My insurance company is fine. But our son doesn't have a license yet.
I totaled a car and they gave me money plus defended me in a lawsuit. The lawyer was pretty good. The plaintiff's lawyer was not.
What's your insurance company and SAT score?
My relatively new minivan is actually twice as expensive to insure as Hawaii driving a 2013 Mazda.
I've been with USAA for a long time because I'm inertia's bitch, not because they're better than any other insurance company (which was once true, but no longer is).
I just learned what people in hurricane and/or tornado states are paying for house insurance and I'm feeling like I really lucked out on blindly agreeing to live here.
I only qualified because my grandfather was in the military so my mom was a member etc. I think my kids are now eligible though the last actual tour of duty ended in 1945.
Actually I guess that's only accurate for my dad's side. Mom's side was career and retired a lt colonel from the Air Force not too long after I was born.
I started doing this recently, and when I hit the "type in your information" parts, the vast majority of it pre-filled, so I would guess they already have all your info anyway. They know our cars, the VINs, everything about our house, etc etc. I hate it, but our auto insurance is really, really pricey, so I need to get it figured out.
nothing was prefilled for me! Doesn't that make your info available for any shmuck off the street who types your name in any insurance website?
Insurance seems like a wonderful industry to socialize, across the board.
I don't like to take my insurance to parties because I feel it is judging me.
I mean, State Farm sounds like a pretty dull date.
Years ago, my ex worked as an insurance defense attorney. Among the social circle of people doing that work, one big company had the informal reputation of not behaving badly when insured clients made a claim, St@te F@rm. My 1/1 sampling when I had a claim was that they treated me right. Word of mouth, but I don't know of any systematic way to look at this issue that you've correctly identified as the central one with insurance.
Changing agents with them if you draw a bad one (or your former agent retires and now you have a bad one) is a bureaucratic hassle, 3/10 irritation level.
Personal information security is a joke IMO, Chinese hackers got Equifax's whole database in 2017, no meaningful punishment for Equifax, though Bill Barr courageously filed charges against a few PLA officers.
that points towards skipping the local independent agent, which is appealing anyway because I don't have to wait for a weekday.
We have an independent agent. We were referred to herby our mortgage person, and she's terrific.
But that may be market deprndent. Previously we used AAA as out agent. In California there seemed to be mote national carriers. MA historically had weiirdly regulated car indurance.
Tim recommended her to a coworker who owned a housd and 2 condos. His wife had not realized that when she started renting out her condo, it required different insurance policies, so Tim's coworker was grateful for the lookover.
We bundled our car and homeowner's.
But when it comes to rates, she said to stay put, because a lot of people are nit getting their policies renewed.
I love ours do much. Our real edtate agent was also amazing.
16 and 17: I think both state farm and all state pulled put of CA homeowners insurance. One was very public about it, but the other was quietly quitting. Can't remember which.
17: Our indrpendent agent is insane and snswrts e-mails on weekends. We have a crazy neighbor who blamed us when a tree from our property fell ons power line which fud damage to her house from the weight on the power line in the middle of the road. Our agent called her to explain the law.
Geico for 40+ years because my wife had had it for a number of years before we married. Very happy with it/them. Can't recall how many claims we've made over the years, probably 2-3 per decade. Switched homeowners insurance a year ago to whoever Geico partners with (as agent) because the one we were using (which also had been very good about paying out and dealing with claims) jacked up the premiums by about 70%. No experience with them yet in re claims and payouts.
TL;DR GEICO is great for car insurance
The general advice I've gotten is if they have a recognizable ad campaign, like with a jingle or mascot, they're probably not a good value.
Here's a situation with some coverage conundrums:
I remember reading somewhere that Abby and Brittany Hensel were charged two tuitions to attend college, and then paid one salary when they were hired as teachers.
herby our mortgage person
Man, those Love Bug sequel went downhill fast.
