Car Insurance Shopping Guide 2026: How to Get the Best Coverage for the Best Price
Learn how to shop for car insurance in 2026. Understand liability limits, full coverage, deductibles, discounts, and how to compare policies to get the best price without sacrificing protection.
Car insurance prices in the last several years has increased over 50% overall. And there's a couple reasons, but more so, let me show you how to shop your insurance to make sure that you not only get the best prices, but you also get the best coverage for the price that you need. At the end of the day, you don't want to be the one wondering if you're covered correctly and saved an extra $3 versus paying the extra $3 and actually having the coverage that you needed for certain scenarios. So, let's go over the ways to shop.
Understanding Coverage Types
The first piece is you need to understand the coverages that you should carry. but there's really only three types of coverages for car insurance. You've got coverage for you, coverage for others, and coverage for your vehicle.
Starting with the middle finger, which is the coverage for others. That's going to be the liability limits. That's essentially what your car insurance will pay. It's also the reason that prices have increased.
Obviously, the dollar is worth less, bananas cost more, medical costs more. All of those things are increases, but most states are starting to realize that the state minimums that they've set are not high enough.
A lot of people are having accidents and it's not enough to cover the scenario. And then lawsuits happen, all of those things. That means that most states, even though their state minimums are 25,000 per person, if you hurt one person and then 50,000 per accident if you hurt multiple people, that's usually not enough anymore because of the cost of medical, the cost of prices, all those things.
What states are starting to do is increase those numbers. So, in some states, you're seeing that increase. That is the coverage for others.
Property Damage Coverage
Now, the other coverage for others is their car, their property. It's called property damage. And that usually starts at 10,000. Not enough. I'll be honest with you.
If you ever have an accident and you hit a Yukon, that's a $50,000 60 $80,000 vehicle. If you total that vehicle, you don't want to find out that you only have 10,000 property damage and their car was 50 grand. That means you're on the hook for 40 grand and they're going to sue you.
Now, I don't have anything for them to take. You got to be careful because they can take your income. They can take up to 30% in most states over your working life.
I can't live off of 30% less than what I make today because I spend it all.
But in general, make sure that you have that property damage as high as they'll allow. At least 100,000 is what I say. If you have to cut the budget, 50,000. That way, you have most of the scenarios covered.
By the way, that coverage isn't that expensive in most states. So, increasing that really doesn't make as big of an impact as you would think.
Working With Insurance Agents
If you are trying to shop for insurance, I'm going to give you a cheat sheet here in a moment that will give you an idea of how to shop across different places, but most of the time just calling an independent agent can help you out.
They typically will shop you across multiple companies so that you don't have to.
The biggest piece is most people don't realize that it doesn't cost anything extra. the companies are either going to pocket the money and that's part of their expenses for marketing or they're going to pay an agent to work with you.
So, it makes more sense to deal with the agent than it does directly to the company because they have your best interest in mind in most scenarios.
And if the prices get ridiculously high because the product prices change with each company, then they can chop you across their market again and find you a better deal if they need to.
Coverage for You
Again, we're not going to go too far in depth on the coverages, but the coverage for others, that's your liability limits.
The coverage for you is any type of medical. Some states require you to have something called personal injury protection or med pay. In those scenarios, that's coverage for you or people in your car.
If you're doing medical payments, it's typically per person. So, if I have 5,000 med pay, each person in my car, if they get injured, has that additional coverage.
And then there's protecting yourself against people that do carry those state minimums. There are some states that actually don't even require you to carry the bodily injury limits.
So if they hit you and it's their fault and they have nothing to go after, they don't even have an income, then there's not much for you to go take from them.
In those cases, they allow you to insure yourself for what's called underinsured motorist or uninsured if it's a hit and run. That way, if they don't have insurance or have less insurance than you, then you can carry the additional coverage that you would like to carry.
Coverage for Your Vehicle
Now, the third piece, which is the end here, is the coverage for your vehicle. That just depends on if you want what's called full coverage.
It's really a madeup word. It's comprehensive and collision and there's a whole lot of all car things that you can add on towing, road service, rental car, accident forgiveness, vanishing deductible, all those little pieces are additional pieces that you can add on to a policy.
Typically, you can't add those extra little pieces unless you have comprehensive and collision, which is what the term full coverage typically makes up.
In this case, you're going to pick a deductible, so you'll pay whatever you choose, and that lowers your cost of insurance.
you're technically saying, "Let's partner up. I'll pay the first $1,000 of the claim. You pay whatever is left to repair my car or replace my car."
In those cases, some people might say, "I'll pay 1,500." That lowers the cost of your insurance that you pay monthly because you're holding more risk in your hand and not requiring the insurance company to not hold all of that risk.
Discounts & Savings Opportunities
Now, regarding discounts .
If you're combining your home and your auto, that makes a huge price. You can knock off 20 to 30% by just doing that.
