My wife no longer drives her car.
She hasn’t driven for months due to the debilitating pain and side effects from her cancer and treatments. Now she’s in her final days at a hospice facility and will never be driving again.
So I called my car insurance broker yesterday to have her removed from my policy. Imagine my surprise when I was told that if I removed her, my premium with Travelers Insurance would increase because I will be losing my “multi-driver discount”.
How can that make sense?
If I have two drivers, my insurance is less than if I have a single driver.
Ridiculous.
I decided to shop the policy and checked out a similar policy at Geico and Progressive. The premiums there were actually a few dollars higher than Travelers for similar coverage.
What a rip off.
I pay nearly $1000 for each car. I have no comprehensive coverage or collision coverage. My coverage is simply for liability, uninsured motorist and PIP.
Basically, if anything happens to my car, my insurance covers nothing. I am only insuring the other car and protecting myself from liability.
So I decided to keep my wife on my policy and make no changes until after she dies.
After that, I’ll be selling one of my cars so my total premium will drop by about half.
I’ll update this post with some numbers when that happens.
Update Jan 2018
After my wife died, I sold her car. As expected, my insurance rate at Traveler’s increased.
My mother suggested I look at AARP since I’m now 50. I did. The rates were worse.
As a last ditch effort, I called AAA. They gave me a AAA quote for Progressive Insurance. I was pleasantly surprised that they offered me a 20% discount if I prepaid. I asked my broker if he could match this and he couldn’t budge. So I moved my car insurance from Travelers to Progressive.