3 Ways To Estimate Annual Mileage For Your Car Insurance Policy

Insurance Blog

If you're looking for ways to optimize your car insurance and make it the best coverage you can get, check out this list of ways to come up with accurate mileage estimates for your insurers.

Having a good estimate of how much you drive a vehicle per year is important -- it may not seem that important when you sign onto a policy, but it does come into play at claims time. If the number's off a little bit, that might not make much difference, but if the vehicle is driven much more than you estimated, it can cause a lot of trouble with a car insurance claim.

So how do you come up with a good estimate for annual miles driven? Here are four great tips.

Start With Your Commute

One of the best ways to estimate annual mileage is to look in close detail at your commute to work every day. Do you go to a certain office and back every single day, or do you sometimes visit other locations? Do you ever make 2 to 3 work trips in a day, instead of just one? Try to evaluate how much you drive for work on a weekly, monthly, and annual basis, and look at exactly how many miles you travel to get to each business location. For instance, you have to have a good idea of how far away company headquarters is if you work there, but you might also stop off at some store, warehouse, operations building, or other location according to your own work calendar, so factor those trips in, too.

Estimate for Grocery Shopping and Other Areas

Another good part of your estimate will be how far you drive to get the food you eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Many working parents and other career professionals spend a good amount of time on the road, buying up all of those items they'll need to make meals at home, not to mention other home supply basics like paper goods, pet food, diapers etc. You can get a lot closer to an accurate mileage estimate by knowing how far away the grocery store is, and how many miles you drive to get there. The same is true for other routine trips -- for instance, how far away is your kid's school?

Vacations

Once or twice a year, if we're lucky, we bundle the entire family into the minivan or whatever we roll around in, and visit some of those exotic places around the country billed as top vacation spots. The thing is, these places might be 10, 20 or 100 miles away from us, depending on where we live. Or they might be a 6, 7, or 8 hour drive. Do you like the Jersey shore, or do you prefer Virginia Beach? Do you drive from inland areas of the Southwest to the California coast? Pin down these longer mileages and factor them into your annual mileage, to get an even tighter estimate for your car insurance company.

Fit in all of the above, and you'll be on your way to a pretty decent idea of how much you drive a vehicle each year. And that can save you a lot of money and a lot of hassle if you end up using your car insurance to file a claim. Talk to a professional like Hug Jeff Insurance for more information.

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