Car Insurance

I'm trying to get car insurance because now that I moved to Texas I cannot be on my family's policy in Ohio. Yesterday I began looking online and getting quotes from places like Geico and Progressive. Based on what I knew about the different types of coverage you can get I chose what I thought would be appropriate for me to have on my policy, which ended up being less comprehensive than what I had on my family's policy. The quotes came out to be about the same as what I am paying now which is around $1200 per year. Well my grandpa told me it would be good to go to an independent agency and get quotes from them because they usually have more than one place they get insurance through. I randomly looked up one on the internet and went there today. Apparently this place doesn't usually get walk-ins and they do mostly commercial insurance not personal but they said they would get a quote for me. Part of the reason I went to the place and didn't call was because I wanted to meet with someone face to face. Well the lady that does the personal auto policies works from home so I had to talk to her on the receptionist's phone. There was a delay on the phone which made it really really annoying to talk to her. Well I told this lady the coverage I wanted, which matched my other quotes, and she gave me a quote. Let me tell you now that this independent insurance agency only uses ONE company to get policies unlike what I was hoping for to get multiple quotes. Well her quote was about $1200 as well. FOR 6 MONTHS!! So this place quoted me for double what the well known companies like Geico and Progressive quoted me. After talking with my aunt for 45 min about car insurance I find out that many companies do not give good rates to people my age even if they have a clean record. Another thing I tried to figure out from talking to my aunt was what the purpose of all the different coverages are. A few of them seemed repetitive and also seemed to overlap medical insurance. There is one coverage that will cover your bodily injury liability if an uninsured motorists causes an accident with you. I tried to argue that my medical insurance would cover that and that my passengers should all have medical insurance too. Well my aunt gave me a good scenario that made me realize that it would be good to have. She knew someone that had her car completely totaled by a drunk driver without insurance and she had the uninsured motorist insurance that covered up to $300,000 and she ended up having all her medical bills and such paid by this insurance. I argued that medical insurance should cover that. But what made her point so good was that the $300,000 goes towards compensation for time off work from the injuries. But then there is coverage called Medical Payments, one called Personal Injury Protection, and then the regular bodily liability coverage which to me seem like they all cover the same thing. Seems to me you would only need the regular liability insurance especially since the other two only go up to $10,000 each and that seems weak compared to what medical costs really are. To sum everything up, I don't have my own car insurance yet, I still don't know what all the different coverages do, and because of this issue it was hard to do really productive work today. I'm going to a Nationwide insurance agent tomorrow and will hopefully get everything figured out and then get some insurance for myself.

One more thing that makes this an irritating process is that in order for me to get insurance in Texas my car must be registered in Texas (it's registered in Ohio). AND in order for me to register in Texas I must have insurance in Texas. Figure out that one. Well after tomorrow I may or may not have my own car insurance in Texas and I may or may not have my car registered in Texas.

Peace,
MO