Another Rate Hike

When are the rate hikes going to stop for awhile?  I’ve been loyal to our insurance company for years because the honest truth is I love them plus even after requesting rates from different companies our current company has been the cheapest.  Unfortunately I think it’s time to start shopping around again because we’ve received yet another rate hike on our car insurance, and it’s not related to anything we’ve done to make it go up.

I admit Hubby’s driving record isn’t the cleanest.  In fact he’s had some pretty nasty stuff on his driving record that has caused us to fall into a high risk category.  Our car insurance is almost double our car payment, and we were barely affording it before the rate hike.  I called our insurance guy today to find out why we had a rate increase, and he explained that it was an increase across the board.  There’s nothing we can do about it as we don’t have any extra services on our plan that we can drop, and we’re already at the state minimum for coverage.

Now, I’m scrambling to figure out just how I’m going to afford it at all, but we can’t do without it.  We’re required to keep full coverage due to our car loan, and not having a car is NOT an option for us with Hubby working 45 miles out of state each day.  The sooner we pay the car off the cheaper the insurance will be as we can drop from full coverage to liability, but that’s going to be awhile, especially if I can’t afford to make double payments on the car because that money has to go to the insurance.

Our car insurance is one reason why we don’t have health insurance right now.  I would have to purchase my own local insurance because I’m self employed.  Hubby can’t get business health insurance through work because his boss decided the group health insurance quote he got when he was searching was too high.  After the one quote he decided not to offer insurance to his employees at all.

I’m starting to think I’m going to need to go back to work full time instead of working at home now.  The only problem with that is even more costs arise that have to be factored in.  There’s the cost of daycare for the little one and the costs of having a job and traveling to it outside of my home.  Plus we’d have a situation that required us to have either another vehicle since we live in the middle of nowhere away from any public transportation.  Honestly the costs of me returning to work full time would most likely outweigh the benefits of having the extra income. 

I guess it’s time for me to sit down with our budget again, see what I can cut out, and figure out what we’re going to do.