personal finance

It is almost impossible to know for sure which car insurance company/companies is/are going to provide you with the cheapest rates or quotes, I here recommend that you first try to get car insurance rates or quotes from several car insurance services such as Insureme.com or HometownQutoes.com. At least this way you can compare several insurance companies. These consumer services take your information and provide you several quotes by matching you with multiple agents. You'll end up with the capability to compare multiple quotes from different insurers. At those sites, you will most probably be able to be matched to over 5 different insurers and will be provided with really competitive rates/quotes.

As a matter of fact, most of the time I have found out that the cheapest quote is originating from one of these sites from my own experiences when shopping around to get the cheapest car insurance rates/quotes. Part of the reason might be, brokers affiliated with companies with a large online presence are seeking to be a cost-leader in the industry so consumers are attracted by those sites to be driven by low rates.

I hope the above experience may help you find your version of cheap car insurance. Give me a comment or two if you have anything to say about your own car insurance shopping experiences!

# Real free credit report: http://annualcreditreport.com. Others claims free but is not.
# Credit score report should be paid separately and the score is a number between 300 and 850 which evaluates your risk as a borrower. There are several ways to obtain a free credit score, however it may not be the official Fair Isaac (FICO) score number.
# The only way to improve your credit score quickly: pay your bills on time and pay the dues you owe.
# Three major credit bureaus: Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion. They don't share information. That translates as: Correct an error on one credit report, does not mean you will not do to other reports from other credit bureaus.
# Your right under federal law: challenge information shown on your credit reports. The credit bureaus have 30 days to derermine if they should correct the error. Otherwise you can can sue them.
# Get your three credit reports 6 months before you apply for a home or car loan, even sometimes for insurance as I mentioned before. An error on your credit reports can take long to fix.
# Monitor your credit for free by laddering your credit report requests. Every four months request a free credit report for free so you build a monitoring mechanism free of charge. For example, I schedule my first report in January for Experian report(like today, yes, today is the day if you wanted to take actions), then May for TransUnian, then September for Equifax(the system at equifax not working most of the term when annualcreditreport.com transfer to their web site, most of the time it says it cannot identify you even if you swear wll answers are correct and the same thing goes well to other credit bureaus. It asks you to download and fill out and mail the form to them - that is too twentieth-century and yes it sucks! Is Equifax dicoraging people to get a free report???), year over year, you get your very credit monitoring system free.

I bought several FM transmitters and none of them are actually what I wanted. At least I need the following features:

good sound quality
easy to tune
with AC adapters for both car and standard outlet, better also can be battery powered
reasonable price

Is there such a thing?

Is this ridiculars? How could credit scores affect your insurance premiums?

Here is an email sent to an insurance agent who changed the insurance premium after checking credit report:

BTW, how will credit score affect the insurance premium? We'll prepay premium in full upfront, and from our history we have no claims. I am confused why credit scores play a role in my insurance premium?

In this financial crisis time, I stay away from borrowing more money that's why, I think, my credit score goes down. The credit agency and lending industry work together to encourage people to borrow as much as they can or afford, this is part of our problem and root of the current financial crisis. Can you explain how my credit scores play a role in my insurance premium if I pre-pay your premium in full and I have no claim history? Can you get an answer from AllState if this is not a question for you?

Sorry for the long email but I feel something is not so right in our credit/insurance system. It looks like people did not borrow or borrow less will get punished even if they are more financially responsible. The credit and lending industry are working together to punish people who borrow less by assigning a lower credit scores. The credit scores are overused in other places - even if people are not borrowing money they are affected by those credit scores.

Thank you.