A typical car insurance policy will cover many of the situations that you could experience while driving. However, it simply doesn’t cover everything that could possibly happen to you. Adding extra insurance onto your car insurance policy can raise the cost of your premium, but it may be worth it.
In order to determine what types of things could be advantageous for you to add to your auto insurance policy, you first need to figure out what is already covered. This can prevent you from adding something that you don’t need to because you already have coverage for it.
Generally speaking, an auto insurance policy could cover bodily injury, liability, medical payments, property damage liability, and collision coverage. It may or may not cover personal injury protection. Policies will vary from one insurance company to another, so you should read over your policy very closely in order to find out specifically what your policy covers.
This means that there could be some add-ons that you may find beneficial. Insurance add-ons, as the name implies, are extra, additional things that you can choose to attach to your auto insurance policy if you want to. Doing so is very likely going to increase cost of your premium. You are not required to add things to your policy if you really don’t want to, or if you are trying to cut back on expenses right now.
You might consider adding gap insurance to your policy. Gap insurance gives you some financial protection if you fall into the gap due to an accident. Your car gets totaled. The insurance company pays you the value of your car at the time of the accident. Unfortunately, you leased your car, and the amount of money you got from the insurance company doesn’t cover what you still owe. This is the “gap”. Gap insurance might give you enough to cover that gap between what you owe, and what you were paid.
If your auto insurance doesn’t cover personal injury protection (PIP), you may want to add that on, especially if your state has “no-fault” auto insurance. Let’s say some other driver hits your car and causes damage. The other driver is not going to be required to pay the bills for whatever medical care you require due to the accident. Instead, PIP could be used to cover those expenses.
On a similar note, you may want to add Uninsured Motorist Coverage. Your state may require all drivers to have auto insurance, but that doesn’t mean that everyone will comply with this law. If you are hit by an uninsured driver it means that you are going to have to pay for whatever damages happened to your car out of your own pocket. You can’t file a claim on insurance that the other driver does not have. If you have Uninsured Motorist Coverage, then you will have some financial protection in that type of situation.
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