Some of you may have heard of “stacking” your car insurance; many of you probably have not heard of this practice and thus do not know what it entails.

Primarily, it refers mainly to uninsured motorist (UM) coverage and underinsured motorist (UMI) coverage. When you stack these types of coverages, you are basically collecting claims from one or more car insurance policies.

Now, there are many states out there which forbid this kind of behavior. You should not go against the law if that is the case in your state. However, there are states out there — nineteen of them, to be exact — which either allow this practice, or do not specifically address the idea of stacking in their laws.

You need to closely read your policy before doing anything else, to see if you will even be allowed to stack these types of coverage.

Stacking will work in mainly two different instances. In the first place, you may have multiple vehicles on your current policy, and you may have UM and UIM coverage on all of them. In that case, you can collect the limits for your policies under any number of vehicles necessary so that you can cover the full amount of damages. In the second place, you may have several policies with UM and UMI coverage, perhaps even from different insurers. In that cause you can file a claim with each policy to cover all your damages.

Mental anguish is not something that you want to mess around with – at all and if you follow the steps in the last blog, you should be fine.  However, what happens to your lost income?  When you are in a car accident, you might be off of work due to absence, what about those wages?  While most car insurance companies do not cover loss wages, there are a few things that you can do.

One of the first things is that you need to prove that you were capable of getting a job but were prevented from doing so because of the accident.  That can be proved with doctor’s notes, medical documents and a number of different ways; you just want to make sure that you can actually prove it.

Taking the person responsible for your car accident to court is a big thing – however, if you have enough prove, you can absolutely win!

Now that we have talked about physical pain and damage, let’s talk mental.  Whenever you are in an accident, the one thing that could potentially be scarred for a very long time is your mind.  Mental anguish is not something that every single person experiences, however, you could experience it if you are in a car wreck – and then you need to report it. 

Whenever you think you may be experiencing mental anguish, you want to make sure that you seek out some psychological or psychiatric help.  A professional will be able to help you live a normal and healthy lifestyle and they will be able to document everything – which is really what you need to prove it in court.

Whenever you are trying to prove something, you want to make sure that you save everything – that is what you should do in this case as well.

When you are dealing with a car accident, it can be difficult to think about what accident losses are actually compensated.  After all, you want to make sure that you are okay, the other driver is okay, your car is going to get fixed – you hardly worry about the compensation.  However, it is important for you to check and see exactly what accident losses are compensated, that way you know what you are getting yourself into.

First up is physical pain and damage.  If you get in a car crash, you might have experienced a bunch of paint and while it is difficult to prove in court or measure how much pain you are in, you want to make your case a lot stronger by saving any credible medical evidence in the form of reports, bills or any other type of documents. 

Save any paperwork that you can that is related to the accident – it will help.  In the next blog, we are going to explore mental trauma and how it relates to any car accidents you might have gotten into.

The tickets are a huge part of your driving record, however – how many accidents you have been in will also affect your premium big time.  If you have been in five accidents in the last five years, that is like having one accident a year and the insurance company will consider you a reckless driver that is not only not safe but also a risk to them. 

What this means for you is that you car insurance premium will be extremely high most of the time and it truly does not matter which car insurance company you go with.  Car insurance companies like to ensure that they are insuring very safe drivers and a lot of them even give discounts to safe drivers – so if they see you as a liability, it might be difficult for you to even find car insurance in the first place!

Now that you know exactly what you need to do to keep your car insurance premiums low – make sure that you do them!  Car insurance is something that you need to have and if you can save a little cash … why not do it?

Now that we have touched base on tickets and how they can affect your premium, let’s talk about what type of tickets can affect your premium.  When you are given a ticket, you are also given a checklist of how much the ticket is going to be and whether or not there are points added onto your license. 

Those points are going to be what truly will mark up your car insurance premium.  If you get a speeding ticket for example, depending on how fast you were going, your car insurance premium could go up by hundreds of dollars a month.

However, tickets are not the only thing that you need to worry about in the way of your driving record, how safe of a driver you are is something that you need think about as well.  If you are a reckless driver, that will reflect in your driving record and could make your car insurance premiums go up.

Car insurance is by far the most confusing thing in the world – I know that I am constantly confused by it and while I know that there are many different things that can affect your premium, do you know what they are?

 I didn’t until I started writing for this particular blog and now I know that my driving record actually affects what I am going to be paying for a car insurance premium.  In this post and the next couple, we are going to explore exactly what you can avoid to keep your driving record spotless!

One of the first things that you are going to need to avoid is tickets – to be completely honest, depending on which ticket you get will depend on what your premium will be.