Here's How to Get the Best Deal on Car Insurance

You've probably had this experience: you're frustrated because the driver in front of you is going too slow for your liking. You can see the driver's gray hair and think that this person should not be driving any longer. Just the opposite is true: 60-something drivers gets the last laugh. Not only are they more likely to arrive safely at their destination, they are rewarded for it with lower auto insurance rates.

"Older drivers by and large are far safer in terms of the number of accidents they have and the number of claims they turn in than the typical driver," said Marty Agather, senior vice president of the consumer resource site TrustedChoice.com. He says insurance companies collect incredible amounts of data to set prices. "The sweet spot in the auto marketplace is someone who is recently retired but still vital," according to Agather. "They're not driving to work every day, still with it, and their reaction time has not slowed down too much. You still have a very safe operating behavior."

According to 21st Century Insurance, "senior citizens are some of the safest, most responsible and defensive drivers on the road." As a result, many insurance companies offer special rates and discounts for these mature drivers. In general, rates for drivers who are 50 and 74 years old are 5 percent to 15 percent below those for people 30 to 50. And of course, drivers younger than 25 can pay more than double what the seniors pay. "For young males, the numbers are astronomical," said Agather. "They are 200 times more likely to get into an accident."

As Your Life Changes, So Does Your Premium

DMV.org says car insurance rates gradually decline from the time you turn 25 until you turn 70 -- as long as you maintain a good driving record. By the time you're in your 40s, you are likely to have a family, which encourages safer driving, and you are less likely to be at a bar at 2 a.m., which does not. But once you hit 70, rates start to go up again because you are more likely to have impaired vision, slower reactions and poorer cognitive functions.

For those in the 50-to-70 sweet spot, some discounts are applied automatically; some require you to inform your agent or insurance company of changes in your lifestyle; and others come from being pro-active. For example:

• Low-mileage discount. If you're retired, you have probably cut down on the miles you put on each day. Inform your agent and your insurer. They don't know about changes in your life unless you tell them.
• Defensive driving classes. AARP, AAA and others offer classes for drivers of all ages. They cost about $50, usually earning a discount of up to 5 percent a year, for three years. AARP says automatic discounts follow a course for drivers in Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. Residents of other states should ask their insurance agent about discounts.
• Policy changes. Older people with more assets may want to take the risk of going with a higher deductible -- and they might also want to boost liability coverage. Agather said you need to make sure that your liability limits equate to the assets you have at risk. "Just because you have an insurance policy, that doesn't limit how much you are liable for in damaging someone else," he warned. "Your assets are at risk if you hurt a brain surgeon or hit a Ferrari." To protect those assets, he recommends an umbrella policy that protects your assets if you are sued for more than the liability limit on your auto policy covers. "It also may make sense to drop comprehensive and collision coverage, which may be costing you $400 to $500 a year," said Agather. "Don't pay a lot of money to insure something you can afford to pay out of pocket," especially if you're driving an older car.

Holiday Shopping Warning: Beware of Men in Parking Lots

All those jokes about women drivers need an overhaul. At least when it comes to parking, men are the true terrors of the lot. Chances are that if someone hits someone or something or blocks a lane, waiting for someone to eventually pull out, the culprit will be a guy.

A CarInsurance.com survey of 2,000 drivers ages 25 and older found that, contrary to many stereotypes, men are the real danger in parking lots. About 37 percent of men reported they had hit another car, vs. 33 percent of women. Nineteen percent of men said they had hit a pole, and 12 percent a shopping cart, vs. 11 percent and 5 percent respectively for women. Eight percent of men (4 percent of women) had hit a cart corral, while 8 percent of men reported hitting a pedestrian. Only 1 percent of women had.

Another big difference: Who gets hit in those incidents. 59 percent of women said they had been hit, while only 45 percent of men had.

Men generally admitted to being more aggressive in confrontations over parking in crowded lots: 27 percent had used a hand gesture while driving away; only 20 percent of women had. When it came to saying something to the other person, 20 percent of men did, but only 12 percent of women. And 8 percent of men said they had touched the other person, compared to only 2 percent of women. Similarly, 5 percent of men, but only 1 percent of women, had touched the other car. Men outnumbered women 4 percent to 2 percent in calling security or the police.

