Kiwis taking stock of finances and budgeting is one of the ripple effects of the rising cost of living. While many of us are feeling the pinch financially, forking out large sums of money for insurance premiums will be a headache for most households.
However, by shopping around for a better insurance deal, Kiwis could be saving some dollars, according to a consumer watchdog.
Consumer NZ's Rebecca Styles told Seven Sharp that going online is a great place to start looking for a good deal.
"It's easy to shop around — it takes a bit of time," she said. "It's a few hours of your life you won't get back, but it's easy enough to go online and get quotes on a website."
Styles' advice is to broaden the search when it comes to choosing an insurance provider.
"Select a few different companies, check out different prices, put in your details and you'll soon get a good comparison of the different prices across insurers," she added.
Changing the excess on your insurance could also help.
"Just raising it [excess] by just a bit can reduce your premiums. It can help with those monthly and annual insurance payments," Styles said.
"Make sure that when you do increase it you can afford to pay that excess if the worst should happen — make sure it's still affordable for you."
Styles also warned people to be wary of add-on insurance products.
"We find add-ons mainly sold with car finance," she said. "We've assessed these add-ons like mechanical breakdown insurance, and payment protection insurance, and found that they don't provide very good value for consumers — we wouldn't recommend people buy them."
She suggested buying a good car insurance policy instead.
"When you buy a car and you've been sold a dud, you can go back to the dealer and you're protected by the Consumer Guarantees Act," she said. "You don't really need those add-on insurance products."
Choosing one insurance provider could also help bring down the cost of premiums.
"If you've got a house, car, and contents insurance with different providers, if you can combine them you might be able to get a multi-policy discount with one insurer," Styles said.
"There are things like installing alarms and security cameras that can bring down the price, but obviously that's a bit of an outlay.
"Just assessing what your insurance needs are can help you save some money in the long run."
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