My wife wrote an article last week about how you can save money going local for balloons and flowers, but here’s another reason you might want to go local – superior service.

In working for my how to buy term life insurance post yesterday, I emailed my insurance agent, Deborah from State Farm, to get some updated quotes on term life insurance. I’ve had the need to email her on several occasions and each time her responses were usually back in minutes. She knew me as Jim Wang, a recent new customer, and not as customer #XXXXXXX in a database somewhere.

It really underscored one thing I had missed when I was with Geico and Traveler’s, personalized service with a real person.

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So they say that getting your auto insurance and homeowners insurance with one policy underwriter and in the next week or I’ll be figuring out whether I can find a better deal than I’m getting right now. Currently my auto insurance is through Geico, my homeowners insurance is through Travelers, and while they have an agreement with each other, neither gives an additional discount because the other policy is through their partner (as confirmed by a CSR on both ends). So, my plan now is to get a quote for both auto insurance and homeowners insurance from State Farm, Allstate, Progressive, Erie Insurance, and any others I may have missed (please leave comments if you know of one I should request a quote from).

My current auto insurance premium from Geico General Insurance Company is $344.90 per six months, or $689.80 per year. My current homeowners insurance premium from St. Paul Travelers Company is $712.00 per year.

That puts my annual total for both at $1401.80, or around 116.82 per month, let’s see if any of the above listed insurance companies can beat that.