If you are new to driving it would be better, unless you have lots of money, to begin with a car from a lower insurance group. If you can build up and maintain a no-claims profile with no penalty points, you should be able to move up the car insurance groups without significantly increasing your premium.

The idea is that cheap car insurance for young drivers should be competitive because you are cutting out the middleman, so the insurer can pass the savings on to you. However you will have to do the leg-work though, which can take a few hours, but it will be time well spent. You should call at least three insurance companies before deciding on a policy. And remember that you can often save between 10% and 20% by going online. Most insurance companies offer cheap car insurance for first time drivers online. So if you get a telephone quote then you need to check you are not missing out on a deal which you can only get online, even from the same insurance company.

There is no shortage of websites that will let you compare car insurance policies and prices between different car insurance companies. But to get the best possible deal, then you need to spend a few minutes making certain that you are answering all of the questions correctly before you jump online.

Don’t think, however, that you can get away with only looking at comparisons on one website. Each website only compares a small handful of insurance companies. If you really and truly want to make sure that you are getting the very best deal possible on your car insurance, then you really need to bite the bullet and take the extra time to make the same comparisons on at least 3 different websites.

Another way to secure cheap car insurance for first time drivers is to pay up front for the policy. Paying by monthly instalments may appear to be the cheaper option but many insurers will charge interest on the payments (up to 25% APR) and this could effectively clear any perceived savings you made on the policy.

Also consider adding breakdown cover to the policy if offered by the insurer as this could save you a lot of money in the long run and is usually quite cost effective considering the peace of mind it delivers. You can save £50-£100 by getting your breakdown cover this way.

So, before purchasing cheap car insurance for young drivers it would be wise to view the car insurance groups that a particular car falls into. These car insurance groups classify cars in a certain level of insurance and each car is assigned a group starting from one and ending at twenty. Buying a car relative to the most affordable group would be a more sensible way to save money on insurance.

By: Paul Hockney