How I Cut My Auto Insurance Premiums by 21% in Two Minutes

I know it sounds like one of those “one weird trick doctors hate” ads, but I slashed my car insurance premium in less time than a World Cup hydration break. All I had to do was bump up my deductible.I was pleasantly surprised by how quick and easy it was for me to save some money. So, being an insurance Nerd, my obvious next step was to analyze more than 400 million insurance rates to see who else might save, and how.I found a lot of potential savings for home and auto insurance. Your mileage (sorry, couldn’t help myself) might vary, of course. But if you’re feeling the squeeze from rising insurance rates, it might be worth a couple of minutes to see what you could save.See what you could save on car insuranceEasily compare personalized rates to see how much switching car insurance could save you.Insurance got expensiveAuto insurance rates are up about 30% in the past three years, on average, according to urban consumer inflation data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Homeowners and renters insurance is up about 14% over the same period. It’s probably not a surprise, then, that nearly half of Americans with auto insurance (49%) and Americans with homeowners insurance (46%) are stressed about the cost of their insurance premiums. That’s according to an April 2026 NerdWallet survey conducted by The Harris Poll.But even if your premiums are rising, you’re the one who gets to pick your deductibles. Picking a higher deductible can be an effective way to push back against stressful rate increases — as long as you’re aware of some drawbacks.My 'one weird trick'To be honest, my auto insurance premiums were already cheap: about $82 per month for full coverage for me and my wife.But after I bumped our deductibles from $1,000 to $2,000 on my insurance company’s website, our rate fell to about $65 per month. The hardest part was remembering my password.Making the change saved me about $17 per month, which would be a little over $200 for a year. Not life-changing, but not bad for 120 seconds of effort.But here’s the thing: I’m one of the worst candidates to save money this way. My rates were already low. If your premiums are pricier, you might be able to save a lot more.How much could you save?I took a look at insurance premiums broken down by state, carrier, credit score, claims history and more. At a high level, I found that moving your comprehensive and collision deductibles from $1,000 to $2,000 can help you save about 13.5% on premiums, on average. For homeowners insurance, bumping your deductible from $1,000 to $2,500 can cut your premiums by an average of about 10.6%.And you can find savings from pretty much any starting point. Here are the auto insurance averages from my analysis:From $250 to $500 deductibles: 10.4% savings.From $500 to $1,000 deductibles: 12.8% savings.From $1,000 to $2,000 deductibles: 13.5% savings.From $2,000 to $2,500 deductibles: 6.1% savings.But percentage points aren’t the whole story — the actual dollar amounts can vary quite a lot. And those differences might determine whether bumping up your deductibles is a good strategy for you.Who can save the most?In short, the higher your premiums, the more you might save. You’d get more out of cutting 10% from premiums of $800 per month than $200 per month, for example.My own experience with my auto insurance helps illustrate this. I saved more than 20% by moving from $1,000 deductibles to $2,000 for collision and comprehensive coverage. That’s a higher percentage than average, according to my analysis — but it’s only about $17 per month in actual dollars.My auto insurance premiums are cheap because I have a lot of factors working in my favor. I live in a small, safe city. I have an unexciting car and good credit. Because I work from home, I drive less than many people, and I have a clean driving record.If I were riskier to insure, I’d have higher premiums, and I could save a lot more by changing my deductibles.For example, I analyzed rates for a 35-year-old male driver with poor credit and an accident on his driving record. With $1,000 collision and comprehensive deductibles, he’d pay about $587 per month, on average.With $2,000 deductibles, he’d pay an average of $506 per month — about $81 per month less. That’s a lot more than my $17 per month, and it might make a real difference in your monthly budget.What’s the catch?Changing your deductibles can reduce your insurance premiums, but it’s not free money. If you need to file a claim, the higher deductible could cost you.Consider your current insurance coverage and your financial situation. If your current deductible is $500, what would it do to your budget if you needed to pay it tomorrow? Would it be significantly more of a hardship to pay $1,000 or $2,000?Insurance is there to help cover significant, unexpected expenses. But if you can’t afford the deductible, that kind of defeats the point. So while raising your deductible can offer cheaper premiums, you need to be careful not to put yourself in a bad financial spot.How to protect yourselfDon’t just raise your deductible and hope you won't need to file a claim.You could be on the hook to pay that higher deductible if you need to file an insurance claim. It's not likely — but it's not all that unlikely, either. About 4.2% of people with collision coverage filed an auto insurance claim in 2024, according to the Insurance Information Institute. It was about the same — 4% — among people with comprehensive coverage.If you raise your deductibles to get lower premiums, it could be a good idea to use what you save to cover the higher deductible, if needed. Calculating the “break-even” time isn’t a bad way to judge whether raising your deductible is worth it.Looking back at our 35-year-old driver’s example, he could save $81 per month by bumping his auto insurance deductibles from $1,000 to $2,000. If he put that $81 aside every month, it could pay for the difference in deductibles (plus a smidge) after 13 months.In my case, I’m saving $17 per month. It will take 59 months, or just under