Ask your insurer to increase your excess in exchange for lowering your premiums. An excess is the portion you’re expected to pay towards a claim in the event of an accident – so by increasing this amount, you’re effectively reducing the liability on your insurer who is then able to reduce your monthly premiums.

Going this route means you’re effectively choosing to act as your own insurer, which means you then need to save so that you’ll have the money to pay the excess should it become necessary.

Another obvious way to reduce your premiums is to ask your broker to get a number of quotes from different providers or to shop around yourself. That way you can choose the most cost-effective option for your specific needs.

If you have several different insurance policies with different insurers, it often pays to combine them into a single portfolio with one insurer who’ll usually be able to offer you a better price for a combined car, home and household contents policy.

If you’re still battling to make payments, you could consider changing your car insurance from a comprehensive policy to just third party fire & theft cover. This sort of policy will cover you if your car is stolen or damaged by fire but will NOT cover damages to your car in the event of an accident, although it will cover damages to the other vehicle involved in the accident should that be necessary.

This sort of policy is usually only suitable for people driving older cars that are out of warranty and are fully paid off. It’s also better suited to someone who’s not completely reliant on their car to earn an income.

One of the biggest causes of insurance policy cancellations is debit order defaults. This can be an administrative nightmare should you have a car accident and could even result in you losing your cover altogether. Try to make sure you always have enough money in your account to cover your insurance debit orders because securing cover after a cancellation usually means a rise in premiums.

Call Melissa on 044 382 0550 to chat about other ways of restructuring your cover to suit your budget, she’s always help.