We recently Renewed our car insurance. State Farm wants an estimate of our miles per month/year.
We actually don’t drive that much. I purchased a home only 3 miles from work in 1989. Most of our shopping and restaurants is within 10 miles of home. I average about 400 miles a month locally. But, even one round trip to Nashville is 650 miles, We go once or twice a year. Round trip to Memphis is 275 miles. Trips add up. Dallas is 300 miles round trip, but we definitely won’t be visiting that city.
Anyone else getting car insurance surveys? What happens if we claim low mileage each month and then take a vacation trip? Will that jack up our rates?
Don’t you write down your mileage when to fill up? Or at the very least do an oil change or some such? Makes reporting mileage to an insurance company a breeze.
I keep a small notebook and pen in the glove compartment and write down all fill ups and services. It’s handy to keep track of oil changes, brake service, etc. E.g., I was surprised a few years back when I found I went 9 years with one battery. Helps to detect problems: The gas mileage seems to be going down? Time to check into it.
Back when I commuted, I discovered I was averaging 11k per year. That included occasional vacations, etc. Amazingly on the exact 10 year anniversary of owning that car it rolled over 110000 miles!* Being able to note such things is worth the time to keep records.
But the car already had a few miles on it when I bought it. Plus there was a two day gap between “purchase” and pick up to get things straightened out. Real Life is always a bit messy.
OP: I’ve had the same insurance company for 30 years now. USAA. They ask every year for mileage for each vehicle. And have for 30 years.
Nothing exciting here. I imagine your carrier asked once when you first signed up and are now getting around to updating the info in case it’s changed. And yes, your rates may slightly change if your estimated mileage is way big or way small versus the norm. Just like living in a good or bad zip code or good or bad state.
I have, since the very first time I got car insurance, been asked by my insurance company approximately how many miles I drove per year, and how much of that was personal or commuting or business. I’m astonished that this is the first time the OP has been asked that.
I’ve never been asked that. I had Farmers for 30 years, then switched to Geico four years ago. I’ve had my car for 17 years and about 83,000 miles if that’s relevant.
This was the first time we’ve been asked about driving distances. Really it’s none of their damn business.
If I have to commute 80 miles a day to feed my family then I shouldn’t have my rates jacked up. Thankfully, I don’t have to. I had a 20 mile commute prior to buying my home in 89. I loved the country life but hated that commute. That’s why we bought a house three miles from my job. I love coming home for lunch. Eating at my own dining table.
What they are looking for is your average number of miles/hours on the road, especially on a nonvoluntary basis such as for commuting. People tend not to drive unnecessarily when they are tired, distracted, drunk, whatever… but they will commute with all kinds of debilitating conditions.
If you drive a 6-mile commute loop, you are in one risk category. A 40-mile one, yet another. A 160-mile one… a very high one. It’s a sheer facet of the number of hours you spend on the road on a running basis, and almost as importantly, why. It’s a perfectly reasonable question for them to ask, and a factor to consider in setting your risk and claim levels.
I don’t think I have ever been asked that by my insurance company other than some special discount that targets low mileage drivers and I would never qualify for that. It isn’t infrequent trips, even very long ones, that drive mileage up to very high levels. That generally comes from having a long commute, kids that need to go places constantly, living in a rural area or some other activity that shoots your average number of miles per year up on a sustained basis.
I drive 25,000 miles a year because I have a fast commute that is also 30 miles one way plus kids and a few other personal driving needs but it isn’t like I spend my life in the car. I can run up 80+ miles a day in a little over 90 minutes just because of the circumstances and the high-speed roads that I drive on. Some people spend way more time in the car than I do and drive way fewer miles per year. Even 25,000 miles a year isn’t some extreme thing. Some people go well into the 30’s or 40’s or even beyond. My mother had a 120 mile one-way commute for 2 years (yes, 240 miles round-trip five days a week) and ended up with over 60,000 miles a year during that time when other driving was counted in.
The insurance company isn’t going to freak out even if you tell them that you drive 18 - 25K miles a year. You will be at the higher end but still not near the far side of the curve.
Insurance companies use a lot of things to establish rates, but a biggie is annual miles driven. If you can document low mileage (State Farm cut is at 7,500/year) you get a decent discount. If you’re not being asked this, it’s because your agent/company is totally cool with you paying the default rate that assumes you’re in the higher bracket. No harm in talking to your agent about this, might reduce your payments.
I don’t use an agent. I applied for my policy online. Their email department has a very good response rate, though. My car is an old beater and I only carry liability, so I probably won’t have that large a discount. My rate is probably only about 40% of what I was paying Farmers for less coverage.
I’ve always been asked. It’s even listed on my declarations page as a factor in my rates.
On the other hand, I’ve never had to document it in any way. They seems to take my word for it.
Going over your estimate isn’t going to “jack up your rates,” any more than starting SCUBA diving will change the rates of your life insurance (after you already have it)
You could, I suppose, be subject to them trying to get out of their policy if they later discovered you grossly (and intentionally) underestimated the miles you drive. I have never seen this attempted, or even raised as an issue, in any of the many auto insurance cases I have handled as an attorney.
It’s simply a way to help them set the rates. More miles driven equal more miles of risk.
uh, yeah, “how many miles do you drive” per week/month/year is a pretty standard question insurers ask. not surprising since the more time you’re on the road makes it more likely you’ll be in an incident.
Seriously? I have been doing it for the last <counts on fingers> thirty years, having picked up the habit from my father, who has been doing it for more than fifty. I actually have an app to keep track for me now, which indicates to me that a reasonable number of people want to keep track of this information. I am not generally an OCD person, but I like to know how my mileage has been.
