Shopping For Auto Insurance Quotes Online - Should Gap Insurance Be in the Picture?
You're a pretty savvy shopper, aren't you? You always hit the sales, remember to clip coupons before you ante up to buy anything and do your best to comparison shop as often as possible. Since your shopping savvy points are through the roof, you already know that shopping for auto insurance quotes online is the best way to make sure you don't end up paying too much. But are you savvy enough to make sure gap insurance is added to those quotes before you sign on the bottom line?
70.5% of car buyers finance their cars. If you assume that there are approximately 196,165,666 drivers in the United States, that means that at any given time there could be up to 138,296,794 people driving around with a lien on their car. These drivers need a quick crash course in car depreciation or they could find themselves holding on to a loan payment for a car they're never going to drive again.
Vehicle Depreciation
As a shopping guru you already know what depreciation is. However, for those out there that might not be as familiar with the value patterns of vehicles, let's talk about the ways in which your car depreciates and how it's going to leave you completely helpless if you have to cash in on the promise you solicited when you went shopping for auto insurance quotes-the promise to cover your car if you ever filed an insurance claim.
You see, what your car is worth today isn't what it will be worth tomorrow. Cars, trucks, SUVs and anything else with wheels and an engine begin to depreciate the minute they drive off the lot. You could be in an accident after owning your car for 6 months or less and find yourself holding the bag for a car that's worth less than what you owe. That's concerning when you're driving but absolutely devastating if you ever need your insurance to total it out.
So let's recap. You wreck your car. Your insurance gives you a check for what it's worth right now rather than what it was worth when you first started shopping for auto insurance quotes. You hand your bank the check, they hand you an invoice for the balance of your loan. Now you have to keep making loan payments for a car you can't drive while you come up with the money for a new car and try and wade your way through a mess of red tape to get another loan.
That's a mess you can avoid if you remember to add gap insurance to your coverage. Gap insurance is designed to bridge the gap between what your car is worth and what you still owe. In other words, it's tailor made to save you from jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire! Gap insurance will make up the difference, guaranteeing that you walk away from the accident free of any financial obligations and ready to step back into the wide, warm pool of automobile ownership.