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Does Marriage Affect Car Insurance Premiums?
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When I was younger, I always thought that there were two things that really made a big difference in your insurance premiums:
- Turning 25,
- Getting married.
Everyone always told me that my premiums would drop when either one of those things happened because they were strong indicators of safety. Right before I turned 25, I recorded my premiums and then compared them to the premiums after I turned 25. I discovered that my premiums fell by a whopping 20% just for turning 25.
So, when I got married to the most wonderful woman in the whole wide world this year, I thought my insurance premiums would fall as a reward for making her an honest woman. As I went to make adjustments to my policy last week, I discovered there was no field for marital status! I’m not a rocket scientist but something says that I won’t be getting another insurance discount because I can’t even tell Geico I got married.
I went to Kanetix, where I did a series of comparisons to see how personal details affected your premiums, and that form had marital status (quite detailed options too) so I’m surprised Geico didn’t care. Is this true for other insurers as well or was I looking in the wrong place?
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The discount is automatic, after you both are on the same policy. It isn’t a “marriage” discount. Meaning just because you are married you get a discount, if you both have different policies.
When we got married, and made or vehicle insurance 1 policy, my rates went up and my hubby’s went down. Overall we saw a decrease in expense. I’m basing rate changes by our vehicle line items.
The discount comes from the wife expectance to drive a portion of the time on the mans vehicle. Thus, his rate goes down. On the other hand, the wifes goes up as they expect the husband to drive her car at some point. Generally, unless the wife has a terrible driving record, this is a decrease of some sort across the board.
Interesting, I suppose I never thought of it that way. I was getting a quote today from Geico and, in adding a new driver, it asked for the marital status of the added driver. It wanted to know the status of the 2nd driver on the policy but not mine, though it does ask for our relationship. It definitely sounds like it’s really just a multi-car discount and not a marriage discount.
Jim, you are right. It is a multi-car discount.
I got married last September and went through this with Geico then. I too figured I could score a sweet discount by combining policies (she had Geico as well) since we were now married. No such luck. Since we were not adding any more vehicles to our new combined policy, the premiums on the new policy were exactly the same as my old single one.
When I called them on it they verified that there is no discount for being married, just the discount for having multiple cars.
Try getting quotes from other companies. I was with Geico and after I got married adding my husband wouldn’t change our rates very much, but I got a quote from his insurance (state farm) and my bill was slashed in half and his by about 20%.
I’m 23 and counting the days till I can score a discount when I turn 25. My fiance and I share a car so our premium is pretty manageable. We do have to pay his motorcycle insurance so it ends up being the same as if we had two cars. Does anyone know if you can put a motorcycle and a car on the same policy and they would count it as a multi-vehicle account with a across the board decrease in premium?
My husband and I lived together for a year and a half, we shared one car, and he drove it most of the time. So there only ever was one policy for us. After we got married, I called up (esurance) and said our relationship status had changed to “married” and our premium went down by about $80/six months.
I just got married and changed my policy last night and added my wife as an additional driver (Progressive). To my surprise the premium went down.
We received a combination of multi-vehicle, multi-policy discounts after getting married.
My husband and I both went from a single-car policy (no homeowner’s insurance, lived with parents) to a two-car policy with home, auto and life insurance from the same company. The home-auto combo netted us 10% off of our premiums, and adding life insurance added an extra 5% discount.
After reading this post, my boyfriend and I tried to get a multi-car discount from AAA of Southern California. We have lived together for over two years but we are not planning to get married any time soon. We asked if our rates would be reduced if we joined our plans together and the agent at AAA said it didn’t matter if we lived together. We had to be married. At least we are both covered on both cars for no additional charge. It seems that the policy on marriage depends on the insurance company.
Re: Blithe’s comment, Geico is generous where they offered me a multi-car discount for my boyfriend and me, given that we have been living together for more than 3 years. So, I guess the lesson learned (as Jim had commented earlier) is that it’s not the marriage discount but the multi-car discount, which can be acquired even without marriage.
As was noted above, some insurance companies do lower the premium based on marital status alone, regardless of how many cars you have. It would seem that if you are married, Geico is not the best insurance company to stick with.
My fiance and I were on the same policy (domestic partners) through esurance. When we got married, our policy went down $352 every six months!
I just changed my info with Geico to reflect married status & our policy went down by almost 100 dollars. We went from paying $882 to $789. Granted this is now a year later than your article!