California Peas - Auto Insurance Increases

All of our insurances have gone up this year.

Ouch, a 54% increase is going to hurt many people! I wonder what mine will be here in Oregon now. I noticed many many lower prices when I moved to Oregon, which was part of my decision to do so. I think the one that had the most impact on me personally, well other than the cost of housing, is my electric bill. I was getting electric bills between $500 to $700 per month! Now I know a big portion of that was because of the pool motor. Another contributing factor was that the house had vaulted ceilings in the living room and master bedroom, both on the front of the house where the hot afternoon sun made the rooms uninhabitable in the summer. And there was no insulation between the roof tiles and the ceiling itself. The air conditioner just could not compensate for that level of heat coming in, even after having the ductwork replaced and larger grates to allow for more air in those two rooms. Here in Oregon, my electric has not been over $100 once. I will be curious to learn what the new auto insurance rates will be. I have an older Subaru that I still love and I just don’t really drive much anymore, so my rate will hopefully reflect that.

Insurance carriers are also leaving California - GEICO, Allstate and Liberty Mutual are not selling new policies.

A dangerous side effect to raising insurance rates is that drivers are dropping their limits down to these minimum required limits to help reduce their premiums. Instead of purchasing adequate limits for their car, this leaves a potentially devastating gap between the insurance proceeds available to pay a claim. If you were to get into an accident with someone that has the minimum limits and they are at fault, be prepared to absorb some of the costs.

I worked in the collision industry (in CA) for years - I saw it happen way more than it should.

I just got a quote from Geico yesterday for our Auto policy. Esurance is leaving CA and so I have until 9/18 to find a new carrier.

Something needs to be done about the insurance crisis. How many more gigantic increases can people expect to bear? How long until people simply can't afford it and just go uninsured? My coworker has 4 cars and 3 teenage drivers and is paying $8500/year. I cannot even imagine.

It was a shock snd I hope ours includes the increase as ours renewed last week. My husband had an accident a year ago and we added a newer vehicle in June. I was more than a little shocked when I saw our bill. We have autoclub. There are three drivers on our insurance but we don’t drive much.

Well, we are almost at the breaking point here in CA.... DH takes care of the bills, I bring in the money, so I can only go off what he's told me. We live off my teacher salary.

Water/sewer is now $500 for 2 months and going up to $700/2 months next year and the year after it will be $900/2mo. There are more increases on the horizon.
Homeowners went up to I don't know what but I do know it increased
Car insurance went up by I don't know how much (it was a 49.5% increase over the year before)- we have a 2005 Sequoia and a 2012 charger and a 1995 T-100 pick up
My medical insurance (for bottom of the barrel Kaiser) is now over $2000/mo and it's going up 9% in October
Food is ridiculously expensive even shopping sales/coupons/costco
Natural gas bill is $125/mo (gas dryer, grill, oven, on demand water heater)
Gas is $4.89/gallon where I live at the "cheap" station and I use more than 20 gallons a week for work and kids sports. That doesn't even account for the gas DH uses running kids for school.
Registration on vehicles and our boat (which will be getting sold soon) has all increased.
My kids sports are raising their tuition and costs so those are needing to be re-evaluated too. It's the LAST thing we will cut because sports are important to us in addition to education to make a well rounded kid.

Thankfully we have solar and aren't getting $900/mo bills like many I know- that would probably break us.

And in my district the union is fighting for a 1% COLA (which in no way will cover ALL the "living" increases we're facing). That's bullshit. Our "deputy superintendent" (NOT superintendent- it's another position) got a 4% pay raise, they're giving signing bonuses of $7500 for special ed teachers and $5000 for regular ed, they've increased daily sub pay to $200 and $250 (over 20 days subbed) and the district can't manage to support those teachers they already have.

Its a vicious circle. Auto makers compete with each other to make the most desirable car. Americans are greedy and need the lastest and greatest.

Insurance companies are part of the corporate greed. For years and years and years they collected premiums with minimal payouts. Then, we started experiencing huge disaster such as floods, huricanes, 3=4" hail storms, fires, ect.

Insurance companies began paying out on huge claim on those very, very expensive cars. But, they were semi broke when this started as the big wigs put our premiums in their pockets to pay for their luxury lifestyle.

So the insurance companies start raising our premiums and we have more disasters and they have to payout more and more on those very, very expensive cars. So they raise our premiums again.

So, we as American' are some of the issue having to have the best of everything. Automakers are some of the issue because they have to be the best and keep making more expensive vehicles. The insurace companies are a huge part of the issue as they spent the nest egg leaving them short to pay for these huge payouts.

It is so sad it has come to this.

We hardly use the grill and don’t use the oven much in the summer because it’s so hot.  I do 2-4 loads of wash a week. We live in Calaveras county.  

My car insurance is thru Mercury and my homeowners is thru Farmers.  When I bought my house in 2008 Mercury would not write a new homeowners insurance policy. I'm guessing because of the housing market crash at the time. So I've never had my car and auto insurance combined.

I don't hate California at all, it's beautiful! I got married there. It's humans who ruin it. It should be turned into a giant national Park.