Can I Get Discounts for Insuring Multiple Vehicles?

If you own multiple automobiles with one or more drivers, often the best option is to insure them with a multi-car insurance policy and get the largest discounts possible. Unless one of the cars or drivers are high-risk or need a specialty policy, one company will often offer better rates for insuring them together than going with two separate providers. If one company is cheaper for one vehicle, it would often be cheaper for the other as well and they offer extra savings when you combine policies.

For example, if you have a sports car for pleasure use and a typical sedan for commuting you can get large discounts by insuring them with the same company. They complement each other and you can only drive one at a time. The company can see that your sports car isn’t used for commuting and you get the best rates when you insure it for pleasure use. You can get a discount on the sedan as well because multi-car policies are usually around 10 – 15% cheaper for each vehicle included.

A usual combination is two cars with two drivers in a family or people living together as each partner would have a vehicle. As long as they live together in the same household and register their vehicles in the same address, they can combine their policies under a multi-vehicle insurance policy and both save money. Most companies allow motorists to add a car to their policies belonging to someone else as long as they live together. Companies like Progressive don’t require drivers to be related and they can just be roommates. Some other companies may not be as flexible but they often offer discounts when the vehicle owners are related.

Furthermore, these policies are very flexible and allow each vehicle to have different levels of coverage if that is what you want. Every car included in the policy must have the same liability and other state required coverage but they can have everything else differently. For example one car can have liability only, while the other gets full coverage automobile insurance with Collision and Comprehensive. The same rule applies to other policy add-ons as well.

There is hardly any reason why you would want to buy separate policies from different companies anyway. Yet, you should always check this possibility and see if it will work out better to insure them separately. Sometimes, when the vehicles are so different from each other like a sedan and a classic car it may not be beneficial to insure them with the same company.

Essentially, motorists shouldn’t chase the discounts but get a few auto insurance quotes from different companies and compare prices. While one company may be advertising a $20% discount for multi-car insurance policies, this may not be enough for such a company to be competitive and another company can offer the better overall price for insuring your cars with one company. Also, this overall price has to beat the total of quotes you got for different policies.

Often GEICO and Progressive are the cheapest and most flexible carriers for insuring multiple vehicles. Most companies limit the number of cars on a policy to 4 but with both GEICO and Progressive you can have up to 8 vehicles on one policy and maximize your savings because you can get up to 10 – 15% discount for each car added onto the policy.

It is worth nothing that you can add another car to your policy mid-policy and still qualify for the discounts. And you may lose the discount for the remainder of the policy if you drop insurance coverage for other cars. Furthermore, some companies offer 5 – 10% discounts when another member of the same household buys a new policy from the company even if they are on separate policies.

When you are getting multi-car insurance quotes, you provide the details of the vehicles and drivers in the same way as buying a policy for one car but you may need to choose the primary driver for each auto. Usually, you can see the pricing for each vehicle and coverage, even if you get a quote for overall cost.