Get That Last Space

One area in which men and women didn't differ significantly was in the tactics they used to acquire a parking space:

• 38 percent circled a lot at least twice, a technique called "vulture parking".
• 24 percent would follow people with bags and wait for them to pack their car and leave.
• 3 percent cut someone off for a spot.
• 3 percent straddled their cars on top of snow banks to fit into spaces others had passed on.

Allstate Auto Insurance Pricing Scheme Is Unfair

The "Good Hands" people at Allstate have figured out a shady, possibly illegal, way to push up insurance rates, according to the Consumer Federation of America, which said Tuesday it discovered a letter from the insurance giant that is a "smoking gun."

And the group, one of the most influential consumer advocacy groups in the nation, said the implications to American consumers over what Allstate (ALL) is doing is huge and can impact anyone with car insurance.

If regulators don't block this scheme immediately, American consumers will pay a huge price.

"This is a watershed moment in the history of insurance consumer protection," J. Robert Hunter, CFA's Director of Insurance and the former Texas Insurance Commissioner, said in a statement. "If regulators don't block this scheme immediately, American consumers will pay a huge price. While we are forced by law to buy these companies' insurance products in order to drive, there seems to be nothing stopping them from targeting millions of unsuspecting customers with unnecessary and unjustified price hikes."

The CFA said Allstate created a new way to calculate rates that creates sometimes sharply higher rates aimed at consumers who are "unlikely shop around to find a better price."

Among the ways the new surcharges and policy adjustments are unfair, the CFA said, includes a random price adjustment based on the month someone was born. As an example, a 46-year-old man with a good driving record who was born three months after another 46-year-old man with a good driving record could be charged 30 percent more on his premium, the CFA said.

Allstate issued the following statement in response to the CFA report:

"Allstate is committed to operating with absolute integrity. The Consumer Federation of America's allegations are inaccurate. The primary allegation in the news release regarding date of birth is grossly mischaracterized and does not take into account all of the risk characteristics for these two individuals. Our rating plans, including Complementary Group Rating Plan, have been and continue to be risk-based.

"Marketplace considerations, consistent with industry practices, have been appropriate in developing insurance prices, and we are open and transparent with regulators. The Complementary Group Rating Plan meets customer needs in the market place, and our success in increasing new customers and renewing more existing customers in the competitive insurance environment is evidence of this."

Allstate is just one company, the CFA said, that has worked with consultants to create a broad array of pricing tables intended to push up profits. The price differences are determined using "marketplace considerations," which doesn't involve risk, and can result in anything from "a 90 percent discount off the standard rate to increasing his or her premium by 800 percent, depending upon Allstate's analysis of the individual policyholder's 'marketplace considerations.' "

The Consumer Federation sent a letter regarding its findings to every state's insurance commissioner.

"Allstate's insurance pricing has become untethered from the rules of risk-based premiums and from the rule of law," Hunter said. "Unfortunately, we believe that Allstate is not alone in using this new and patently unfair approach to auto insurance pricing, they are just the first to be unmasked."

I Wisely Navigated My Way Off My Car Insurance

I am a lucky girl. Throughout high school and college, my parents kept me on their car insurance policy. I was an expensive item to add! I kept the cost as low as possible by earning the good student discount, driving a 14-year-old Subaru, never having a speeding ticket and being born a girl. However, when my fiancé James and I were preparing to get married, one of the financial conversations we had was about the car insurance policy. My parents gave me the title to the car (they owned it) and it became my responsibility, my car -- and my turn to get insurance.

I set out to find a policy and did all of my research online. I soon found out, however, that some of my preconceptions turned out to be misconceptions.Here's what I learned along the way.

Where to Start?

I looked online and compared premiums from three difference companies, which I will refer to as Insurance Company A, which my parents have, as well as Insurance Company B and Insurance Company. C. My preference was to stick with the familiar -- my parents' insurance company – but it turns out it was far beyond my budget. Here is the quote I was offered:



It was like the story of the Three Little Bears. Insurance Company A cost too much. My parents have the advantage of bundling their policies (homeowners, etc.) and saving that way, in which case I recommend it. However, I'm not at that place in life where I need anything other than car insurance.

