list of New Mexico insurance companies.

Whichever way you use, ensure you’re using the exact same deductibles and coverage limits with each company. If you enter different liability limits it will be very difficult to make a fair comparison in Rio Rancho.

Tips to Get Lower Rio Rancho Rates

Smart consumers have a good feel for the factors that go into determining the price you pay for car insurance. Understanding what controls the rates you pay enables informed choices that may reward you with lower car insurance prices.

• Do you need those extra coverages? – There are quite a few extra bells and whistles that can waste your money on your car insurance policy. Things like roadside assistance, accident forgiveness and membership fees may be costing you every month. These coverages may sound good at first, but your needs may have changed so remove them from your policy.
• Please use or commuting – The more you drive in a year’s time the more you’ll pay to insure your vehicle. Most companies price each vehicle’s coverage based on how the vehicle is used. Vehicles used primarily for pleasure use qualify for better rates than those used for commuting. Double check that your car insurance policy shows the correct driver usage.
• With age comes lower rates – Older insureds tend to be more responsible, tend to cause fewer accidents and get fewer tickets. Young drivers are known to get distracted easily when behind the wheel and because of this, their car insurance rates are much higher.
• The type of vehicle makes a difference – The performance of the vehicle you are buying insurance for makes a substantial difference in how high your rates are. The cheapest insurance rates tend to be for lower performance four cylinder passenger cars, but the cost you end up paying is determined by many additional factors.
• Men fork out a little more – Statistics have proven women are more cautious behind the wheel. However, this does not mean women are better drivers. Men and women cause accidents in similar numbers, but the men have costlier accidents. Men also statistically get more serious tickets like reckless driving and DUI. Teenage male drivers are several times more likely to be in an accident and therefore are the most expensive to insure.

Do drivers who switch really save?

Consumers in New Mexico get pounded daily by advertisements for car insurance savings by companies like State Farm and Allstate. All the ads say the same thing that you can save if you switch to them.

How do they all claim to save you money?

Different companies have a certain “appetite” for the driver that is profitable for them. For instance, a preferred risk might be between 25 and 40, has no driving citations, and has excellent credit. Any driver that hits that “sweet spot” gets the lowest rates and most likely will save a lot of money.

Potential insureds who do not match the “perfect” profile will have to pay more money and this can result in the driver buying from a lower-cost company. The ads say “drivers who switch” not “everybody who quotes” save that much. That’s why companies can advertise the way they do.

Because of the profiling, you should get quotes from several different companies. It’s just too difficult to predict which insurance companies will provide you with the cheapest rates.

Final considerations

You just read a lot of information how to shop for car insurance online. The most important thing to understand is the more quotes you get, the better your chances of lowering your rates. You may even discover the lowest rates come from a small local company. These companies often have lower prices on specific markets than their larger competitors like Allstate or State Farm.

As you shop your coverage around, it’s a bad idea to skimp on critical coverages to save a buck or two. There have been many situations where someone sacrificed comprehensive coverage or liability limits and discovered at claim time that it was a big mistake. Your goal should be to buy a smart amount of coverage at the best price while still protecting your assets.

For more New Mexico car insurance information

Additional car insurance information can be read on the website for the New Mexico Insurance Division found here. New Mexico drivers can find out industry alerts, report car insurance fraud, discover disciplinary actions, and read industry bulletins.