Naturally, your driving record plays an enormous part in the rates you pay — and contrary to what some drivers out there think, you do have control over this. A speeding ticket, a DWI charge, a charge of reckless driving — these violations can cause you to be penalized for up to five years, in addition to making your rates outrageous. It just is not worth it.

Even your credit rating affects your premiums. A driver with a poor credit rating, or no credit at all, will generally have to pay higher rates.

Believe it or not, these days even your occupation will affect what you pay for car insurance. Some occupations are considered riskier than others — like someone who delivers newspapers, for instance.

Studies also show that the more education you have, the less you may have to pay.

Naturally, there is nothing you can do about your age — until you get older. And there is nothing you can do about your gender — unless … well, that is a whole different blog under a whole different category.

Anyway, some things that cause you to pay higher — or lower — rates may seriously surprise you. For instance, if you are married, you are going to pay less than a single driver.

Where you live determines what you pay as well. Drivers who live in congested cities and/or high risk areas — areas where there is a high rate of car theft — pay higher premiums. Conversely, in rural areas, areas with less traffic, and so on, car insurance rates tend to be much less expensive.

Affordable auto insurance. We all want it, right? And yet, millions of drivers — hundreds of millions of drivers, more likely — bemoan the fact that they cannot get affordable auto insurance … or so they firmly believe.

The fact of the matter is that many drivers are not even aware of the many, many factors that can have an effect on their car insurance rates. There are so many things that can make you pay more — or less. You can control some of these. Some factors, however, are beyond your control. We are going to look at those first.

To begin with, your age is a factor. It may come as a surprise that drivers between the ages of fifty and sixty five statistically have the safest driving records. Drivers under twenty five are considered the highest risk.

Your gender plays a part in your premiums as well. In spite of all the jokes about female drivers, for instance, they pay lower rates — they are considered less risky.

Now that we have discussed some of the bad points of texting and driving, let’s go ahead and talk about some of the benefits of not doing it.  One of the main things that you will be doing if you do not text and drive is you will not be putting yourself at risk – which is very, very important.

Next, while you are not guaranteed not to get into an accident, you are not so much at risk, so your car insurance will not go up.  If you do happen to get into an accident if you were texting, your car insurance premiums can skyrocket, so that is something to keep in mind.

Texting and driving is just not worth it – there are too many risks and too many things can happen to you if you do, do it.

Although splitting your attention between driving and texting is something that is certain to cause an accident, there are some other risks that you need to be aware of whenever you are doing anything with your cell phone while you are driving.  One thing that you need to be aware of are the laws in your state.

Many states right now are passing laws that actually make it illegal to text or talk on your cell phone while driving.  This is something that you can even get pulled over for and can get ticketed for, so that is something that you do need to watch.

In the next blog, we will talk about what the benefits are from not talking or texting while you are driving.