Car Insurance

lost_in_thought

DonDaddyD wrote:

Jesus, this really is 6 pages about car insurance.

You lot take the wee-wee! And then blame me about thread derailment.....

It's not a thread derailment! It's 6 (now 7) pages on car insurance! This may be the most on-topic thread EVER!

And now you've gone and ruined it.

:P

the_hundredth_idiot

Sailorchick wrote:

There is that

I dread to think what my brothers car insurance cost him. By the time he got his first car (Metro) he'd already managed to write off my Mum's Volvo 440. He's one of the statistics that make it more expensive for young lads - he went into the back of a stationary Cavalier at 50mph without even touching the brakes. How? - he had a car full of mates on the way to a gig and was adjusting sunroof/stereo, went round a bend and didn't notice the car stopped waiting to turn right. If he had been in a less sturdy car would have been nasty but as it was everyone walked away from it - they actually played their gig that evening.

Sticking up for my brothers, it's not just men who do daft things like that.

I was on holiday in Cornwall in June - car full with me, wife, two sons (1 and 3), dog and beach stuff. On a long, straight bit of road, waiting in a queue of traffic at some roadworks (one of those ones where two men are employed to hold a stop/go sign and turn it around every so often. In front of me was a couple of cars AND A MASSIVE GREAT BIG COACH. Didn't stop some dozy bint not seeing the queue of traffic and slamming into the back of me at some speed.

First thing that alerted me to the impending crash was a massive squealing of tyres behind me - looked in the mirror to see an old Golf covertible with locked wheels (and smoke coming from the tyres) slam into the back of me. No idea how fast she must have been going a couple of seconds before she twigged that I was stationary.

lost_in_thought

THI, the girl touched the brakes then?

The boy in Sailorchick's story didn't...

:P

the_hundredth_idiot

Fair point. And it wasn't so much a touch of the brakes as a pedal to the floor moment. She definitely wanted to stop - just a shame she didn't make that decision a few seconds earlier. :evil:

Pritchard5

lost_in_thought wrote:

DCowling wrote:

Pritchard5 wrote:

Insurance now sorted
Just a smidgen over £2000 on a 2007 Mini One with a chilli pack

Pleased

£2k = £ 38 per week

I must be getting old, I was not earning that much a week when I was your age

It's OK, I'm sure mummy and daddy will cover it, and the cost of the car.

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

rjsterry

Pritchard5 wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

DCowling wrote:

Pritchard5 wrote:

Insurance now sorted
Just a smidgen over £2000 on a 2007 Mini One with a chilli pack

Pleased

£2k = £ 38 per week

I must be getting old, I was not earning that much a week when I was your age

It's OK, I'm sure mummy and daddy will cover it, and the cost of the car.

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

Touché

rolf_f

Pritchard5 wrote:

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

What's an 07 BIG on finance then? Genius lumbering yourself with pointless debt already.......

DCowling

Pritchard5 wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

DCowling wrote:

Pritchard5 wrote:

Insurance now sorted
Just a smidgen over £2000 on a 2007 Mini One with a chilli pack

Pleased

£2k = £ 38 per week

I must be getting old, I was not earning that much a week when I was your age

It's OK, I'm sure mummy and daddy will cover it, and the cost of the car.

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

I am impressed but also amazed that you would rather pay the insurance up and finance a car , I genuinely am pleased but hope you have your sums right
I know the insurance companies charge circa 35% on the premium if paid in installments but how does this compare to the % on the finance

davis

Pritchard5 wrote:

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

Chapeau for paying for it yourself... but that's the same mistake I made with my (second) car. Good way to loose 6.5 grand without blinking (finance and depreciation). It would have been a bigger loss if I hadn't paid it back early...

lost_in_thought

Rolf F wrote:

Pritchard5 wrote:

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

What's an 07 BIG on finance then? Genius lumbering yourself with pointless debt already.......

Quite.

So why did you have to convince your parents that you 'need' over a 1.2 if you're paying for it yourself?

Sailorchick

bails87 wrote:

still, £800 for a new driver, in a 1.3 with a crash on his 'record'. That's a bargain!

I think my sister pays more than that on a 1.0L '04 (I think) Corsa!

And Sailorchick, that £350 in 1986 works out as worth anywhere between £760 and £1300 today.

The car was a 1986 reg. I bought it in 1998.

bails87

Sailorchick wrote:

bails87 wrote:

still, £800 for a new driver, in a 1.3 with a crash on his 'record'. That's a bargain!

