Cheap car insurance rates by state–where does your state rate?

Posted by austin Published in Auto Insurance

Reader question:

Considering that the cost of living changes depending on where you go, how does that work out with car insurance rates?

Luke

They change, Luke, but it’s different.

When looking at the average car insurance premium by state, it doesn’t look like it follows the same trends as cost of living. It might be more expensive to live in the state of California, but in standards of insurance, California is only middling–not good, but not half bad, either.

Even though averages can be made out state by state, there is still a high amount of variation within each individual state, depending on where you live. You might live in the country, but once you move to the suburbs your insurance rates are going to skyrocket, even if you haven’t left your native state.

The average household in the United States pays out just under $2,500 a year for car insurance, which is a 6.6% increase from last year. That comes from information from over 1000 insurance quotes from the past year.

Where you live has a lot to with how much you pay. Louisiana got it worst, perhaps because of the hurricanes with an almost 22% increase in premiums, the highest of all the states. Coming in close after with high increases are South Carolina, Arkansas, and Nevada. On the other hand, the states with highest decrease percentage are topped off by New Hampshire (-13.9%), followed close behind by North Carolina and Rhode Island.

The state where you’ll be paying the most for insurance is New York, which is the only state with an average per household premium of above the $3,000 mark. The state with the lowest average is Maine.

The averages, however, are rapidly changing, so when considering which state has the highest look at a state’s increase rate, because that is a better indication of how fast it may surpass its fellows in the years to come.