Who are we kidding? Nobody really wants to buy car insurance. It's like raising a child: socially responsible but invariably complicated, costly, and boring. There's even a chance that your "premiums" (the insurance industry's way of saying "exorbitant yearly fee you pay us for the privilege of being completely at our mercy") will exceed the value of the clunker you're looking to insure. After hearing all those negatives, you may be thinking that you don't want to get car insurance after all. So, just for you, we've compiled a list of ways to avoid it altogether:

  • Don't own a car. Or drive one. Ever.

  • Borrow a friend's insured car. Then appear on Judge Judy to settle the score after you wreck it.

  • Work for an insurance company in some department that doesn't deal with car insurance. Befriend somebody in the car insurance department using lascivious methods.

  • Consider a change of lifestyle. The Amish do not need car insurance, nor do prison inmates, Eskimos, or contestants on Survivor!.

If these options don't seem particularly appealing, then you'd better read on. Soon you'll be informed enough to understand why your insurance agent looks away and giggles every time you mention your deductible.

1. FIND OUT WHY YOU NEED IT

Car insurance? That's for wusses! Maybe so, but there are many good reasons to be a proud car-insurance-owning wuss:

  1. It's the law. Almost every state government requires that car owners have car insurance. The fascists. And even the states that don't require it by law insist that you provide evidence that you have the financial resources to pay a judgment against you if you should injure another person. So getting insurance is a good idea, even if you consider yourself a perfect driver.

  2. Car insurance protects unlucky people that are the victims of accidents. Surprisingly, car insurance is guided by sound principles: if you put your car through someone's fence, your insurance pays to fix the fence and your car; if you hurt someone with your car, your insurance pays for the injured person's medical bills. And the same holds in reverse if someone puts their car through your fence, car, or part of your body. Now imagine that you got hit by a car, and the driver didn't have insurance… you'd have to pay for the medical bills out of your own pocket, even though it was completely somebody else's fault! So requiring people to have car insurance protects innocent people with bad luck. (We all agree that getting smooshed by a car is bad luck, right?)

  3. Insurance companies can handle huge bills. Insurance companies work by charging customers periodic fees and then footing the big bills if any huge catastrophes arise. These big bills come from one group of people: lawyers. When someone gets in an accident, he immediately hires a lawyer who demands that his client receive compensation for "pain and suffering." So a car accident can potentially cost hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of dollars. Who has that kind of cash sitting around? If you have insurance, the company will pay. Then how do insurance companies make money? Because for every 1000 people that pay monthly fees, only a few will need huge amounts of money. The premiums that customers pay every month more than make up for the rare big bill.