Conversely, if you do decided to change insurers a proof of prior insurance discount may apply. Most insurers request at least 6 months of consecutive insurance from previous insurer. If you are a full-time student who meets certain grade requirements and are unmarried and usually under 25 years of age (some states age is 21) you could be eligible for a good student discount. If you own a home, including condominium, town home, or mobile home, which is used as a principal residence, a discount could apply. Military personnel either currently active or retired from any branch of US military a discount could apply. If your vehicle is equipped with an anti-theft device, a discount could apply.

You could lower cost of your car insurance in other ways as well.

For people who own older cars, it may not be necessary or cost-effective to protect them with collision and comprehensive coverage. By comparing book value of your vehicle and premium that insurer has offered, you may find that it cost as much for insurance as it does for vehicle. If car is worth less than $2,000, you will probably spend more insuring it than it is worth. The whole idea of driving an older car is to save money, so why not get what is coming to you.

In addition, keep in mind that type of vehicle you buy could greatly affect your premium. A flashy red sports car is usually going to cost more to insure than a mid sized sedan. This is also true of vehicles that are on list of most stolen. There are many ways that policyholders can save on their insurance. Knowing more about auto policies and premiums can help consumers take advantage of less obvious discounts while ensuring that they have appropriate protection for their vehicles. The last way to save is to assume more risk. If you chose higher deductible on your Personal Injury Protection or Comprehensive and collision coverage will lower your premium as well. The deductible is amount of money you have to pay before your insurance company begins paying rest.

Understanding how discounts affect your car insurance rates is important to save you money.

Step 5 is one of most important risk management tools available to investor in real estate. Each property has typically an inherent rate at which it can be rented, even if that is not your intent. By looking at rental rates, relative to amount of principle, interest, taxes, and insurance (PITI) that you will have to pay, then you can understand amount of cashflow that may be required to support property. If your objective is to produce cashflow, then you need to be cashflow positive very quickly. If your objective is capital gains and cashflow is negative, then you now understand what you may have to support on a monthly basis if things don’t work out.

Deferred maintenance then becomes our Step 6. For an existing property, how much maintenance has previous owner neglected that you will need to catch up? Be careful here since this can be one of major places to get nasty surprises.

And now I saved best for last: Step 7 is to determine your own personal risk tolerance. Some new investors look at a deal and only see positive. This is a huge mistake. EVERY REAL INVESTOR I KNOW HAS LOST MONEY IN A DEAL but they gladly will do more. Why? They understand their risk’s going in, they understand how to limit their downside, and gains are much larger than risks they are taking. If you were standing beside them and saw what they saw, you would gladly take risk as well and rapidly ignore any small losses that you experience.

Hopefully this has given you a good start at learning how to analyze a potential opportunity. Obviously each of these steps requires additional work or training but they are what separate new investor from seasoned, battle tested veterans.