Cheaper Car Insurance For Your Teen Driver

You knew it was coming, but it always comes as a bit of a shock when the day finally comes: The day your sixteen year old stands in front of you and holds out their hands expectantly, brand new driver's license burning a hole in their pocket. Handing your teen the freedom to drive can be scary. Even scarier is the thought of what your teen is going to do to your car insurance. Fortunately, there are plenty of things that you as a parent can do to guarantee cheaper car insurance for your teen driver.

Have you seen the statistics floating around out there on teen drivers? A teen driver is, statistically speaking, ten times more likely to get into an accident than a thirty to fifty year old driver. That means that their insurance provider is ten times more likely to have to pay out one or more claims each year. Most insurance providers don't like those numbers. They don't make profits when they're paying out thousands of dollars worth of damages for a driver that's only paying them a couple thousand dollars a year in premiums.

To compensate for that loss they're going to raise the bar as high as it will go to insure your teen driver. Since teen drivers aren't allowed to have their own insurance policies your insurance policy is going to be the one to take the hit. Since you can't beat the system, you're just going to have to find a way to make it work for you! To lower your premiums for cheaper car insurance you're going to have to do a couple of things:

1) Talk to your insurance agent about what discounts you and your teen might qualify for. A ten percent discount for air bags might not have meant much to you when the difference was only a matter of a few dollars (courtesy of your superior experience and spectacular driving record), but with a teen driver added on to your policy those tiny, previously insignificant discounts might be the key to cheaper car insurance.

2) Talk to your teen. Since teen drivers don't have good credit or a strong driving record to show how responsible they can be, both behind the wheel and out in the real world, most car insurance providers are willing to consider their academic record. This might be a good time for your underachiever to hit the books and start spending some quality time on the honor roll and (for college students) Dean's list.

3) Consider getting them their own car. It's going to cost you a fortune to insure your $87,000, 2009 Jaguar XK convertible with your teen behind the wheel. It's a simple matter of numbers; it's going to cost your car insurance company more to replace it, so it's going to cost you more to insure it. On the other hand, a cheap, $2,000 secondhand Honda isn't going to cost much if it's destroyed. Getting your teen their own secondhand clunker (and making it the only car they're insured to drive) will go a long way toward helping you find the cheaper car insurance premiums you've been looking for.

4) Raise your deductibles. It's an old game, but if you want cheaper car insurance you need to raise your deductibles. When your insurance provider pays less after an accident you pay less the rest of the year. It's the only premium reducer guaranteed to give you the results you've been looking for.

Relax! There's cheaper car insurance for teen drivers out there today than there was a few years ago, so hand your teen the car keys, sit back and enjoy the ride.

Clifford F. Berman is CEO of QuoteScout.com. Since its launch in 1996 QuoteScout has specialized in matching consumer requests for insurance quotes with multiple quotes from both local agents and national providers. For more information about cheap auto insurance for your teen, visit them on the web at http://www.QuoteScout.com