Cutting down on my very first car insurance

shoutshout

Greetings, all you amazing cost cutters!

I am in need of your assistance, and would very much appreciate any tips I can get!

My predicament:

I'm starting as a GMP police constable in 4 weeks, and will, by all my estimates, simply require a car, as it will not be possible to rely on public transport for all my shifts and different places I have to go to.

I have set aside £750 - £1250 for a car and I'm not fussy, I'm just going for the cheapest in terms of fuel consumption, insurance, tax, etc. So most of my options are Skoda Fabia and Seat Ibiza, with an odd Polo or a Toyota here and there. That's not the part which worries me though, a car is a car, so I know it will cost dearly.

However, it's the insurance that I'm hoping to save on. I'm being quoted between £750 and £850. I'd like to bring it down if possible, but I don't know if there's anything more I could do

I'm 28 (29 in two days if it makes any difference), my spouse is 34. I have my licence since December 2017, my spouse has it for 16 years already. We haven't driven any cars in the last 5 years, so no bonuses of any kind.

Problems I have:

1.) The police have emailed me this:

"You will need to bring in your Driving Licence and Insurance certificate on Day 1 of the initial training course. You must have Business Insurance as you will be commuting to various locations, not just commuting to and from a place of work."

Okay, fine, I've added business insurance to my quotes. However, most comparison sites ask me to specify how many personal miles and how many business miles I will have. I can guesstimate my regular commute and a bit on top. But I have no way of guessing how many business miles I will do! Is it really important to be precise with this factor or can I get away with just giving it a blanket value of 500 or 1000 miles? Surely that might be enough, but I can't know that!

2.) I've quit my old job, and I'm now unemployed until I start with the police. Obviously the job title of a police constable/officer is one of the best ones for car insurance, so I don't have to tinker with it in order to get a better quote.

BUT

I'm not a police constable yet, and if I select unemployed, then my quote skyrockets (somewhat understandably, I guess).

I'm not planning to start driving until 2 or 3 days before I start my job, but I would probably already buy a car in the next few days and then insure it with the policy starting at the end of the month.

I'm sure it won't be really legal to insure it for the end of the month and say my job title is "Police Constable", but can I get away with it, or is there something more I should know?

I'm checking MoneySupermarket, Confused, Meerkats and GoCompare. If there are any other good places to check, do let me know.

Additionally, if there any other cost-cutting tips you have, I'd be grateful!

Many thanks for reading!

lisyloo

Regarding mileage, it won't matter if you a bit out, but if you are significantly out e.g. doing 10,000 instead of 1,000 then you would need to ring the insurer. I would be cautious and then just ring if you end up doing a lot more than expected. You are not expected to be mystic meg but you should inform them if it changes significantly from what you expected. Neither are you expected to actually count them.

stripeyfox

I think I'd be inclined to call them up and ask. You've not started your employment yet, so if you say you're a copper and something happens BEFORE you start then you could be in trouble, not just with insurance but in your job too,

But if you tell them the situation, presumably they can factor this in - the fact you are starting to role soon surely must count for something!

Manxman_in_exile

stripeyfox wrote: »

I think I'd be inclined to call them up and ask. You've not started your employment yet, so if you say you're a copper and something happens BEFORE you start then you could be in trouble, not just with insurance but in your job too,

But if you tell them the situation, presumably they can factor this in - the fact you are starting to role soon surely must count for something!

Yeah - I'd do it by 'phoning around. It's easier to explain slightly out of the ordinary circumstances by talking to a human being rather than a comparison site.

MovingForwards

I've got business insurance on mine, I randomly picked 17k business use miles!?! But it doesn't add much to the cost of the policy.

As you are getting an old car you could add a voluntary excess of £500 because to be honest any minor bump will write your car off. 65-75% + of the pre accident value gets a car written off. Insurance companies have their own book to value cars from and it's a lot less than you would realistically pay sadly.

Keep the voluntary and compulsory excess amount in the bank so you can buy another old car quick.

Probably avoid all the extra like courtesy car, loss of keys etc as that saves a few quid.

Fabia's are cheap to insure, look at nice sensible, mature person car and you will get cheap insurance.

Avoid polo/Ibiza/Corsa etc as they are boy racer cars, tend to get modified/thrashed and are high nickable cars and it's reflected in the insurance.

My OH has a Fabia estate and pays less than £250 fully comp, he hasn't had his own vehicle for probably 15+ years.