five years, for that savings to cover the $1,000 difference in deductibles. That’s not phenomenal. But I have enough in savings to cover the higher deductible in the meantime, so I’ll take my chances.Your finances and tolerance for risk can help define a good break-even time for you. You can calculate average break-even times where you live using our tools for auto, home, condo and renters insurance deductibles.What about homeowners insurance?The same trick can work for your home or condo, too. My analysis shows an average premium savings of about 10.6% when you move from a $1,000 to a $2,500 deductible for home insurance. For condo insurance, it’s about 11.8%. (But because condo insurance is cheaper, you’d save considerably less in actual dollars.)And as with auto insurance, raising your deductible is risky. Remember, you might have to pay that higher number! So you’ll need to judge whether the lower premiums are worth the risk for you.Let’s say you’re insuring a home built in the 1980s, with not-so-great credit and a prior insurance claim on your record. For $500,000 in dwelling coverage and a $1,000 deductible, my analysis shows a national average premium of about $622 per month.Moving up to a $2,500 deductible, that homeowner could save about $61 per month. They could save the $1,500 deductible difference and break even in about two years.The case for condo insurance isn’t quite as good. Take an example with relatively high condo insurance premiums because of poor credit and a history of filing a claim. For $300,000 in liability coverage and $100,000 in personal property coverage, average premiums are about $133 per month with a $1,000 deductible. Moving to a $2,500 deductible drops the monthly premiums to about $115.Saving $18 per month for condo insurance isn’t nothing. But you’d have to save it up for 84 months, or seven years, to cover the $1,500 higher deductible. That’s a pretty long time.And what about renters insurance? It usually has lower deductibles than home or condo insurance, so I took a look at the difference between $500 and $1,000. Moving from a $500 renters deductible to $1,000 cuts premiums by about 9.3%, on average. But because renters insurance premiums are low, that’s only about $3.45 per month. It’s hard to get excited about that difference.How to control your insurance costsShopping around and comparing insurance quotes to find a good deal is always a good move.If you want to save on auto insurance, you can also look for discounts and consider vehicles that are cheaper to insure. You should shop around for home insurance, too, and consider bundling your home and auto coverage.But when it comes to speedy options, it’s hard to beat deductibles. So next time you’re waiting for the skip button to show up on a sketchy “one weird trick” ad, take a minute to see what you might save.MethodologyNerdWallet analyzed more than 1 billion auto, homeowners, condo and renters insurance rates from Quadrant Information Services — an insurance rating and analytics platform — to find out how much people can save by raising their policy deductibles. Auto insuranceOur primary auto insurance rate analysis is based on a 35-year-old single driver of a 2023 Toyota Camry with good credit, no recent at-fault accidents or driving violations, and a full coverage policy across five comprehensive and collision deductible levels: $250, $500, $1,000, $2,000 and $2,500. By holding every other policy variable steady, we measured what a driver can save by changing nothing but their deductible.To test whether the savings hold up for different drivers, we ran the same comparison across other groups, including by age (20, 35 and 70), credit (good, fair and poor) and driving record (clean record, an at-fault accident, a speeding ticket and a DUI).For every group and deductible level, we calculated the national median rate and the percentage difference between deductible levels to find the average savings.Homeowners insuranceOur home insurance rate analysis is based on a single-family home with replacement cost dwelling coverage. We compared median rates across two deductible levels — $1,000 and $2,500 — for newer and older homes, homes with and without a recent claim, and homeowners with good and poor credit. Condo insuranceSimilar to home, our condo insurance rate analysis compared median premiums at a $1,000 and a $2,500 deductible. Our primary analysis is based on a condo policy with $100,000 in personal property coverage and $300,000 in liability coverage — again comparing owners with good and poor credit and with and without a recent claim.Renters insuranceBecause renters deductibles tend to run lower, we compared a $500 and a $1,000 deductible for a renter with $30,000 in personal property and $100,000 in liability coverage.A few notes on the numbersWhere the article names a specific dollar example — the 35-year-old driver with poor credit and an accident, or the 1980s home with a claims history — that example uses the higher-risk profile described in the text, which is why its premiums run higher than the base averages.To ensure a handful of extremely low or high premiums wouldn't distort the results, we removed clear outliers before running this analysis. These are sample rates intended for comparison only. Your own rate depends on your location, your vehicle or home, your coverage choices, credit score, claims history and more. What you actually pay will differ from the figures cited in this article.Article sourcesArticle sourcesNerdWallet writers are subject matter authorities who use primary, trustworthy sources to inform their work, including peer-reviewed studies, government websites, academic research and interviews with industry experts. All content is fact-checked for accuracy, timeliness and relevance. You can learn more about NerdWallet's high standards for journalism by reading our editorial guidelines.1.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Motor vehicle insurance. Accessed Jul 29, 2026.2.U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Tenants' and household insurance. Accessed Jul 29, 2026.