For the years I was married, we used my former roommate’s USAA insurance policy for auto and home insurance. I managed the insurance policy, but it was in her name. I thought it would be a good idea to get on my own insurance policy after being served my divorce papers and USAA was my first stop.
When I contacted USAA about setting up my policy with them, I was floored with the quote. They quoted me a policy exactly as I had before except with only my vehicle on it but the cost was double what I’d paid previously for two vehicles. I asked them why and because the prior policy had been in the ex’s name I didn’t have the length of service with them that the ex did hence the higher price. Never mind that my name was on the policy as insured and I was the one who paid it all those years. USAA only has loyalty to the person’s name that’s on the policy.
I did research and went with Progressive which was significantly cheaper. Overall, my service with Progressive was good and I used them for my renter’s insurance as well. However, sometimes I have a bad habit of scrolling through my Facebook news feed aimlessly and one day I came across an ad for an app called Jerry. I usually ignore these advertisements as someone is always promising savings and most of the time they’re full of it. However, on this day, I was feeling particularly froggy and I downloaded the app. The worst thing that could happen would be that my phone got infected with some sort of malware and I wouldn’t be able to scroll through Facebook for a bit.
The Jerry app was very easy to use. I entered my information on my cars, put my current coverages in and waited for quotes. Within about 15 minutes I received my first quote. It was almost too good to be true as it was $600 a year cheaper than my policy with Progressive! I went ahead and applied for it, talked to an agent and got all set up. The policy was with Travelers insurance so it’s not like I was stuck with some no name company. I’d had Traveler’s in the past and had a positive experience with them and was happy to go with them again for that type of savings.
I was pretty pumped up about the news and shared it with my brother. He received his quote and it was $400 a year cheaper and also with Travelers! That’s two data points and it takes three to make a trend so maybe a third person I know will try this!
The way Jerry works is that every 6 months, it looks for lower priced policies for you automatically. You may question if the coverages are the same and they are. I actually had my agent for my life insurance policy take a look at it and they couldn’t touch the price and said the coverages were the same as I had with Progressive.
I highly recommend the Jerry app if you want to save money and have the app do it for you automatically. After 6 months of service, I received a text message from Jerry regarding my policy. They recommended that if I was happy with Travelers, I should stick with them as jumping around could raise my rates. My policy did go up $50 (I have not checked as to why yet) for the next 6 months but still is $500 a year cheaper than my old policy.
I have provided a link to their website below. Give it a whirl and if it saves you money as well, please share in the comments.
Update: After 6 months, I had Jerry rerun my insurance rates as Travelers was going up since I had a new car along with my old one. After Jerry did it’s analysis, it came back with Progressive as my provider again. I know I’m not supposed to jump back and forth but if I get better rates, I plan on continuing to do this. The only downside of Progressive is they want you to use their app to track your driving. Be mindful of any abnormal trips that you might have planned during the evaluation period (on the app). They do have a pause feature that I recommend you use. I did not know about the pause and went on a rare trip with my kids that involved a lot of driving and apparently too much hard braking. My grade on the app was less than stellar afterwards.