If you're a renter, sometimes having renters's insurance is cheaper than having just car insurance.
So, having extra coverage might be a benefit, but also might make the policy less expensive. It depends on the scenario. Talk to your agent to see if that's a good fit.
Affiliate Discounts
affiliations. If you're a CPA, if you're a tax person, if you're a government employee, if you're military, if you're a nurse, all of these things, if there's different even car ownerships, motorcycle ownership, Harley-Davidson Club, credit union members,
there are discounts that a lot of these companies give for those occupational situations that are called affiliate discounts.
Go ahead and let the agent know any affiliations that you have or any clubs or memberships that you're part of because it can get you a discount on your insurance.
How to Shop for the Best Deal
Okay, but this is all about how do I shop for the best deal? How do I get the best price? How do I find the best company? And what's that cheat sheet you're talking about?
Here's the piece. When people shop, they typically get lazy. And I honestly understand it because nobody likes talking for an hour and a half on the phone with a couple agents, 10 minutes with some that just don't care, and finding the best deal.
If you're going to shop, the best way to do this is to do an apples to apples.
That's a catch22 phrase because most companies purposely don't do apples to apples comparison. There's some companies that increase the coverage a thousand dollars just because they want their coverage to be a little bit different or a little bit better than that next guy and their price might be cheaper.
Comparing Policies
So because of that, there's not an easy way to do the apples to apples if you're going outside of the typical coverage.
So, if you're just looking for the coverage for you, coverage for others, coverage for your car, most companies are going to let you do almost identical coverage options.
When you're doing that, make sure you understand the limits. And again, I'll link a article at the end that goes over those.
But if you are looking to do that, pick the coverages you want to lean towards and then start to compare those with different companies that you want to lean towards.
Be careful of the online tools because it is a lot more confusing if you go directly to progressive.com or geico.com or statefarm.com.
If they give you an option, they usually have little tweaks because they get it. You're trying to do an apples to apples. They may not give you an apples to apples and you might have to edit it individually to even compare.
Watch Out for Hidden Changes
So when you're looking at that great price that you saw, make sure that it is the right coverage because I find more often than not when there is a great price, something was slashed out of that policy.
Even when you're working with agents, when you're calling a non-independent agent, somebody that works straight for one company, they don't have another option to be competitive in some scenarios.
Sometimes they are, but in most cases, if they're not, they've got to start chopping things off to at least get your business.
So, be careful when you're working with that type of agent.
Choosing Additional Coverages
Outside of all of those pieces, determine what are those extra coverages that you want to carry that are important to you, i.e. towing and road service.
Do you want $100 of towing or road service? Do you want unlimited? Some companies do unlimited up to a certain amount.
Do you want the vanishing deductible? Do you want what's called a savings bank or a gap insurance type coverage where if your car is worth $10,000, but you owe 15,000, do you want your insurance to pay that off?
These are additional coverages that don't come on that base policy and not all companies offer it.
Adjusting Based on Price
So those are some of the benefits when you are comparing a Geico versus a nationwide versus an allstate who has those coverages that you want.
Actually technically they all do. So just ignore there are companies that don't do that.
But if that is the case then make sure that you have the benefits that you're looking for and just start with what you would love to carry.
I want vanished deductible. I want the best road service and towing. I want the loan payoff if I have that.
Check your prices to see what that is first.
Bundling Insurance Policies
Money left on the table. Be very careful.
If you are not quoting your home and your auto together and you own a home or you're renting and paying for renters's insurance, it's a headache.
I get it. You have to call your other insurance and tell them you're not going to do it anymore.
You have to tell the apartment building if you're renting that you switched insurance or you got to change the loan company and let them know.
It's extra work. I get that part.
Key Information for Quotes
So, just to recap, when you are shopping insurance, know what coverages you want to carry.
Gather the key information. You need to know what type of vehicle you have, how many drivers or non-drivers are in the home because that does matter for insurance.
They have to put all the risks together.
Get the VIN, the vehicle identification number if you have that of the vehicle, not necessarily needed for the quote, the address they're going to ask for because the zip code, even though you you would think you could just give somebody a zip code and they'll give you a price.
Final Thoughts
If you don't trust who you're talking to, sure, make up an address, move it three houses down, get a quote out there.
The problem is you're going to run into is insurance is based on what I call a profile.
So, they are checking insurance scores.
That is your history, your claims, your credit in a piece of it.
I'll link a article that goes very in-depth on the actual insurance score, but the insurance score is also taking into consideration the risk of your vehicle and the drivers that are in your house or non-drivers that are in your home.
Conclusion
Let me know what your thoughts are. Is there anything that you do when you check your insurance? How often do you check your insurance? And how often do you think it should be?
I'm a fan of between 3 to 5 years because there's certain discounts tied to it, but some people shop every renewal.
Let me know in the comments below what your thoughts are.
