Saturday morning, Tyler was flat on a piece of cardboard under the CR-V changing the oil when I sat down on an upside-down bucket next to him and started reading our car policy out loud. He had nowhere to go. It's the best time to talk to him about insurance.
Our policy renewed in May, and when I went through the new declarations page, I noticed a few small lines I'd been paying for without thinking much about them. Each one is a few dollars. Together they add up, and both our vehicles are paid off now, which changes the math on some of them.
Here's what we kept and what we dropped. I'm not an agent, and what these add-ons cover varies a lot from policy to policy, so check your own before you change anything.
Roadside assistance: kept
Roadside assistance costs us $1.40 a month per vehicle, so $2.80 for both, or $33.60 a year. On our policy it covers a tow to a nearby shop, a jump start, a flat tire change, a few gallons of gas if you run out, and lockout service if you shut the keys inside. How far they'll tow and how many calls you get a year depend on the policy, so read yours.
We kept it on both. The truck is a 2015 with well over 160,000 miles, and the CR-V will be ten years old next year. A single tow from Long Branch Lake back to a shop in town would cost more than a year of this coverage, and a tow from somewhere out on a county road could cost a lot more.
Our agent mentioned that roadside help sometimes overlaps with things people already have, like a motor club membership, a credit card benefit or a new-car warranty. We don't have any of those, so there was nothing to double up on. If you do, check before you pay twice for the same tow.
Rental reimbursement: dropped
Rental reimbursement was the bigger line: $3.10 a month per vehicle, $6.20 for both, $74.40 a year. Ours paid up to $30 a day for 30 days toward a rental car while a vehicle is in the shop. The catch, which I didn't know until I read it, is that it only pays after a covered claim, like a collision or a deer. It doesn't pay a dime when a vehicle simply breaks down.
So the question was whether we could get by on one vehicle for a week or two if the other one was in the body shop. We decided yes. The pharmacy is a few minutes from the duplex. Tyler's shifts and mine overlap some days, but between driving each other, a ride from my mom now and then, and a guy from Tyler's plant who lives out our way, we'd manage. If we truly needed a rental, our emergency fund could cover a week.
The math helped too. A week of rental at $30 a day is $210. We'd have to need it about once every three years for the coverage to pay for itself, and neither of us has filed a collision claim in our lives. We dropped it on both vehicles. If we're ever down to one car, or one of our jobs moves out of town, I'd put it back.
Gap coverage: nothing left to cover
Gap coverage was the one I had to look up, because a coworker assumed we'd want it on our policy "just in case." When you finance a car, you can owe more on the loan than the car is worth, especially in the first couple of years. If the car is totaled, insurance pays what it's worth, and gap coverage pays some or all of the difference between that and what you still owe. You can get it from a lender, a dealer, or as an add-on to a car policy, where it's sometimes called loan or lease payoff coverage.
When I financed the CR-V in 2022, I had gap coverage through the loan. That made sense then, because for a while I owed more than the car was worth. The last payment went out in March of last year, and the gap coverage ended with the loan. The truck has been paid off even longer.
With two paid-off vehicles, there's no loan for gap coverage to fill. If either one were totaled, every dollar of the payout would be ours. So we don't carry it, and we won't, unless we finance a vehicle again someday. If we do, it's one of the first things I'll ask about.
Where that leaves us
Our add-ons went from $9 a month to $2.80. That's $6.20 a month, or $74.40 a year, and it goes to the house fund with everything else. It's not much. It's also the kind of money that disappears if nobody reads the declarations page.
Tyler finished the oil change about the time I finished the policy. He said, "So we kept the tow." That's the short version.
