Insurance rates in many states remains high. Shopping around can help.
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses lowering your home and car insurance with State Farm’s Ashley King.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
This morning on BRN, lowering your home and car insurance. Joining me now, welcome back to the program, Ashley King of State Farm Insurance. Ashley, happy new year.
Great to see you. Thanks for joining us on the program this morning.
Ashley King, State Farm
You’re same to you, Jeffrey. So great to see you. I’m glad to be back.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, it’s always great to talk to you about a lot of things related to the vehicle and the home and insurance. I want to start off talking about coverage. We’ll get into the, you know, getting the best deal and all that kind of stuff in a couple of minutes.
But let’s talk about coverage. There’s obviously a lot of calamities that have gone on here in North Carolina with the hurricanes, you know, floods and things going on in California. But in generalities, let’s talk about coverage.
Does car insurance or home insurance, does that typically cover these types of events?
Ashley King, State Farm
Absolutely. No, great question. So for car insurance, right, any kind of water damage, fire damage, that is typically covered underneath your comprehensive coverage.
So your comprehensive coverage is any damage that’s done to your vehicle that is weather related, the car’s stolen, the car is vandalized, you hit an animal or a tree falls on your vehicle. I know we’ve seen that. Cars parked in their driveway and heavy winds come through and a tree falls on it.
Yes, that falls underneath comprehensive coverage. Now for your homeowner’s policy, I know you mentioned that flood is a little bit different when it comes to your homeowner’s insurance to where with State Farm at least, you do have water coverage built into your homeowner’s policy. But there is a difference between water damage and damage that’s caused by a flood.
There is separate insurance that you would need to have if the root cause of the damage was by flood. And you can get that, that’s just a separate policy. And you can choose to have that if you live in a flood zone or if you don’t live in a flood zone.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, really important. And so a lot of people watching this on the news probably, I know I did and you take pause and you say, well, do I need to worry about that? If I’m interested in knowing my coverage, and hypothetically, it doesn’t have to be specific to State Farm, but how do you determine whether or not you had these types of coverages?
Like if you had the flood insurance or some of the other protections, do you look at the actual policy documents that may be online or on your phone?
Ashley King, State Farm
Absolutely, yep. So every policy has like their core coverages, but then there are also endorsements that you can add to your homeowner’s policy. And so what you’d wanna do, my recommendation would be take a look at your coverages, but then reach out to your insurance company and set up a time to review what your policies are and ask these kinds of questions.
I mean, that is always a really good thing to do every year or every few years, because a lot of times like you don’t think about your insurance until you have to use it or these kinds of major events happen. And the last thing you wanna do is to find out, well, I thought I had this coverage and it turns out that you don’t, right? So it’s a lot easier to add the coverage and have it there when you need it versus, man, I wish I would have had it on there.
Because if it’s not on there at the time of the loss, there’s nothing that the insurance company can do because you didn’t have that coverage at the time that the loss took place. So 100% review your decorations page and even reach out to your insurance company. And if you do have a local agent, like reach out to them, schedule a time and say, hey, I wanna go over all of my coverages that I have to make sure there aren’t any gaps in coverage.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, like really? Yeah. I’m sorry, go ahead, finish your thought.
Ashley King, State Farm
Oh, I was just gonna say like, we’ve been doing that a lot, right? We reach out every year or two just to review people’s policies because life changes, right? A lot of people, they buy auto insurance when they’re 16 and then they kind of, or whenever, but they set it and forget it.
But a lot of life events happen and you need to adjust your coverages to keep up with where you’re at in life. Absolutely.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
You’re not the same driver you were when you were 16. You’re certainly not the same as a homeowner as you were at age 30. Ashley, when you look at the car insurance marketplace, I read a lot of articles and I think a lot of us see the news stories on the news, on TV about car insurance going up.
From your perspective though, how are we doing in terms of car insurance rates today?
Ashley King, State Farm
Yeah, absolutely. I think over 2024 and 2023, you saw a steady increase in those rates, but that was from my opinion. That was from more people getting back on the road after COVID and the cost of vehicles nowadays, I mean, to fix these cars, like the newer vehicles, it’s not a couple hundred.
We’re talking about tens of thousands of vehicles. And I feel like with certain accidents, even if it seems like a minor fender bender, all of the damage that’s done behind the scenes with like I said, the safety features and getting parts and recalibrating things, it’s costing more. So sometimes insurance companies are instead of fixing the vehicle, they may be totaling that vehicle out.
So 2022, 2023, 2024, we’ve seen a lot of that, but from State Farm side, our rates are steadying, are pretty steady now. And so we’ve even had a rate decrease in North Carolina starting December 1st, which is really nice. And then you’ll see another one.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Absolutely. I know.