I think my sister pays more than that on a 1.0L '04 (I think) Corsa!

And Sailorchick, that £350 in 1986 works out as worth anywhere between £760 and £1300 today.

The car was a 1986 reg. I bought it in 1998.

My mistake! :oops:

Sorry for aging you

Pritchard5

I am paying half the finance and my parents are paying the other half.

Petrol is going through the company, so i can claim that back.

I AM NOT GOING TO GET IN DEBT
if the worst came to the worst my parents would pay it all off!

£160 PM finance

prawny

Sailorchick wrote:

bails87 wrote:

still, £800 for a new driver, in a 1.3 with a crash on his 'record'. That's a bargain!

I think my sister pays more than that on a 1.0L '04 (I think) Corsa!

And Sailorchick, that £350 in 1986 works out as worth anywhere between £760 and £1300 today.

The car was a 1986 reg. I bought it in 1998.

My wife had a polo fox for her first car. It didn't even have a stereo fitted.
She used to drive home from uni in Aberystwyth every weekend too.

cee

Pritchard5 wrote:

I AM NOT GOING TO GET IN DEBT
£160 PM finance

ermmm....soon as you sign that finance agreement you are in debt....

cee

bails87 wrote:

still, £800 for a new driver, in a 1.3 with a crash on his 'record'. That's a bargain!

I think my sister pays more than that on a 1.0L '04 (I think) Corsa!

And Sailorchick, that £350 in 1986 works out as worth anywhere between £760 and £1300 today.

This was back in '96 Passed test december 16th. borrowed next door neighbours car to get to work, good roads on way in, after midnight on the way out, rain and then freezing temps meant back ice on the road. Brakes didn't do anything on my way to a crossroads with a red light at less than 30...through red light into rear nearside qp of car 1....it spun into car going opposite direction to it....

3 cars written off...no-one even as much as bruised. 6 penalty points and a £1500 fine, later converted into Community Service hours.

Skip forward a year or so....

I buy my first car...the 1.3 Astra...already have the point endorsed.....3rd party fire and theft cost £800.

so that was 13/14 years ago....

current insurance is the £200 described.

rjsterry

Nothing wrong with debt so long as you can make the repayments. All those with mortgages end up paying back tens of thousands of pounds more than they borrowed. Give the poor guy a break; if that's what he wants to spend it on it's up to him. How is the debt anymore 'pointless' than buying a £4K bike on finance?

Wallace1492

cee wrote:

Pritchard5 wrote:

I AM NOT GOING TO GET IN DEBT
£160 PM finance

ermmm....soon as you sign that finance agreement you are in debt....

Jeez, give the guy a break. It's hardly huge debt, he has no mortgage, kids, responsibilities. Just wants and can afford a decent car. Personally I would do the same in his position. But from a more mature pespective that i have now, I would advise getting a smaller, cheaper car, bu heyho, he hasn't.

Best wishes to him, and hope he does drive carefully.
A teenager in a mini recently almost killed one of my friends, they were speeding and went out of control, crossed to the wrong side of the road and hit my friend head on. She spent months recovering and now walks with a stick. Teenage driver severly brain damaged....

DonDaddyD

Nearly everyone gets a loan of some sort to make a part payment for a car. And if they don't do it for a car they've done it for something else they think is worth the financial commitment.

asprilla

When I take a loan on a car I just try to make sure that my payments are ahead of the depreciation curve (helped by not buying brand new cars) so that if the worst came to the worst I could sell the car and completely clear the amount owed.

DCowling

it is not so much the value of the car but the cost of insurance in relation to the value.

As most have said, the OP has very little driving experience and is therefore getting scrood on the premiums, I was trying to point out that he may have found it cheeper to pay off £2k of the car value and do the insurance on installments

DonDaddyD

If and when I get a loan for a car the loan would be less than the cash I also use to buy the car.

I would never finance or HP through a car company, always bank loan.

That way, if I need to sell the car I can, the money need not be interfered with by car finance/HP agreements. and the loan is managable against the value of the car and the time it takes to pay back the loan.

I would never get a loan longer than 3years.

£8000 = £5000 - cash + £3000 - loan

I accept if people would do this differently.

unixnerd

I think people spend more on cars than they need to. Cars are much more reliable than in the times when most of us were growing up :-) Older cars which have been looked after and have service history can be a real bargain. If they develop a major fault you can just part them out and get another, often for more than they cost!

Summer car is a 1990 BMW 318iS (my third since I bought an almost new one 20 years ago!). Bought in the south of England (so no Scottish rust), it's mint and cost me 1200 quid. Going up in value, not down. Gave my last one away to a friend with 215k miles and still going strong.