I'm watching Jaws and realizing how different the 70s were. Because the shark appeared and someone shouted "Doesn't anyone have a gun?" And no one did.
We have all of our insurance (auto, home, umbrella liability) through a local agency. They've been fine? The agency has gotten a lot of business by referral around some local nerd circles, and I think word would get around if they suddenly became terrible. But I haven't shopped around enough to know if I could do much better - it's been worthwhile that they answer the phone when I call.
Personal information protection is kind of a joke. A few years ago I got a blood test at Quest, for something I was interested in but that was not actually medically important. A year later I applied for some life insurance and was denied (well, offered remarkably punitive rates) on the grounds that I'd gotten the test from a doctor/location who was associated with "addictionology". As best I can tell most of Quest's business is administering drug tests that are required for one reason or another, and so by getting any test at Quest the life insurance industry now suspects me of being an addict.
The shark looks comically fake up close. Graboids were better done.
We had State Farm and at some point my card expired and got replaced with a new one and this somehow screwed up their billing and they sent me one paper letter and then cancelled my insurance. I had no idea and was driving uninsured for a couple months. I found this all very upsetting and so switched to AmFam rather than continuing with them. We then got our homeowners with them too (with various combo deals). But recently our home insurance has gotten way more expensive for no particularly obvious reason (we're not natural disaster prone, the house has gone up in price but that's just the value of the land not the house and the land won't burn down). I've been vaguely annoyed about it but not enough to actually seriously look into changing.
What are the insurance companies that don't have memorable jingles/logos/geckos?
My favorite insurance company, you probably haven't heard of them.
33: I guess this is when Unfogged needs my special expertise as the last person here that still watches broadcast television. "No Jingles or Mascots, just great insurance" - the slogan for NJM. Now you might think that this would mean that their commercials wouldn't have all kinds of bizarre and/or cute animals like the other insurance companies' commercials, but you would be very wrong. Their commercial all feature crazy-looking animatronic creatures that are aspiring to be the NJM mascot, and face rejection each time, because NJM is much too serious an operation to have a silly animal mascot. The layers of irony are more than my simple mind can handle.
Also a little cautionary tale about switching home insurance -- after many years that we kept our insurance with Liberty Mutual despite having been told a few times that we were paying too much, my newly retired wife decided to do something to save us money and responded to an insurance agent that got us a deal with Progressive that saved us a huge amount of money. Everything seemed to be going fine, but one day out of nowhere we got a letter from our agent that Progressive had inspected our roof (via drone apparently) and determined that it was not in acceptable condition and that they would cancel our insurance in 2 months if we didn't get a new roof. We screamed and moaned, but it turned out we didn't have a lot of options at that point -- we got a new roof. It will be many years before the insurance savings equals the cost of the new roof, but, on the other hand, maybe we really did need a new roof.
Roofs as an industry really need to be socialized.
You can be straight without being narrow.
Without being a total commercial, someone on Reddit recommended a company called Amica, and since Minivet recommends that I ought not have heard of a company, and since LW said not to bother worrying about getting an online quote, I got a quote from them, and our 6 month auto premiums would drop from $5,750 to $2,390. I'm okay with saving almost 7K/year.
Sounds good. Be sure you still have uninsured motorist coverage.
We're not a simple one car family, but with two cars it was still well under $2,000. But one car didn't have comprehensive.
Even at $5,000 a year, you practically owe it to yourself to drive drunk once in a while.
22: You don't pay for the agent. They are getting paid by the insurance companies they represent. But they represent several different ones, so they are not necessarily got going to push one product over another. They also need to maintain a reputation as an individual, so they are incentivized not to screw you over.
Tim's coworker went to her, and she recommended different companies for the 2 condos he rents out from the house (which is a higher value property).
21 and 30: I think MA is a special case. I might go with GEICO in CA, but here if you are found at fault in an accident, you can argue your case before an insurance board and get the finding overturned. When the state let in the national companies like Progressive and Liberty, some local companies chose to participate in the old system.
