Pay for Car Insurance Now, Not for Damages Later

Everyone has to buy car insurance, but some people only decide to carry the coverage required by their state. However, there are usually few restrictions on if you can buy more than the required coverage. But, you might not want to because you have to make ends meet, and paying a lot for car insurance isn’t really your priority. All the same, if you pay now, you will usually pay far less than you would for the cost of a car wreck. Here’s just a few reasons why.

Increasing Coverage Offers More Benefits

Usually, your state will only require you to buy certain car insurance. In Virginia the requirements are:

Virginia requires the following minimum coverage:

• $25,000 bodily injury per person per accident
• $50,000 bodily injury for all persons per accident
• $20,000 property damage liability
• $25,000/$50,000 uninsured motorist bodily injury
• $20,000 uninsured motorist property damage with a $200 deductible for hit-and-run accidents

What coverage offers

Usually, you must buy coverage upon registering your car in Virginia. Even foreign-made cars, driven by foreign-licensed drivers, must get state registration and insurance at a certain period.

However, you can usually add extra coverage to your policy. This might include coverage like:

• Collision insurance to pay for damage to your car from wrecks
• Comprehensive insurance that pays for vehicles damaged in non-accident hazards
• Higher liability insurance limits will pay more money in case of expensive at-fault claims
• Medical payments coverage will pay for your medical costs if you get hurt in a wreck

But wait, you might think that buying more coverage will require you to pay more for your policy. Yes, it might.

However, the catch is that any increase in premium is likely far less than the cost that you might have to pay out-of-pocket should you encounter a vehicle accident or other claim.

Think about it this way. Car wrecks cost the U.S. $230.6 billion yearly. That’s a cost of $820 per person. The average cost of a collision claim was more than $3,000. So, what if you didn’t have collision insurance? That’s a cost you might have to pay out of your own pocket, without help from your insurance company.

On the other hand, the average cost of collision insurance in the U.S. is about $600/year. If you add that into a full-coverage policy, you’ll likely still pay a lot less than $3,000 for going without coverage. The average cost of a full coverage policy in the U.S. was $1,621/year, an average of $136 per month for 12 months. Even if you have to pay a deductible for your policy, the deductible cost itself is still likely far less of an out-of-pocket cost than the cost of no collision insurance.