I have been insured by USAA for car and home insurance for decades. When I bought my house 23 years ago my real estate agent asked if I had insurance yet, and I said USAA, and he replied “Well, you can’t do any better than that.” Every now and then I might shop to see if I am doing okay and lately USAA has gone up. Five years ago the monthly premium was $125 and now it is $215, insuring a car that is five years older and a home that is exactly the same. USAA has always issued a yearly dividend, but it is rarely very much ($27 last year). Lately, with Covid, they have been issuing special dividends because people are driving less and getting in few accidents, and therefore USAA isn’t paying out as many claims. I don’t drive that many miles anyway and again, the dividends aren’t much (3 payments totaling $61).
When I got a new car my rates went up because I was adding collision and the value of my insured car went up (though you get a new car discount for some reason, therefore the rate didn’t go up nearly as much as I thought it would). When I talked to them about adding the Ford they asked if I had taken any defensive driving classes in the last three years which would lower my cost and I said I had not. Once I sold my old car and only had to insure one vehicle again, I looked for a competing quote and found that Geico generally has good rates and reasonably good customer service. Plus they do online quotes pretty quickly. It is always tricky comparing exactly the same coverage, but I think I got it about right. And Geico came out just about the same as USAA. But Geico offered a 10% discount (about $50 on a six month policy) if you took a defensive driving course online for $12.50 (and you keep getting the discount for three years). They also said I would get 15% off just because. That brought the rate down well below USAA. Now USAA offers a defensive driving discount as well, so I looked into that. They said any course approved by the state you live in would count. But Georgia doesn’t recognize online classes, so you have to take one in person (“During Covid?!” said the USAA rep, unaware of Georgia’s rules protecting Georgia based in person training) and those run into the hundreds of dollars. Georgia approves courses for people who are trying to reduce the points on their license due to tickets or as part of a judgement. Georgia doesn’t really care about insurance discounts. So USAA has tied their discount to something that it doesn’t seem like is the same thing, saying they don’t want to run afoul of Georgia regulations, but I’m not sure Georgia cares whether USAA discounts car insurance or not. That’s unfortunate because Geico just links you to one of three online companies that offer a course (I chose the National Safety Council; it is about a 3 hour narrated PowerPoint slideshow with quizzes). Why wouldn’t I switch? So I did. Once I signed up I found out the 15% discount was Geico’s version of the USAA’s special dividend and you would only get it once. So it would apply to my first six months of insurance and then never again (USAA has refunded about 13% of a 6-month policy so far this year).
I called USAA to tell them to cancel my car insurance and they asked to do a comparison. There wasn’t much they could say, but there is a discount for having homeowner and car insurance with USAA and that is taken off of the home insurance policy, not car insurance. Geico offers something similar maybe, but that does make a difference. The USAA rep said dropping car insurance now wouldn’t matter to the homeowner rate immediately and I could maybe come back to USAA in six months around the time my home insurance renews and get the discount again.
Once I got the car insurance, I tweaked it a little. I had been getting medical payment insurance of $5,000 for about $20 which would cover medical deductibles and copayments for me if I was in a wreck (liability would pay for anyone else), but since I have $5,000 it didn’t seem to make sense to insure for that. Also I have a $1,000 deductible for collision (if I wreck my car), but I didn’t get rental car coverage for while my car was being fixed. I could pay for a rental car on my own, I guess, but I would already be out $1,000 on the deductible, so I decided to get the rental car coverage of $900 (30 days at $30/day). It was about $10, so maybe I will get rid of that later and cover that myself too.
A little later I decided to check out Geico’s homeowner insurance. They said you could get a combined discount too, but when I got a quote, it was for Liberty Mutual, so I don’t know if I would get the discount or not. Still, the quote was about $200 less than USAA’s current yearly rate and if I lose the USAA combined auto/home discount, that would make USAA’s policy go up another $170. So I may switch that too. I don’t want to lose my eligibility with USAA and I don’t think I would once I have been a customer, but maybe I should open a mutual fund with them just to make sure.