2022 Percentage Increases
- Jan: 1.09 Percent
- Feb: 1.79 Percent
- Mar: 0.83 Percent
- Apr: 0.54 Percent
- May: 0.36 Percent
- Jun: 1.60 Percent
- Jul: 0.94 Percent
- Aug: 0.98 Percent
CPI Car Insurance Percent Change From Year Ago
Over the past year, the cost of car insurance is up 8.72 percent and rising fast.
CPI Car Insurance Index Detail
CPI Car Insurance Index Since 2012
Between 2018 and 2020 the growth in car insurance rates leveled off. From the end of the pandemic, and especially starting in 2022 (lead chart) cost of insurance is on a tear with no end in sight.
What’s Going On?
Crime comes to mind.
The New York Time reports ‘I Honestly Believe It’s a Game’: Why Carjacking Is on the Rise Among Teens
“I honestly believe it’s a game,” Mr. Majeed said. Stolen cars used to be stripped down, with the parts sold for cash, he said. Now people are carjacked, and the cars are often found afterward, crashed or just left on the street. “It’s a game.”
In the strange math of the past two pandemic years, as different kinds of crime have spiked and plummeted, carjacking has made an alarming resurgence. The number of reported incidents nearly quadrupled in Philadelphia from 2019 to 2021 and is on track to double this year; Chicago had more than 1,900 carjackings last year, the highest number in decades. Two months into 2022 the number of armed carjackings in New Orleans was already at two-thirds the whole year’s tally in 2019. Washington, D.C., where 426 carjackings were reported last year, is not an exception.
But none of this fully explains what officials say is the most troubling part of the trend: the ages of so many who have been arrested. Fourteen-year-olds, 12-year-olds, even 11-year-olds have been charged with armed carjacking or in some cases murder.
“It has been interesting over the course of my career to watch the mix of crime shift without seeming explanation,” Professor Ferrer said. “A number of these are crimes of opportunity, folks looking for that kind of low-hanging fruit.”
What is clear, he said, is that the long-term impact of the solitary and traumatic pandemic years on the development of adolescents cannot be overstated. Though schools are back to in-person learning and recreation centers are reopening, that impact — and the rise in carjackings — has not simply gone away.
Any End in Sight?
Not that I can see.
Auto insurance is similar rent. Primarily it goes up once a year or possibly every six months. Then it jumps in a single big adjustment that the BLS slices and dices into 12 buckets.
For August, the BLS says car insurance is 2.4 percent of the CPI. At the pace it’s rising it adds a tiny bit to the overall index every month.
Insurance an inelastic item. Unless you are willing to give up your car, there is nothing you (or the Fed) can do to influence this cost.
Stocks Hammered as CPI Rises a Mere 0.1 Percent More Than Expected
On September 13, I noted Stocks Hammered as CPI Rises a Mere 0.1 Percent More Than Expected
The CPI rose 0.1 percent in August and that was 0.1 percent more than economists expected.
See the above link for details.
This post originated at MishTalk.Com
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Mish
You can probably add to the mix. Ins companies gave discounts during pandemic. ( Least mine did) Maybe since rates are are based on miles driven work from home might be throwing higher rates on the drivers
of crime shift without seeming explanation,” Professor Ferrer said.
I had an ugly bike for grocery runs, and a huge lock. Everywhere else I went had a bike room.Bike theft has been rampant everywhere, for as long as I can remember. One learns to take precautions.
1. Personally you CAN do something about car insurance rates and they are highly elastic for the individual. Get a used car and your rates plummet. I pay 900 a month or so for 4 cars and two drivers. That’s it. Credit score of over 830 for both of us, no tickets and used cars.
2. How much of car insurance rates shooting up is due to people’s credit scores falling? Credit scores are a not-insignificant factor in rates, and it could be that it’s not so much insurance rates shooting up as it is the value of the car increasing and credit scores going down.
Of course, if you switch to a used car and sell your new car someone else will pay for insurance on that new car so averages won’t come down, but personally, you can absolutely lower your insurance rate and those rates are highly elastic.
All 4 of my cars are 10 years old or older. My truck is 27 years old. Still works fine, with occasional problems starting in high humidity.
And yes, I”m in semi-rural NC.
link to marypatcampbell.substack.com
I cannot fathom paying 50k for a car or truck. I could buy 12 new to me cars\trucks for the same price. I’m not poor either and have 40k in extra cash flow every year that I pour into dividend paying stocks and rental properties. I can afford a new car easily, just prefer to spend my cash on investments, not shiny new things.
And yes, I’m doing much of my own maintenance, which isn’t much lately. Not all cars have appreciated. Mini vans, much hated, have not appreciated all that much and with 3 kids to haul around, that’s my daily driver. I have two of them, one for me, one for my wife. If one breaks, we have a spare! woohoo!
Car prices have skyrocketed, but so has my determination to drive older cars. I can fix pretty much any older car. Newer ones? Nope. Too many electronic parts that aren’t necessary to the operation of the vehicle.
Cuba, strangely enough, has demonstrated what a person can do who is determined to keep a car operational. Those cars in Cuba are ancient but still work well because they aren’t a throw away society. Not a fan of Cuba, but I am a fan of their cars!
And you don’t need struts. I’ve had a bouncy car for years! haha.