I helped a new Dallas client with her car insurance this week. We were able to save her $300 a year over what she’s paying now and give her better coverage. One of the ways we added coverage and kept the price lower is by offering her a discount for agreeing to let the new car insurance company monitor her driving for up to 4 months.
Dallas and the North Central Texas Council of Governments, like many municipalities, are working through the task of creating a consistent car for hire policy. The goal is to create a seamless regional approach for cabs, limos, and app based companies like Uber and Lyft. If successful, we can avoid a patchwork approach of different rules and regulations for Dallas, Fort Worth, Plano, Grapevine, Richardson, Keller, etc.
Have you heard about the new Ford F-150? It would be hard to miss the press on its predominate aluminum body. Ford shaved 700 pounds off last year’s model by switching from steel to aluminum for 97% of the outside of the truck’s body. Doing so helped improve theF-150’s fuel economy from 5% to 29% depending on which engine is installed.
In case you missed it, House Bill 2305 was passed by the Texas Legislation on June 14, 2013. It goes into effect on March 1, 2015 and it does away with the familiar inspection sticker most Texas drivers are accustomed to receiving when we have our cars and trucks inspected each year. The goal, starting March 1st is to combine inspection sticker with our vehicle registration sticker.
This sparked my thinking about what advice I’d give on the insurance side of personal finances to help you confirm you’re adequately covered and hopefully pay less than you did this year! So get out your policies, flip to the declaration pages, and let’s see what we can do in 30 minutes or less!
There are two blog posts I’ve written in the past several months on car related topics. One involved the airbag recall fracas between the auto makers, the air bag manufacturer, Takata, and Congress (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/air-bags-recalls-mysteries-driving-changes/). The other involved our privacy rights from the auto makers (see http://50.87.248.161/~wiseinsu/privacy-rights-and-your-car/). I felt it was time to revisit and update these posts due to the movement in both of these stories.
Sheri and I were returning to Dallas after visiting family in Birmingham for Thanksgiving. A friend and client called me on my cell phone. Since it was Saturday, that usually means a couple of things such as they need help with a claim or a copy of their ID card because they’re getting their car inspected. In this case, it was neither, she was in the process of buying a new car, and before driving off the lot with her new car, the finance manager wanted to confirm she has a current and active car insurance policy.
Is privacy dead? Most of us know that if we write a blog, tweet, share on Facebook, pin something on Pinterest, or share a video on YouTube, it’s probably not private. The same goes for email and those cookies which seem to track every website we visit. But did you know your car may have the ability to share more about you than you’d like?
There’s one more area teens have that parents need to address; what to do in alcohol related situations. For example, 25% of all teens don’t know what to do if someone was drinking alcohol in the vehicle. 28% don’t know how to get home if their driver has been drinking. In 2011, 32% of teen drivers killed in car accidents had a blood alcohol content of 0.01 or higher.
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