As an insurance expert, I know teen drivers are the most expensive group to insure, and teen males are the most costly of all. As the mother of two teen boys who turned 16 one after the other, I went into insuring them as new drivers without any illusions about how expensive it would be.
Fortunately, I also understand how an insurance policy works and what can be done to keep teen car insurance affordable.
Beyond shopping around and finding discounts, digging into your policy and making small tweaks, choosing the right car for your kids and staying on top of driving habits can save you a lot of money.
Here are my three top tips for parents of teen drivers.
Buy your teen a car
Yes, I said you should buy your teen driver a car. Now, that doesn’t apply to everyone, but if you have one or two newer vehicles at home for which you and your spouse are the rated drivers (or if you are a single parent with one vehicle), you don’t want your teen driver rated (they’re the one determining the cost of insurance) on a new vehicle.
The newer and more valuable the car is, the more expensive it will be to insure. And if the car is financed, you have no choice but to carry full coverage, making it even more expensive.
Instead of putting that money into higher insurance rates, buy a safe and reliable but cheap car for your teens. Pick a car you don’t need to carry full coverage on, which will significantly drop your rates. Then rate your teen on that car.
Your teen can still drive any car in the household and be covered, but their inexperience affects the car on which they are rated as the primary driver.
Here’s an example using vehicles I own.
I drive a 2024 Mazda CX-50. If my teen driver had been rated on that car, my insurance would have increased by more than $1,000 every six months because it’s a newer car, and I carry full coverage.
We bought our son a 2008 Acura TSX, which we insure on a liability-only policy. We paid just under $6,000 for the car, and our insurance increased by less than $150 every six months. Over a few years, we’ll have saved the purchase price of the vehicle, his insurance will go down, and, if all goes well, he’ll wind up with a car instead of thousands paid to the insurance company.
Yes, we take the risk of having to repair or replace the car out of pocket since we don’t carry full coverage. We weighed the risk and decided it was worth it. And when our second teen got his license, we added him to that car too, keeping our rates reasonable.
Go over every detail on the policy
When you buy insurance, the insurer makes some assumptions based on averages. That includes how you use the car and how many miles you drive annually. It may also automatically add coverages like rental reimbursement and roadside assistance.
Go through each coverage and each rating factor to ensure everything is accurate. Your teen likely drives less than the average, which is usually estimated at between 12,000 and 15,000 miles a year. Your teen doesn’t commute to work every day. Change these to reflect pleasure or personal use and reduce the annual mileage.
Do you have extra cars at home or access to alternate transportation for your teen if the car is damaged? You can drop rental reimbursement coverage. Are you a member of AAA? You can drop roadside assistance.
Check all of the discounts and ensure you’re getting the right ones. Check that the date your child was licensed is correct.
And finally, ensure your teen is rated on the right car, as the insurer may do that automatically, too.
With most insurance companies, you can do this online or in the mobile app.
Lean in on driver training and safety
The advent of graduated licensing programs has dramatically reduced the incidence of teen car crashes; teens who take on the responsibility of driving gradually are safer drivers.
A big part of those programs, which exist in every state, is keeping new drivers off the road at night and limiting their ability to drive with other teens in the car – a major factor in distracted driving.
Beyond keeping your teen safe on the road, these practices and the required driver training will also lower your insurance rates.
A teen driver with tickets or accidents on their record will pay astronomical rates. The average increase in insurance rates after a single speeding ticket is 36%. That’s a massive increase for a teen driver already paying high rates.
So, it’s not just about getting a lower rate right off the bat but also about keeping that rate from going up by investing in driver training and safe driving habits.
Each state requires a certain number of supervised hours behind the wheel for a teen to get a license. Consider that a minimum. We still had our teens drive whenever we went anywhere together for some time after licensing to continue their learning.
Take advantage of every minute you are in the car with your teen, even when they have completed the requirements. Have them drive under your supervision in various weather conditions. Be strict about the rules at each stage of licensing.
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Ride out the high rates: It gets better
Even with everything you can do to get cheaper car insurance, teens are just plain expensive to insure. It will get better. We saw our highest rates with a 17- and 16-year-old on our insurance at the same time. But a year later, it went down.
At 18, my oldest now has a full license with a clean record, and his rates have dropped. At 17, my second son also has a clean record. Staying on top of safe driving has kept our rates from skyrocketing and instead sent them in the opposite direction.
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