I was catching up on filing today when I noticed our RV policy premium with Progressive had increased – not a lot, but an increase. It started me thinking about insuring depreciating assets.
I called Progressive and asked what the insured value of our RV was. The number they were using was our purchase price from December 2019. They do not increase or decrease that value when they renew the policy (which means there may be a large variance between that number and your actual cash value less depreciation that would be paid in case of total loss). They agreed to reduce our insured value by about $12,000 to the current NADA value. It reduced our premiums by more than $50 a month (or $600 per year)!
It’s really easy to get the current value of your RV by using this J.D. Power site.
I wondered if others might be overlooking this issue.
Later and still thinking about it, I called back and asked about values for our truck. I learned autos and trucks have a different rating platform. It takes into account purchase price, but also many other issues such as number of drivers, age of drivers, driving history, zip code, credit scores, parts availability and pricing, etc. So, no discount on our auto policy. Nice try!