MAPFRE is ok as insurance. You get a discount for giving a small donation to cancer research. When I've had medical issues after n accident, that person is lively.
30: A lot of independent doctors send their patients to Quest. Jeesh,
I remember dad always used to watch the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour. Then that Brooks guy started appearing all the time.
Aw, we had a Tom Lehrer book of sheet music for the piano that I semi-worshipped as a kid.
In health insurance being the absolute worst news, my mother is currently dying of breast cancer (fairly cheaply -- it was diagnosed too late for anything but hospice). In the second week of July, she got a letter saying that her insurance from the company she retired from had been canceled on June 30, and if she had a problem with that she should call before the end of July. Phoning revealed that they made a mistake and innocently thought she wanted them to cancel it: they said whoopsie and turned it back on.
Now, it's supplemental to Medicare, so it might not have made a big difference even if they'd gotten away with it, but it's still awful.
yeah, I'm so sorry, too. Lots of love your way.
They just can't help adding insult to injury, can they? Very, very sorry to hear about your mother.
Yes - very sorry. Not sure how it works with hospice, but the supplement is definitely important, because it covers the 20% Medicare won't.
Oof! LB, that's so hard. Wishing your mother, your sister, and you any possible ease.
Tangentially related, here's a local shitshow with 66 apartment owners who found out their building is about to collapse. Like, serious enough risk of spontaneous collapse that they closed the street and sidewalks in front of it as well as half the parkway that's adjacent to the street. I'm wondering how the insurance is going to work on that, they couldn't afford the demolition so the city is covering it and will recoup costs through sale of the land.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/25/metro/cambridge-demolition-cost/
63/64: Let's go to France for some on-site research and find out.
63: AIMHMHB, back in the Gay '90s, my friend and I experimented with making bathtub absinthe. Mostly by mixing thujone and/or wormwood tea with Pernod. They were not very successful experiments. Then a friend of a friend started making "real" bathtub absinthe, distilling mixtures of herbs from classic 19th century recipes in everclear. That was marginally better, and in fact I still have an unopened bottle of it downstairs. By the time it got decriminalized, and another friend got into ordering bottles from the Czech Republic, I was pretty over it. Just can't get past my dislike of the liquorice flavor from the anise.
Since this was basically pre-internet, pretty much the only sources we had were "Absinthe: History in a Bottle" and Dale Pendell's "Pharmako/Poeia" and our own wits.
63: the last time we were in Prague we went to an absinthe bar in Staromestska and had a great time. "Green Devil" on Tynska. Can recommend.
We're pretty happy with Geico. The rates seem to be going up lately for no apparent reason, but I was in a car accident in May and Geico made the claims process pretty easy, and that's the important thing, right? But the other party also had Geico, which might have been relevant, I'm not sure.
It was weird. I've had half a dozen car-accident-related events in the past 20 years, but this was the first one in all that time that I actually had to think about my own insurance. They were so helpful it got annoying. I felt pushed to take the earliest repair appointment possible! I felt pushed to accept the rental car they offered me while repairs were going on, even though I might not have needed it! (I did. I treasure my memories of carlessness, but it would have been bad that week.)
Contrasting it with the time I was biking and got hit by a car, for example. Back then there was concerning but ultimately fine medical stuff, my own insurance was never brought up, and a few weeks or months later I made a claim on the other parties' insurance that worked out to more than the value of the bike. All the complications were because no one knows how to handle car-on-bike accidents where the car came out worse.
63: I haven't drunk absinthe straight up in a long time if ever, but a couple weeks ago I had a sazerac cocktail I really enjoyed which included the stuff.
Agree, absinthe is for rinsing the glass, not drinking!
Ok, back to business. Here are some quotes I just got:
Allstate: $5750 (6 months, existing coverage)
Progressive: $1246
Travelers: $3287
Amica: $2824
People on reddit like Amica and Travelers and hate Progressive. Is that worth $1600 every six months? Maybe it is?
