Friday, March 25, 2011
Young people faced with difficult choices
Can it really have come to this? Must it be that for some young drivers the choice is between paying for car insurance cover or putting a deposit down on a house?
Well, I for one hope that young people aren’t faced with this dilemma. Although the obvious choice would be to own a house, you still need to be able to have some freedom of movement. What’s the point in owning a house if you’re stuck in it all day and can’t actually move anywhere?
You might think I’m being extreme, but I’m not – for some young drivers, the exorbitant cost of motor insurance cover means that they are actually faced with this dilemma.
Said one young driver who was quoted £24,000 to insure his 12-year-old Volvo, “It’s enough for a deposit on a nice house.”
And this wasn’t some young boy racer. This was a responsible young man who had taken the Pass Plus advanced driver certificate.
And, astonishingly, in the same week another young driver was actually quoted a full £12,000 more for a policy for his modest grey Vauxhall Corsa.
Perhaps these two hadn’t heard of telematics car insurance, which saves you money by rewarding you for safe driving, but I’ve got a feeling that if they had we probably never would have read any news stories of their outrageously expensive car insurance quotes.
Telematics: it doesn’t make you choose between being a driver and a mortgage holder. But let’s face it, with house prices as they are today, we’re not likely to be able to afford a house for a while yet.
I wonder if our parents’ generation, many of whom bought houses in their early twenties, has any idea of just how lucky they’ve been.
Image by cheetleys via Flickr, under Creative Commons Licence
Labels: car insurance, telematics, young driver
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posted by Fuse @ 10:07 AM 
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