Car insurance is one of the biggest expenditures a motorist has to fork out every year to keep driving. A single mum managed to slash the overall car of her cover by £550 annually by moving to a different and new kind of cover. Masika 26, from Slough, switched to a ‘pay per mile’ insurance policy which altered her annual expenditure significantly. After changing job she decided to review her cover as instead of driving 120-miles a week she’d be commuting by train.
This meant that she would only be using here car a limited amount for driving her son to nursery, shopping or visiting friends or family.
As a result, the single mother was driving around 10 miles a week. When she checked the renewal cost she found out she would be paying £917 each year.
“I work full time and I pay almost £800 for childcare on top of household bills of around £1,200 before food or even considering any social outings for my child and I,” Masika said.
“With the price of an annual train season ticket £3,500 and a renewal quote from my car insurance provider at the time £917, it was too much.”
She decided to switch to insurer By Miles, which operates a ‘pay as you drive’ service, who quoted her an estimated annual quote which worked out nearly £600 cheaper.
“I thought it was too good to be true, so I did some reading around to be safe and found out By Miles was regulated by the FCA. Then after an initial conversation with the By Miles team over live chat, and a phone call, I decided to go for it and get a pay-by-mile policy,” she added.
The By Miles cover sees motorists plug in a tracker into their car which then charges you by the number of miles you drive each month. Masika’s first full month statement came to just £8.24 for 121 miles.
“I was showing it off like I’d been given an award. I think that is the first bill I have been happy to pay.”
She also described how the cover has given her more flexibility and helped her and her family out.
“At the end of last month my father had some car trouble and was without a car for four days or so. Just to hire a car for those days was so expensive so I offered to put him on my insurance so that could drive it.
“It cost me 0.1p extra on my per-mile rate and for the miles he did, it came up to £40. If I’d hired a car or if I’d had mainstream insurance, he would have had to pay a lot more.”
When taking out the cover she had to pay a flat rate of £269.82 and just 6p per miles after that.
Based on these calculations and her first month’s mileage she would be expected to pay just £368.70 a year compared to the £917 she was quoted.
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