Before you buy a cheap car, take a good look at the insurance. Do it right and you can save some money on your insurance. How much you pay for your car insurance depends on the type of car and the owner but what many people don’t know is that there are quite a few cheap cars to insure which can work in their advantage.

For example, if you have a history of car accidents or you have run afoul of the traffic law before, then your track record will not be in your favour.

Insurance companies weigh in these factors when pricing the car insurance fee:

1. Model – The model of your car is a factor that the insurance companies consider. The reason is that some popular models are most often stolen than other models. These include Toyota and Honda. The models with cheaper insurance are: Volkswagen Polo, Ford Fiesta, Fiats, and Renaults.
2. Repair cost – The higher the repair cost, the higher the insurance fee. High end cars and vintage cars are generally more expensive because of specialised technical skill required to fix the car or that the spare parts are hard to obtain.
3. History of your car – These factors play a part in the insurance fee: where you live, where you park your car and the and the mileage that you drive per year. If you live in a crime-infested area, chances of losing of your car is high. The more mileage you clock in, the more likely it is to break down due to wear and tear.
4. Safety features – The safer the car, the lower the insurance fee. A car is deemed to be safe if it is equipped with safety features such as seat belts, airbags and anti-lock braking system.
5. Resale value of the car – Generally, the more expensive the car, the higher the insurance fee. They also look at the value of the car if it were to be sold to someone else afterwards.
6. Security features – You can lower the insurance fee by installing an alarm system to protect it against loss from theft.
7. Characteristics – Insurance companies categories cars into different groups based on the characteristics of the cars . The group that pay the least insurance fee are those that are smaller and easier to drive such as four-door sedans, while high-performance cars belong to the more expensive group.

Before you buy a cheap car, consider the above eight factors which will affect the cost of your car insurance.

Each item on an NHS prescription costs £7.40 irrespective of their actual prices. This means that if you were to get something which costs £10, you would only pay £7.40 if it was on a prescription but the same applies if the medicine you were after costs less.

After a visit to my GP, I was prescribed an anti fungal shampoo called Nizoral and the GP said that it is available off the shelf and it would be better if I get it over the counter than her putting it on an NHS prescription. However when I went to boots, I had to pay £9.60 for the Nizoral shampoo and because I had already asked the guy to bring it over and already tendered my money, I thought it had to be same price everywhere and the GP was obviously mistaken. I was not very happy about it and decided to enquire about it later.

Onc e home, I thought I had 2 options; one was to go back to the GP and asked her to put the shampoo on a prescription and the other was to return the item to Boots and get it somewhere else cheaper. I saw that other supermarkets were selling it for £6.80 and obviously Boots was ripping me off. The problem was that on the day that I purchased the shampoo from Boots, their payment system was down and I had to pay cash and didn’t ask for any receipt because it would have taken much longer, waiting for their system to get up and running again. So I couldn’t just go back and ask for a refund without any receipts and decided to just count my losses but learn from my mistakes.

To sell this item £3 more than other places is a rip off to me because it’s nearly 33% more than what it should be. I think Boots knows that some medicines which are available over the counter will not be put on NHS prescriptions by GPs and they put up their prices to make a profit on innocent people because not many people will go back to their doctor and ask them for a new prescription or will go other places to check prices for convenience purposes and to get their medication faster.

Many teenagers will try to get their driving licence as soon as possible so that they can buy their own car and have their own mode of transport. In the UK, you are allowed to drive at the age of seventeen and although many parents will either buy a car for their children or help them with the finance aspect of it, the problem that most teenagers will face is the fact that car insurance for 17 year old drivers is extortionate and soon becomes a major hurdle and a spirit killer.

Of course once you’ve passed your driving test, you are very keen to start driving on your own but you may only do so legally if you have proper car insurance cover in place. The thought of driving uninsured will cross the mind of many young drivers and there are valid reasons for this. First of all, you’ve just turned 17 and you don’t want to spend a fortune on your first car. So you get a vehicle that’s pretty cheap, say for less than £1500. Now when you start hunting for a decent 17 year old car insurance quote, you find the prices ridiculous expensive especially for that particular car make/model that you’ve purchased and you think to yourself that this can’t be right because it’s a used car after all, not a new one. But when you keep searching, you discover that no insurer is willing to offer you a decent car insurance quote and the cheapest that you’re getting is £4000 which is well over twice the amount of money you’ve paid for your car.

It is then that reality strikes and the hope of driving your own car starts to vanish. No wait, don’t just give up yet. Surely there must be a way to get a 17 year old driver insured at a rather decent premium, no? Well things are tough in the insurance sector and especially with so many people driving without a licence, the insurers have had to increase quotes a lot for all drivers and you being a new driver with no NCD (no claims discount), your chances are already limited.

So what can you do? Put it this way, you’re a young driver, 17 of age, and just like it’s difficult for a job seeker without experience to get a decent job, you will find it hard as well to get a reasonable car insurance quote, no matter what car make/model  you’re trying to insure. The best thing for you to do is build up your driving experience and no claims bonus so that in 1 or 2 years’ time, you pay a fraction of what you’ll be paying now.