Hello, I'm Bruce Boord from The Insurance Club of California talking to you about how much auto insurance you should have. The one word answer is enough. By that I mean everybody has their own amount of auto insurance that they need, a college student with no assets to protect and an old car that he drives, he or she drives. They might need the basic minimum 15, 30 and 10, by that I mean $15,000 bodily injury, $30,000 per occurrence and $10,000 property damage. Now if you do own your own house and you have some assets to protect you probably want to increase that coverage up to say $50,000 per person, bodily injury, $100,000 per occurrence bodily injury and $25,000 property damage liability. The reason I say that is because a lot of cars on the road today are worth or they start at about $25,000, say a newer Honda Accord might cost that much. If you're involved in an accident and you're considered at fault, you're going to have to pay for the property damage to that car. If you total that guy's Honda Accord, they might want $25,000 or more. So it makes sense to have all the insurance that you can get at the time of an accident. However, if you don't have any assets to protect, you should at least have the minimum coverage that I talked about, that 15, 30 and 10. Your typical doctors and lawyers driving around Beverly Hills, California you're going to want to have higher limits, at least $100,000 per person, $300,000 per accident bodily injury and at least $50,000 per accident property damage. All of your leasing companies are going to require you to carry those same limits, 100, 300 bodily injury and $50,000 property damage. If you have multiple houses, maybe you want higher limits than that. You can get $250,000 per person, $500,000 or a half a million bodily injury and $100,000 property damage. Then on top of that for I don't know, $200 or $300 a year you can get what's called an umbrella. An umbrella moves that coverage up from 250, 500 liability up to a million dollars coverage. Now that's what you should have if you own a few oil wells and you do have a lot of assets to protect. The bottom line is you should have enough coverage to pay for all the damages that you could possibly be held accountable for. So the more coverage you have the better it is in the even of a claim. If you have no claims at all, well maybe it's better to go with one of the lower limits, talk to your insurance agent or independent insurance professional, see what they say and what they suggest about your auto insurance needs. I'm Bruce Boord from Boord Insurance in West Lake Village, California.
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