So, I was going over our budget yesterday, and I noticed that our car insurance payments have increased over the past few months. I thought I’d give my agent a call and see what was up.

Silly me, I had forgotten that we had added another car onto the policy and that was why it was so much higher. But of course, while he had me on the phone, he did what any good insurance agent would do and tried to get me to upgrade my policy.

I told him, “Jim, I’m trying to get my payments down, not up. The way things are going, we need to be saving money in any way we can.” I was really surprised when he said he completely understood, and then began scrutinizing my policy to find any reasonable way to reduce the payments!

He pointed out that on our main vehicle we had hospital coverage of $1000 in case of an accident. He asked, “Do you have good health insurance?” I told him we did. He said that our health insurance, or the other driver’s insurance (if it was another driver’s fault) would cover those expenses anyways. I asked, “So, we really don’t need that?” He honestly told me, “It’s really just frill.” Surprised, I said, “Okay, well let’s take that off.”

Next he pointed out that we were also paying for rental car coverage, in case we needed a rental. Seeing as we have three vehicles (all paid for mind you), we really wouldn’t need to get a rental car if one broke down. So, I dropped that too.

I also discovered that if I have my payment automatically drafted from my account that it would save me the extra billing fee. I signed us up for that right away.

All in all, I was able to reduce our monthly bill by a little over $11. Now, that’s not huge, but it’s something! That’s more money in my pocket, which is always a bonus in my book!

Why am I telling you all of this? Because there may be extra “frill” in your policy that you don’t even need, but continue to pay for month after month. I’m sure there are many other little things written into policies that I don’t know to tell you about as well.

If you are looking to save a few extra dollars every month, I urge you to contact your auto insurance agent and speak to them about ways to reduce your monthly premium (without compromising your coverage).

If anyone knows of any other unnecessary coverage hidden in auto policies please inform us all. We need to be doing all we can to save our pennies!