How Much Car Insurance Do I Need?

In Oregon, if you buy car insurance, (which you know everybody has to because it's the law) if you're driving a car you only have to buy $25,000 worth of coverage which is not very much at all. But you can get away with buying just that much because that's all the law requires.
So when you call up Geico or Progressive or one of the other cheap car insurance companies and say, "You know, give me the cheapest policy I can possibly get," -- they're telling you on their TV ads you're going to get $25,000 worth of coverage. That's coverage that you're buying for yourself if you hit somebody. It's also coverage if somebody hits you and they don't have enough insurance. So if you buy $25,000, and somebody else that hits you has $25,000.00 Oregon law says you're not going to get anything from your insurance policy.
You can add on hundreds of thousands of dollars of coverage (that will cover you if somebody hits you and doesn't have enough insurance to cover your bills) for pennies a year. It's cheaper than health insurance. I've seen people buy supplemental policies that are expensive and pay $50-$60 a month. You don't have to do that with car insurance. It's cheap to get above that minimum level. So I tell everybody this, and my friends and neighbors get sick of hearing me say it -- "Buy as much car insurance as you possibly can!"
If you, god forbid, end up hurting somebody else by not paying attention, you're going to have enough insurance to cover what you did. And if you don't, somebody can come after you for your house or your other assets so it's a great idea all the way around. It takes out that risk factor of some driver out there that's trying to scrimp and save that's not bought enough insurance. What I have, and what you should have, is as much as you can afford on your own insurance policy.
So if somebody hits me and really injures me, I have $1,000,000 in coverage because it's cheap once you get up that high. It's really cheap. I think I paid an extra $100/year bumping up from whatever I had before, $300,000 or something. so it's really cheap to get that much coverage. The other thing it does: if I hurt somebody on the street accidently it covers what I've done. So it's a great thing to have and it's not a place to save money. You just need to call up your insurance agent and say I want as much liability insurance as I can afford. I recommend $300,000. That will give you protection if you hit somebody, AND if you get hit by somebody who doesn't have enough insurance. You can't control how stupid people are on the road, and when they are careless and negligent and don't pay attention, but you can still protect yourself.

Category:

Autos & Vehicles

Tags:

• car insurance
• car accident
• at fault driver
• insurance premium
• crashes
• car accident lawyer