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How do people afford to drive ?!?

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Sugar daddies?

Don't bother waiting hoping the insurance will be any cheaper - I'm 30 and being quoted £2,600 for a 1,000 mile per year limited policy with a £500 excess! Then there's the tax, the MOT, the maintenance, the petrol, the storage and all the taxes on those goods and services! And all of that is after the thousands you have to pay just to get a license which you then can't use to drive because of all of the unnecessary costs!I'm planning to move to the US to escape all this BS - unlike this country, the government isn't hell-bent on making driving anything decent with a petrol engine a hobby only for the rich!

Reply 22

IWMTom

Original post by Tetra-Ethyl Head

Maybe try not getting a policy with such low mileage???

Don't bump old threads.

Reply 23

Nuffles

Original post by Tetra-Ethyl Head

What on earth are you getting a quote on for £2,600?! I just paid £350 fully comp for my 130bhp diesel estate aged 27, including my 27 year old partner. I think hers was like £150-200 for the year as well..

Reply 24

Tetra-Ethyl Head

Original post by IWMTom

Maybe try not getting a policy with such low mileage???

Don't bump old threads.

How do you figure a higher mileage policy would be cheaper?

Also, why is this thread still open if posts are not welcome?

Reply 25

Tetra-Ethyl Head

Original post by Nuffles

A late-80s Pontiac; they're not even that powerful - 210 BHP - 235 BHP from factory and given it's 30 years old now it's probably even less! £2,600 is the same kind of figure I was getting quoted from insurance companies over 10 years ago! I even got a quote for a faster 1100CC motorbike for less than half that back when I was 23! I wouldn't have even got the bike if I wasn't getting such ridiculous quotes for the car! Of course, the bike stayed out-of-use too because they still wanted £900 and I never got the bike license and ran out of money to pay for another test.

It would actually be cheaper for me to ship the car back to the US now than pay for the insurance!

Reply 26

stimtothesky

Original post by Tetra-Ethyl Head

How do you figure a higher mileage policy would be cheaper?

Also, why is this thread still open if posts are not welcome?

Insurance companies work in mysterious ways. For me the mileage sweet spot is 4000 miles. An extremely low mileage indicates to the company you aren't driving regularly and will therefore be less experienced/well practiced.

It's a bit like how in some areas/for some ages it's cheaper to have your car on the road than a driveway. It's all based on statistics on risk of claims for your demographic for your area, not on common sense.

Reply 27

IWMTom

Original post by Tetra-Ethyl Head

How do you figure a higher mileage policy would be cheaper?

Also, why is this thread still open if posts are not welcome?

As above, insurance is a complicated matter.

It's all based on statistical analysis, and those with very few miles tend to either be lying to get a cheaper quote, or don't get much driving experience. Both end up costing the insurer money, so they raise the premiums accordingly.

It's forum etiquette to not bump an old thread - they're not locked automatically.

Reply 28

Tetra-Ethyl Head

Thanks for the tip on the mileage, I'll give that a try the next time I call. I just think the last time they did a number on me with all the questions they asked - the more info they have about me, the more they have to hold against giving me a cheaper quote. What I particularly hate is them asking me how many miles I'm going to do but not be able to tell me straight, how much it's going to cost me! I'll do as many as I can afford and that largely depends on what they're going to quote me!

I would be keep the car in a garage for a certainty so I hope that doesn't put it up further (perhaps they figure "Oh, he's got a garage to put it in, that must mean he's rich and we can therefore charge him more!"). They say it's based on statistics but you never get to see those statistics so I wouldn't put it past them to be a little creative with 'the data'. I'm not convinced that women are safer drivers when many more than men have no interest in how a car works. If we had the Finnish driving test (where they have to control a RWD car sliding on an oil pan using the throttle) that would be far better determinant of a person's ability to control their car than just an arbitrary number of years driving or what ever statistics they can dig up on what ever arbitrary groups you fall into or don't fall into.

At this rate I'll have to change my name every time I get a quote just to see if I can get it any cheaper! In the US they let me drive a 5.7L Dodge RAM having had my license only a couple of months - a stark contrast to this country!

I don't understand your point about forum etiquette - I would have figured it better to keep relevant posts together in a single thread rather than create a new one just because the old one is old.