FOCUS, PEOPLE. We have a job to do here, for me.
It really is. Argh. Then again, you should see how much I'm paying now.
I recommend you don't mention the absinthe.
holy crap, I just priced out Progressive if we bundle in home insurance, and it drops the auto premium to $797 for six months.
That's just a trick to get you to buy a house.
77. I was just about to comment that with a young/inexperienced driver in the house, $1600/six months would be a worthwhile price to pay for peace of mind, but forget it, I'd let myself worry a little if it saved me that much money.
I've been with State Farm for decades without having done any comparison shopping since I first signed up. In the last five years I've had a car totaled by a hit-and-run and had a tree fall on my house requiring weeks in a rental and more than 100 grand in repairs. I'd say in general that we underwent a fairly ordinary amount of bureaucratic hassle. (The contractors we hired, on the other hand, were a mess. But we got paid more-or-less appropriately.)
Totaled two cars, now that I think of it. The tree got one.
61: I saw that. The city had to take over the demolition and then charge the condo owners later, because thye couldn't afford it. And because it's an emergency, they got permission to skip the usual procurement process. Crazy.
81: That's why you need uninsured motorist coverage. Very few trees have their own.
I am still with American National for car; I'd had everything bundled with them for two decades, but then they left home insurance in CA last year. Fortunately they gave me a few months notice, but not many were taking new clients in CA. I tried State Farm and they had a freeze, but referred me to Farmers, who it turned out couldn't issue the policy themselves, but ran down a decent third party policy. The new policy issuer made me trim back the trees away from the roof, but otherwise have been fine this year -- but I haven't gone through claims with them, so don't know if they'll actually pay.
Reddit is saying that Progressive lowballs its introductory rate, and then will spike in six months.
I decided to reach out to a local independent agent and have them get a few quotes for me, and at least use that for context.
Hope it goes well. Getting a few quotes is always helpful.
Hope it goes well. Getting a few quotes is always helpful.
I buy insurance from Hanover for home and two cars. I haven't priced them against anybody else, but they did pay promptly for a new roof and car dent repair after a hail storm several years ago. I pay them around halfway between Progressive and Amica in 72.
Okay, I got the quote! First off, he said no one would give me a quote for bundling with home insurance, because the insurance companies said there was too much tree cover for them to see what shape my roof is in.
He talked to 3 companies and gave me one quote, for $2714. And that company is...Progressive. wtf world.
Anyway, I suspect the $800 progressive quote would not materialize for more than 6 months and the real price is close enough to Amica that we should just go with them.
Good work, team!!
90: Two drivers, married adults over 25 with good records. Oldest kid turns 16 in 2027.
89: For new policies, they want your roof to be less than 15 years old,
We got a metal roof put on in 2011! That should carry more weight, because a metal roof can carry more weight.
This is making me believe I should stop bundling home and auto and get a new auto quote at least because I cannot believe how much we're paying when my car is a hideous van where the air conditioning doesn't even work if it's over 85, which it always is now. I'm not sure how much is that the home insurance payment gets pulled in as part of the mortgage so of course we're paying a lot but the car insurance comes out of the account every month and oh good god why are we paying that much? etc. But thanks, heebie!
85 is way too fast for lots of roads.
995: The 15-year rule is for asphalt. I bet it's different for metal.
Health insurance isn't really a thing here, but, by comparison, in the UK, my car insurance is £400 a year, fully comprehensive.* So the US numbers above seem very high.
I live in London, so I'm definitely not at the cheaper end of the risk calculation. I could also get it cheaper, but I've stayed with my current provider, which is a big reputable provider rather than a smaller one. That said, I've got a chunky "no claims" bonus as I've been driving a long time and have had exactly one insurance claim in 30 years.
* I don't know how US auto insurance works, but fully comprehensive means that my car is covered, and any third party is covered, in the event of an accident, fire, theft, etc. even if the accident is my fault.