My auto insurance policy is up for renewal so im starting to shop around for prices.

What is the minimum amount of coverage for Bodily INjury and Prop Damage one should get?

Right now Im at 50/100 for bodily injury and 25k for property damage. Most insurance agents i spoke to tell me that I am underinsured since I am a homeowner.

Me: Homeowner, 30 yrs old, no accidents or tickets.

The minimum you should get is the maximum they will sell to you. The premium doesn't go up anything like linearly with the coverage, because the likelihood of paying out the limit diminishes as the limit gets bigger. The reason for this is so you can get uninsured and underinsured coverage to match your limits, so that if you get injured by someone with no coverage or minimum coverage, you can get your insurance company to make up the difference between their coverage and your limits.

Get an umbrella cover

Get umbrella insurance to protect your assets. And then get the minimum car insurace that your umbrella policy will allow.

I got 50k for property damage (I'm 29 and a homeowner). I figure with my luck, I'll end up demolishing someone else's Beamer.

I am with response insurance

Hyundai Accent 2002 in Houston

I pay $178 every 6 months, but I am looking for cheaper though.

rigor said:i wouldn't do less then 100/300/100 with any property.I wholeheartedly agree with this. Plenty of insurance companies give you an additional, often substantial, discount if your policy limits are at least $100K/$300K or $300K CSL -- they often won't give you a direct discount but you won't be accepted into their preferred risk pool until and unless you've had these liability limits at their or some other insurance company for at least 6 months to a year. So, even for people with very few assets to protect, it is often cheaper to carry those liability limits. This begs the question -- why would you even drive around with liability limits under $100K/$300K? You only need to get into a mildly serious accident to immediately exhaust those limits.

geo123 said:mewannaxbox said:GermanExpat said:Get umbrella insurance to protect your assets. And then get the minimum car insurace that your umbrella policy will allow.

The thing with that is, if the damage is greater than your auto coverage then you will be sued and the matter will be prolonged. This can cause additional expenses, especially if the event occured away from home.Do you know what an umbrella policy is? The purpose of the umbrella coverage is to protect you if the claim exceeds your underlying insurance limits. So, if you have a $250K/$500K auto policy and a $1MM umbrella, if you have a $750K claim the matter will not be prolonged in any way -- instead, you'll be fully covered up to your umbrella limit. That's just one of the reasons we use umbrella policies.

Yes it will be prolonged, ins. policy adj. don't just hand you a check the day of your claim. They investigate, if the other driver disputes your claim, you may goto arbitration hence the prolonging.

Each state has different minimums.

If you own a house, you will want much more than the minimums. If you get into an accident and your coverage doesn't quite cover it, the next thing to go are your own assets.

Nummerkins said:Each state has different minimums.

If you own a house, you will want much more than the minimums. If you get into an accident and your coverage doesn't quite cover it, the next thing to go are your own assets.

How does that work when you have liability on your homeowners and/or an umbrella policy? That's assuming you have enough coverage on your auto so you can get an umbrella...