Winter car (you need one up here, on snow tyres) is a 1996 328i estate I paid 1000 for, again from the south of England. Again, not a mark on her and full history - owned by a family of doctors and every receipt since new. Cost over 30k new.

They cost me about 160 each to insure and I only tax the summer car half the year. I do all my own maintenance, but little is needed.

I used to buy expensive cars when I was younger, most I spent was about 17k on an 18 month old BMW. But as I got older I came to realise the older cars were more fun and it was madness spending so much on something that depreciated so much. I suppose I used to see an expensive car as a status symbol, but I've since grown up a bit (I hope!).

A well looked after old car can be a bargain if you buy carefully and wait for the right one to come along. Look for an old BMW, Merc, VW, Audi, etc. Got a splendid S reg SAAB 93 for a relative last year, just 800 quid with full history and a new MoT.

You can use the savings to buy all sorts of carbon fibre goodies ;-)

lost_in_thought

I've always bought cars with money, not finance, so excuse my ignorance, but if the OP writes off his car, does he still have to pay for it? Or does the insurance pay for it? What if the insurance settlement is less than the outstanding balance of the loan?

And, OP:

Pritchard5 wrote:

lost_in_thought wrote:

It's OK, I'm sure mummy and daddy will cover it, and the cost of the car.

Nope,
I am paying for both
Car on finance and just paid the insurance upfront

+

Pritchard5 wrote:

I am paying half the finance and my parents are paying the other half.

I AM NOT GOING TO GET IN DEBT
if the worst came to the worst my parents would pay it all off!

£160 PM finance

=

unixnerd

but if the OP writes off his car, does he still have to pay for it? Or does the insurance pay for it? What if the insurance settlement is less than the outstanding balance of the loan?

If he's got 3rd party insurance and writes off the car through his own fault then he's stuffed. If he's got comprehensive then they'll pay either way. They won't pay his excess (say 200-500 quid), but they may try to claim it off a 3rd party if one was involved (especially if he has optional legal cover, costs about a tenner).

The value of the settlement may well be less than that of the car and/or it's finance.

I've been contacted by individuals and insurance companies in the past because I run a BMW website for the older cars. I've been asked to give valuations. In one case they offered a guy with a really perfect 1989 635CSi 500 quid at first, he eventually got 4.5k. It pays to haggle.

One thing to watch with classic or older cars is that any accident will often involve the car being written off due to repair costs being more than half the car's value. In this case you can often buy it back from the insurer for 1/3rd it's value and repair it yourself with used parts for very little. But some companies refuse to let you buy it back and will crush it if you make a claim, check your policy details! You'll find loads of Cat C and D cars on ebay, insurance right offs with fairly minor damage that folk buy and repair.

Also, it can be cheaper not to claim at all and just fix it yourself. Any insurer must fix it with new parts, the cost of fixing it with used parts is a fraction of that. You can often get a used bumper in the right colour for 100 quid, it could cost over 1000 to buy a new one and have it painted. That's why your insurance is so expensive :-( Even a minor scrape can cost a fortune.

beegee

I know it is off topic but I love these threads - they make me laugh more than a Steve Martin film. But I suppose this post will be just after someone describes their trauma at a major accident they attended involving a teenage driver :?

asprilla

unixnerd wrote:

You can often get a used bumper in the right colour for 100 quid, it could cost over 1000 to buy a new one and have it painted.

£700 for a 2006 5 Series Touring bumper.

My Mrs also claims the reversing sensors are faulty............

lost_in_thought

So, what happens if the insurance settlement is less than the outstanding amount on the loan? Does he still have to pay the loan?

And what if he sells the car? Does he sell the loan too? Do you have to pay off the laon before you're allowed to sell the car?

Can you get several car loans at once?

unixnerd

My Mrs also claims the reversing sensors are faulty............

Are the reversing lights coming on? If they're not it could just be the switch that screws into the side of the gearbox.

unixnerd

So, what happens if the insurance settlement is less than the outstanding amount on the loan? Does he still have to pay the loan?

And what if he sells the car? Does he sell the loan too? Do you have to pay off the laon before you're allowed to sell the car?

Yes. The two aren't connected, all the loan company will care about is that you owe them money.

No, but you should or the car will have finance owed on it and may be technically owned by the finace company who could take it back from it's new owner! For this reason you should do an HPI check on any used car you buy to ensure it has no accident history or finance owing on it.