Which Option Is the Best Fit for Me?

The rates offered by Insurance Company B were affordable but I needed to investigate exactly what I was paying for or missing out on.



I plugged in my price to see what coverage options were available. Company B's most highly recommended package cost less than Company A's basic option. I didn't feel comfortable enlisting in the most basic option because I don't yet have a fully stocked emergency fund in case of a serious accident. So I compared the mid-range option at Company B with what I could get from Company C.

I was impressed. The premium Company C package offered more and cost less than the equivalent from Company B. The same was true of the mid-range package. Continuing my research, I called upon several important sources: my mom, Google (GOOG), and the insurance company agent (in that order). I needed to clear up some confusing lingo I was experiencing and get an opinion. I'm generally skeptical, and believe that if a deal sounds too good to be true, it probably is.



What Does a Comprehensive Deductible Cover?

I asked my mom (and Google) about the comprehensive coverage. Basically, that means the non-accident damage that will be covered. Hail and flood damage are some examples.

The collision deductible is what you're willing to pay as cash out of pocket after an accident for repairs.

Bodily injury and property damages are the amount insurance will pay if you cause harm to another person or property with your vehicle.

What Happens If I Total My Car?

I learned that a totaled car means the total loss of a vehicle. A vehicle is considered a total loss when the repairs needed exceed 50 percent to 70 percent of the value of the car, depending on the insurance policy. The insurance company will give you the market value of the car before the crash. So a $600-800 repair would be a total loss for the Subaru because it had a market value of $1,200 (optimistically). In my case, if that happened, I would receive about $1,000 from my insurer to then find a new car.

Can I Get Additional Discounts?

It never hurts to ask for a discount. You might be surprised at what you're offered.

All things considered, I chose the Company C "similar" (mid-range) policy, but was able to bring my cost down to $79.96 each month. After going into the office, my agent asked me about my qualifications for other discounts, which brought it down even further. For example, I have a diploma, which still qualifies me for a good student discount. It's not paying off my debt, but hey, I'll take a discount when I can get one.

Harvard History and Campus

History  

 

Harvard's foundation in 1636 came in the form of an act of the colony's Great and General Court. By all accounts the chief impetus was to allow the training of home-grown clergy so the Puritan colony would not need to rely on immigrating graduates of England's Oxford and Cambridge Universities for well-educated pastors, "dreading," as a 1643 brochure put it, "to leave an illiterate Ministry to the Churches." In its first year, seven of the original nine students left to fight in the English Civil War.

The connection to the Puritans can be seen in the fact that, for its first few centuries of existence, the Harvard Board of Overseers included, along with certain commonwealth officials, the ministers of six local congregations (Boston, Cambridge, Charlestown, Dorchester, Roxbury and Watertown), who today, although no longer so empowered, are still by custom allowed seats on the dais at commencement exercises.

However, despite the Puritan atmosphere, from the beginning the intent was to provide a full liberal education such as that studied at European universities, including the rudiments of mathematics and science ('natural philosophy') as well as classical literature and philosophy.

Campus  

 

The main campus is located next to Harvard Square in central Cambridge, approximately two miles (3.2 km) from the MIT campus. Virtually all undergraduates live on campus. First-year students live in dormitories in or near Harvard Yard. Upperclass students live in twelve residential Houses, which serve as administrative units of the College as well as dormitories.

Nine of the Houses are situated along or close to the northern banks of the Charles River and so are known colloquially as the River Houses. These are:

Adams House  , named for several alumni of that name, including U. S. President John Adams;

Dunster House, named for Harvard's first President, Henry Dunster;

Eliot House  , named for Harvard President Charles William Eliot;

Kirkland House, named for Harvard President John Thornton Kirkland;

Leverett House  , named for Harvard President John Leverett;

Lowell House  , said to be named for the Harvard-affiliated Lowell family in general (but the most obvious reference is to Abbott Lawrence Lowell, Harvard's President at the time of its construction);

Mather House  , named for Harvard President Increase Mather;

Quincy House  , named for Harvard President (and sometime mayor of Boston) Josiah Quincy III;

