Funny how it REALLY registers home when it's your turn to be the parent and have a 16 yr old boy with a drivers license. More than doubled our rates! This is really scary considering we're both considered low risk professionals with high credit scores and he's a high GPA honor student.

I recall being 16 and driving... No wonder mom and dad were so quiet for a while.

Anyone else going thru this?

Scott

You know, Scott, the reason why insurance rates for kids is so high is because they conveniently group them all together and say they are a risk as a whole. Doesn't matter that there's alot of good drivers mixed in there too, they end up paying through the nose. To me, this is wrong. It's no different than grouping a bunch of people of from country "A" whom studies have shown are far more likely to have an accident than people from country "B", and the women drivers from country "C", well....Anyway, the point being, this is age discrimination, let these young drivers have a chance before declaring them "high risk". If they screw up, then hike the rate accordingly. Seems convenient for ins. co's to descriminate against age and also sex,young men afaik have always paid more than young women. I'm always trying to figure that one out when I see young women speeding through my neighbourhood while blabbing on the phone right after pulling out of their driveway. Pheww! I feel better now, really.

It's not discrimination, just statistics. Younger drivers as a group get in more accidents, so rates are higher.

They could not do it that way, but then everyone else's rates would be higher to help make up for the insurance claims paid out as a result of younger drivers.

How about this for a solution to your 16 year old driver. If he wants to drive, he pays his own car insurance.

That's my point though, if they are allowed to group people together based "statistics"(this one being age), I'm sure the "statistics" would also tell us that people from certain parts of the world( of course I won't mention from which countries) have a higher rate of accidents than immigrants from other countries that come here then we should group all of those people into "high risk" according to the statistics. To lump everyone into a group and charge ALL of them seems discriminatory.

I agree with you on the solution, if they(kids) want to drive they should have to pay their own car Insurance...I did.

Adrian, people who live in populated cities pay higher insurance than those who live in rural areas. Without any change in coverage, my insurance rates changed every time I moved between Cities in OK (Tulsa, Stillwater, and Claremore).

There's two sides to that one, David. I agree, in some cities probably insurance rates are high due to the percieved higher crime rate....on the other hand, rural people tend to drive farther distances(to the city?) and therefore are on the road more, increasing their chances of an accident.

I don't know about the States, but here, the Insurance companies are trying to hike premiums quite a bit now, not because people have suddenly become worse drivers but I suspect they are trying to recoup some of their losses due to the economic downturn.

Our auto insurance rates went up whenever we moved from Orlando with a metro population of 2 mil+ to Vero Beach's 130k population, whenever we asked why the increase we were told it was due to the number of 'retired' folks who live in the area ... "Retired?!" "Yessir, er uh...OLD folks!'

But that wasn't anything compared to how much they went up whenever our son turned old enough to drive.

Been there done that. Our rates sky rocketed when my kids, one girl one boy, started driving. We made it a privilege and not a right. Neither kid was able to drive if they didn't pay for their own coverage.

For awhile we had three teen girls on ours and the rates were outfriggin'rageous. Now were are down to one and soon to be none. Guess what? More speakers for Daddy! I'll break the news to my wife after the speakers arrive.

Or buy Rick a new smoker for Father's Day

My son did buy me a grill for Fathers day a couple years back.

You surely didn't let him grill though, did you?

No Grilling at Wid residence. Only smoking. Right Rick?

Probably had to keep an arsenal of weapons on hand also, didn't you Ed?

My buddy down in West Palm has a 16 year old and a 14 year old daughter and he's is about to go on a teenage boy killing spree, not because the girls are bad in any way ... it's because he's an old redneck from north central Florida and he just can't stand the thought. I pity their poor boyfriends.

Weapons were already there. Only spent time cleaning them when boys were around. The girls were none too impressed at my timing though.

Way back in the day I had a girlfriend's father aim and then shoot a pistol a couple of feet above my head whenever I went to pick her up once while showing me his 'new 357', ended up being a blank ... like that really mattered at the time.

Yeah, messed a perfectly good pair of underwear!

I've done that a few times.

Not much Ed. If we do grill we grill over a wood fire from the smokers fire box.

That's what I figured. You have a very nice smoker setup. I'd probably do the same.

Note to self. Make a trip down to Ill. and visit the master of the smoker. Bring Wisconsin smoked cheese for said master.

Come on down Ed.

My boy is about to turn 16 this fall. I’m not looking forward to the insurance rate hike, but know it’s coming. It doesn’t matter if they are listed as drivers or not, from what I’ve been told by my friends in similar situations. If the kid is living in my household, and gets a license, the insurance company racks my rates up. Oh well….Karma….I put my parents through hell. It’s time to pay for my sins I suppose.

So many sins, so little time.

Amen Brother

Not me

WOW. I skip a day and come back to find 3 pages! At some point we'll get him to chip in financially, but for now his AP/Honors class schedule is enough to choke a horse so good grades are payment enough. Well, sort of. On top of that we added more chores around the house and other "fun" stuff. See Baby Blues comic strip from yesterday (8/12) for a good laugh change date to 8/12 .