[treflop]

Don’t buy insurance from the same company giving you the service.

Insurance is for you and you should pick it from your own choice of company and you should tailor the policy for your own needs.

Same with financing.

In my case, I get a lot of my insurance from a guy in my town and he has an office that I can walk into if I need help.

[cantSpellSober]

How to with rental cars?

I don't own and no local insurers will offer me non-owner insurance. I have to get the crappy expensive insurance at the rental car desk.

[dylan604]

When I canceled my insurance after going carless, I was told that there would be a lapse in my coverage causing my rates to increase. So naturally I asked why would I cover a car I no longer own. Apparently, there is a type of insurance that covers you as a driver of other cars. Of course there is. Going on 4.5 years now with no insurance payments. It's been glorious

[maxerickson]

If you do regularly drive other cars, it can make a lot of sense to make sure you have a liability policy that will cover an incident (vs assuming that the coverage on the vehicles is appropriate for you). Not sure why you'd be bothered/dismissive that you can access a sensible financial product.

[dylan604]

It was less about me driving (I don't drive since going carless), but more about here's a way for us to keep you on a monthly payment for a service you no longer need to avoid "lapse in coverage". That's like telling someone they will have a lapse in their homeowner's coverage while they are renting.

[BrentOzar]

> How to with rental cars?

Some credit cards like American Express offer their own insurance as part of the membership fee as long as you pay for the rental with their card, and decline the coverage offered by the rental car company.

[eurleif]

This is typically (including in the case of AmEx) collision insurance only, not liability insurance. You still need liability insurance from somewhere.

[Dove]

There are companies that will sell you rental car insurance as a standalone policy. Google "Rental Car Insurance". Last I was dealing with this problem myself, the policies were something like half the cost of what the rental car place wanted.

[b112]

Many credit card companies offer insurance when you rent using them.

[HFguy]

There are yearly policies you can get if you just rent cars. GEICO has them for example

[tim333]

I tend to avoid the insurance and just pile up the money I would have paid to cover the losses. Depending on the type of insurance. But theft insurance tends to be problematic. The fraudulent buy expensive stuff, keep all the receipts, sell the stuff for cash to a friend and then claim on insurance with the proper paperwork. Normal people tend not to keep and file away all paperwork and lose out.

[treflop]

Although it’s a little more complicated, generally if you can cover a loss out of pocket, then you don’t need insurance.

Insurance is for losses that will have a major impact on you. It’s putting a price on risk.

[wjnc]

Insurers do notice that small claims (in P&C) are a relatively small part of claims + cost so most don’t offer the high deductibles. As a bonus, with higher deductibles come relatively more lawsuits. So safer to only offer low deductibles. (My experience after 20 years in the sector.)

In my country a family perhaps pays about €5k total a year for two cars, health, house and the assortment of legal and liability insurance. That is quite modest (not for all income classes though), since there are catastrophes possible in nearly any avenue of life. A minimalist insurance scheme would save one about €2k/yr. That just isn’t that worthwhile utility wise.

[accrual]

Right. If I accidentally crash my vehicle into someone's property (or worse, someone) I don't want to be out of pocket for potentially 100s of thousands when I could just pay my sub-$100 premium and not worry about it.

[to11mtm]

> Normal people tend not to keep and file away all paperwork and lose out.

Interestingly some of 'valuable property' insurance I have used for my camera gear encourages you to submit your invoices, photos of the item, etc on your policy profile. Makes it easy to remember to toss a photo of the item, photo showing serial number area, close-up of it, invoice alongside the other info.