Winthrop House  , more officially called John Winthrop House, named for two famous men of that name: Massachusetts Bay Colony founder John Winthrop and his great-great-great-grandson John Winthrop, 2nd Hollis Professor of Mathematicks (sic ) and Natural Philosophy

The remainder of the residential Houses are located around Radcliffe Quadrangle (or "the Quad"), half a mile (800 m) northwest of Harvard Yard. These housed Radcliffe College students until Radcliffe merged its residential system with Harvard. They are:

Cabot House  , previously called South House, renamed in 1983 for Harvard donors Thomas Dudley Cabot and Virginia Cabot;

Currier House  , named for Radcliffe alumna Audrey Bruce Currier;

Pforzheimer House  , often called PfoHo for short, previously called North House, renamed in 1995 for Harvard donors Carl and Carol Pforzheimer

There is a thirteenth House, Dudley House , which is nonresidential but fulfills, for some graduate students and off-campus undergraduates including members of the Dudley Co-op , the same administrative and social functions as the residential Houses do for undergraduates who live on campus. It is named after Thomas Dudley, who signed the charter of Harvard College when he was Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Harvard's residential houses are paired with Yale's residential colleges in sister relationships; see the Harvard-Yale sister colleges article for more information.

The Medical School, the Business School, and the university stadium and some other athletic facilities are located across the Charles River in Boston. Harvard has recently acquired more land in the Allston neighborhood of Boston and is planning to move more of its facilities there.

Harvard Institution

Harvard is one of the world's most prestigious universities and has the largest endowment of any academic institution in the world ($22.6 billion as of 2004, nearly double that of Yale University, the institution with the second-largest endowment). The 2005 US News "National University" rankings placed Harvard and Princeton in joint first place . Harvard was also first in 2004, following five years of second and third place rankings. The 2004 Times Higher Education Supplement World University Rankings placed Harvard University in sole first place .

A faculty of about 2,300 professors serves about 6,650 undergraduate and 13,000 graduate students. Admission to Harvard is extremely competitive, and its overall undergraduate acceptance rate for 2004 was 10.3%. According to The Atlantic Monthly, it is the fifth most selective college in the United States (after MIT, Princeton, Caltech, and Yale).

Harvard recently returned from an unrestricted Early Action policy (where students can apply "early" to Harvard in addition to other schools) to a single-choice nonbinding Early Action policy (where you can apply "early" only to a single school), aligning it with the policies of Yale and Stanford, which had both recently moved from a binding single-choice Early Decision policy.

The school color is a shade richer than red but brighter than burgundy, referred to as crimson, which is also the name of the Harvard sports teams and the daily newspaper, The Harvard Crimson. The color was unofficially adopted (in preference to magenta) by an 1875 vote of the student body, although the association with some form of red can be traced back to 1858, when Charles William Eliot, a young graduate student who would later become Harvard's president, bought red bandanas for his crew so they could more easily be distinguished by spectators at a regatta.

Harvard today has nine faculties, listed below in chronological order of foundation:

• The Faculty of Arts and Sciences and its subfaculty, the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences, which together serve:
  • Harvard College, the University's undergraduate portion (1636)
  • The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (organized 1872)
  • The Harvard Division of Continuing Education, including Harvard Extension School and Harvard Summer School
• The Faculty of Medicine, including the Medical School (1782) and the Harvard School of Dental Medicine (1867, the first U.S. dental school).
• Harvard Divinity School (1816)
• Harvard Law School (1817)
• Harvard Business School (1908)
• The Graduate School of Design (1914)
• The Graduate School of Education (1920)
• The School of Public Health (1922)
• The John F. Kennedy School of Government (1936)

In 1999, the remnants of Radcliffe College were reorganized as the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.

The Harvard University Library System, centered on Widener Library, with over 90 individual libraries and over 14.5 million volumes, is the largest university library system in the world and, after the Library of Congress, the second-largest library system in the United States. Harvard also has several important art museums, including the Fogg Museum of Art (with galleries featuring history of Western art from the Middle Ages to the present, with particular strengths in Italian early Renaissance, British pre-Raphaelite, and 19th-century French art); the Busch-Reisinger Museum (central and northern European art); the Sackler Museum (ancient, Asian, Islamic and later Indian art); the Museum of Natural History, which contains the famous glass flowers exhibit; the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology; and the Semitic Museum.

