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My mother called me and told me that she had been calling around and had found out that there were some great deals right now on car insurance. She said that after only about 20 minutes online she found several insurance policies that were much less than what she was paying. She also told me that the only reason she started researching this at all was that she heard something on the local news that said that auto insurance rates were falling, but she still felt that her car insurance rate was kind of high, so she decided to look into it, and boy the news was right. She wound up saving about $1000 per year on her car insurance, which is a significant savings to say the least. She said she couldn't believe all the really low insurance quotes that she had found, and wondered why her insurance company had not dropped her rates at all, even though prices across the board were going down. I told her that they usually only reassess your insurance rates when you switch companies and that is why it is a good idea to shop around for insurance every few months to make sure that you are getting the best deals that are available to you. Also, a change in status like single to married, a driving class, the dropping of a ticket, or even an improvement in your credit score can help drop your insurance rate, but your insurance company won't even look at it until your policy expires. It is a good idea, with economic times being tough to take advantage of all the different competitors in the different markets, and don't just assume that the company that was giving you the best rate or deal before is still the one giving you the best deals today. That just may not be the case, because some companies will get greedy and try to take advantage of the little guy and our expectations that things are getting increasingly more expensive, when the truth is that in some markets the cost of things are actually going down, like the insurance industry, for instance.