5 Ways To Reduce Your Student Car Insurance Policy Payments

One in every five students in higher education in the UK either owns their own car or has access to a car that they can drive to university. If we take it as given that higher education students have very tight budgets to live on, the following are five ways to help reduce your student car insurance policy payments and help you to save money:

1. Mum and Dad

You’re going to relying on Mum and Dad to help you out a lot over the coming years, so you may want to have a chat with them and ask them if it is possible for them to add you to their car insurance policy. Under current UK car insurance policies, this can be achieved in two ways: (1) ask them nicely if they’ll insure the car with no named drivers, that way anyone can drive the car; or (2) ask Mum and Dad nicely if they’ll add your name as a named driver on their car insurance policy. Although their motor insurance policies will very likely go up, it shouldn't be as much of an increase as it would cost you to buy the motor insurance on your own. Be careful, however, if you select option (1) – sometimes no-named car insurance policies exclude drivers under the age of 25, so read the motor insurance policy carefully.

2. Use your student union card

You’ll be amazed how many discounts you can get with your student union card. If you plan on driving your car to university, one of the first questions you should be asking your student union is whether or not the student union has a tie-up with a car insurance provider that offers discount student car insurance premiums to student union cardholders.

3. Agree to limit your yearly mileage

If all you are doing is driving to and from university then you may want to consider agreeing to limit your yearly mileage. By agreeing to this, such as with a per-mileage insurance policy, you should hopefully find that your annual car insurance premiums are less than if you have an open mileage insurance policy. Be careful though that you do not exceed your annual quota of agreed to miles, as this will likely invalidate your car insurance.

4. Buy a smaller car

One of the major cost factors used in calculating yearly car insurance is the engine size of the car. Basically, the higher the engine size, the more it is going to cost you in yearly car insurance. So, while it may be nice to drive around campus in a Porsche 911, driving a Nova may be financially more practical!

5. Agree to increase your excess amount

Motor insurance ‘excess’ is the amount you agree to pay before your car insurance policy provider is required to pay any money. As such, if you agree to increase your excess, there is less chance that your insurance company is going to need to pay. Therefore, as there is less chance that the car insurance company will be required to pay, your annual motor insurance policy should be cheaper.