Prominent student organizations at Harvard include the aforementioned Crimson; theHarvard Lampoon, a humor magazine; the Harvard Advocate, one of the nation's oldest literary magazines; and the Hasty Pudding Theatricals, which produces an annual burlesque and celebrates notable actors at its Man of the Year and Woman of the Year ceremonies; and the Harvard Glee Club, the oldest and one of the most prestigious college choruses in America. The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra, composed mainly of undergraduates, was founded in 1808 as the Pierian Sodality and has been performing as a symphony orchestra since the 1950s. Let's Go Travel Guides, a leading travel guide series and a division ofHarvard Student Agencies , is run solely by Harvard students who research and edit improved versions of the books every summer. Harvard student organizations run the gamut, from publications, to political clubs, ethnic and religious associations, special interests, community service, and so on.

The radio station WHRB (95.3FM Cambridge), is run exclusively by Harvard students, and is given space on the Harvard campus in the basement of Pennypacker Hall, a freshman dormitory. Known throughout the Boston metropolitan area for its top-notch classical, jazz, underground rock and blues programming, WHRB is also home of the notorious radio "Orgy" format, where the entire catalog of a certain band, record, or artist is played in sequence.

Harvard's principal athletic rival is Yale University, including the nation's oldest football rivalry, dating back to 1875. While the Harvard football team was one of the best in the beginning days of the sport, today Harvard fields top teams in ice hockey, crew, and squash. As of 2003, there were 43 Division I intercollegiate varsity sports teams for women and men at Harvard, more than at any other college in the country.

Harvard College has traditionally taken many of its students from private American preparatory schools such as Phillips Exeter Academy, the Lawrenceville School, Groton School, St. Paul's School, Milton Academy, and Phillips Andover Academy, though today most undergraduates come from public schools across the United States and around the globe. Harvard has traditionally had close ties to Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in the United States, founded in 1635. Early incoming Harvard classes were predominantly from Boston Latin; still today over a dozen students each year matriculate to Harvard from this inner-city magnet school.

Harvard contains many strong departments that are ranked among the best in the world. Some lesser known departments also have significant global influence. For example, the Department of African and African-American Studies is widely recognized as the foremost in the world, notwithstanding the recent departure of Cornel West for Princeton University. Another example is Harvard's Judaic Studies Department, which was headed by Professor Harry Austryn Wolfson. Harvard boasts a unique $5 million Judaica library which has identified and categorized books by ink type, font type, paper thickness, pagination style, binding method and numerous other categorizations.

Harvard has a friendly rivalry with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology which dates back to 1900, when a merger of the two schools was frequently mooted and at one point officially agreed upon (ultimately cancelled by Massachusetts courts). Today, the two schools cooperate as much as they compete, with many joint conferences and programs, including the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology  and the Harvard-MIT Data Center . In addition, students at the two schools can cross-register (i.e., Harvard students can register for courses offered at MIT, and vice versa) without any additional fees, for credits toward their own school's degrees. The city of Cambridge is notable for the presence of two major research universities within two miles (3.2 km) of each other. A third major research university, Boston University, is located between Harvard and MIT on the Boston side of the Charles River. These three schools jointly participate in many programs, such as the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology  hosted at MIT.

Famous Harvard alumni include seven U.S. Presidents (John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and George W. Bush), philosopher Henry David Thoreau, comedian Conan O'Brien, and actor Tommy Lee Jones. See also: List of Harvard University people.

Harvard is known for its liberal left-wing politics. Richard Nixon famously called it the "Kremlin on the Charles" (note that the city in which Harvard is located is sometimes called the "People's Republic of Cambridge").

Though Harvard has been featured in many films, including Legally Blonde, The Firm, Good Will Hunting, With Honors, and Harvard Man, the University has not allowed any movies to be filmed on its campus since Love Story in the 1960s. Many movies have characters identified as Harvard graduates, including A Few Good Men, American Psycho, and Two Weeks Notice.