Insurance costs have been rising at the general rate of inflation, but due to a combination of reasons that range from litigation to global warming, the costs of insurance now are rising quickly. Luckily, there are a few ways you can use your smartphone and tablet to save you buckets of money on your insurance premiums. Here are three of our favorite apps and sites.
1. Yelp
Yelp is a great resource for reviewing every type of business, but people are especially willing to leave positive and negative reviews for services that are commonly stressful and complicated. Insurance agencies and individual agents certainly qualify for this category, as there are many amateurs selling sub-par products in the marketplace.
Using a site such as Yelp can help you make sure that the person and company giving you advice (and likely asking for your money) are legitimately trustworthy. You’ll still want to compare every estimate online (see below), but if you see on Yelp that an insurance agent or company has hundreds of terrible reviews, don’t even waste your time and money meeting with them.
2. YouTube
How can a video app possibly help with insurance? Well, this is a “tip of the iceberg” kind of solution. Because we are accustomed to watching television and video so often, we’re also highly receptive to receiving our education in a visual and audio manner.
There are tons of videos that explain the difference between whole life and term life insurance, for example. That level of knowledge (in as little as two or three minutes of tutorials) can empower you with information that can save you stress and money when you finally make the decision to buy the life insurance you need.
3. LastPass
LastPass is a great app because it stores not only your passwords, but it also offers a cloud-based directory of sites that you want to save for future reference. When it comes to insurance, this is incredibly handy. If you want to compare the market for life insurance, for example, you could access the app to find a comparison site that was recommended by your friends (or the site you’ve used in the past).
Since life insurance is something you only shop for on rare occasions, it can be difficult to remember those awesome niche-specific comparison sites. But you can give your brain a break on finding that info, when you have LastPass.