Ashley King, State Farm
Finally. But then come mid July or so, we should be seeing another one, which is really, really, really nice to give a breather for everyone.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And just to be clear, state insurances like car insurance and home insurance and life insurance, that’s all regulated at the state level, right? So a firm like State Farm or another insurance company would have to go to the state insurance regulator. They’re all called different names to get approvals on the rate.
They’d have to provide details and get approval.
Ashley King, State Farm
Absolutely. Yes. And State Farm has a whole team that does that for a state.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yes. I’m sure they do that for the state of North Carolina and all the other 49 states and probably some territories, et cetera. Ashley, let’s talk about how to get the best deal.
So you mentioned December 1st, maybe some rate reductions or some keeping things kind of level set. If I’m looking for car insurance or I’m looking to maybe get new home insurance, what are the best tactics to take in order to realize those benefits that you’re talking about this morning?
Ashley King, State Farm
Oh, absolutely. I think the number one thing that we see that really helps people out is when people keep their policies with the same company, right? To where you’re able to maximize that multi-line discount, especially if you’re a homeowner, like a home and auto discount together, that is going to save you the most money by having everything under one roof.
The other area that you can look at is looking at, all right, for yourself personally, what does your savings account look like to where then that’s going to help you adjust what your deductibles are. So for insurance, for the auto as well as your home insurance, the higher the deductibles, that’s what you would pay out of pocket if you needed to use your insurance, the lower your monthly premiums are. So kind of, you can, instead of having a really low deductible, you can, right?
But if you have the financial means to carry that higher deductible, that’s going to save you the most when it comes to, or not the most, but that’s going to save you when it comes to that monthly premium for you.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And one more, just to interrupt you, and I apologize, but like if I’m trying to project that out, is there a way to do that online so that I, like, you know, like sometimes I know in the retirement industry when you move your, I’m going to retire at age 65, I’m going to retire at age 70, and it’ll tell you how much you need based on life expectancy. I would imagine that State Farm and other insurance providers have the ability to say, hey, if I dial up my deductible, make it higher, I’m going to pay less in premium.
Ashley King, State Farm
Absolutely, yes. And so, and we can even walk you through that here, right? To where with our office, what we do is it’s not a cookie cutter, like, all right, we’re going to give the same coverages for everybody.
Right? Or not apples to apples if you come to us for a quote. Like, we need to find out what do we need to protect, right?
And so, with the deductible, the question that we ask is, okay, if you had to write a check tomorrow, how much could you comfortably pay out of pocket? And then we can fluctuate from there. Some, most companies have like a set dollar amount or like tiers, and then you can play around with that and see what that difference would be or the impact it makes on your monthly premium.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And then, Ashley, what about the, I know we talked to you about it before the drive and save, or we had the little GPS, I’m going to call it GPS locator for lack, I don’t know what it’s called, but it just sits in your vehicle. Is that really a way to, I mean, what are we talking about in terms of typical differentials if you decide to track your mileage?
Ashley King, State Farm
Absolutely, yep. So, State Prime has a drive safe and save program.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
That’s it.
Ashley King, State Farm
Yes, most companies carry something along those lines, but what’s really nice with it is like it brings awareness to how you are as a driver, okay? And what that allows you to do is it allows you to honestly tailor your rates based on how you are as a driver. So, some of the different aspects that State Farm looks at would be how hard you’re braking, how quickly you’re accelerating, how sharp you take turns, and then even it does look at your annual mileage, right?
And then every six months, well, when you first sign up, you get an introductory discount, right? Because we don’t know what you’re driving, your particular driving habits look like. And then at that six-month renewal, based on how you are as a driver, then your discount will fluctuate based on, okay, how safe you are as a driver.
So, it’s meant to bring awareness to your own driving, and you can see what your discount is in real time right there on the app. But it’s really, like I’ve had a couple of people come into it, they’re easily saving $200 plus every six months because of they’re hyper-aware of how their driving habits are. And that’s what it’s meant to do.
It’s meant to allow you to tailor your rates and tailor that discount to how you are as a driver.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and that’s that part of that personalization that you were talking about. It’s not just cookie cutter. Hey, every male age 52 and above is gonna get this rate regardless of their driving record and their style.
Ashley, we’re gonna have to leave it there. Great information as always. Thanks so much for joining us and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
Ashley King, State Farm
Wonderful. Thank you so much, Jeffrey, for having me. This has been great.
Jeffrey H. Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
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We’re back again tomorrow. That’s right, back tomorrow for another edition of BRN. Until then, I’m Jeff Snyder.
Stay safe, keep on saving, and don’t forget, roll with the changes.
