Have you ever seen a grown man cry? It is not a pretty sight, but it is one that has been witnessed by innumerable wives over the last 12 months, as their husbands have opened the letter containing their car insurance renewal offer, and they have realised that since they have no more chance of paying such hysterically adsurd sum, they may well have to give up the thing they love most in the world; their cars. Petrol at the price of liquid gold, servicing costs that an Arab sheik would wince at, depreciation at a faster rate than the national debt, all these things we have taken in our stride but a 40% increase in last year's eye watering premium for many people is the last straw. The car will have to go; there is nothing else for it and misery will rein internally.

There is another option of course, and that is to pay for it monthly (see here for details). Like a mortgage payment (and probably not very much less than that mortgage payment) insurance can now be spread over 12 'easy' payments, courtesy of our benefactors, the kindly insurance companies. Well perhaps their generosity is not all that it seems; the fact is they want our business, because if they don't get it some other competitor will do so and that will mean less bonus at the end of the year for the managing directors. And it is not as if they give it a is for nothing either; invariably there will be a bill to pay in the form of interest, or charges, or whatever they wish to call their extra profits.

Buying no deposit car insurance is like buying every other form of car insurance; you either have to be prepared to spend a couple of days get hold of quotations, spent 10 min getting them via a dedicated price comparison site. Find a good one, and you will be able to compare not only the premiums, not only the different benefits you will get in the event of a claim (always assuming of course that the insurance company will not find some get out clause in the contract), but also exactly what it will cost you if you pay monthly. This sum varies quite considerably from one company to another, and it can even vary from one day to another, depending upon just how much is in the advertising budget at that particular time.

Check here for car insurance with zero deposit

There is of course the third option of driving without any insurance cover at all. This would mean that you would not be able to tax your car, so all your neighbours would realise, when they saw the missing tax disk, that you are obviously a person of no substance; so that would not do at all. Neither would you really appreciate the man from the DVLA knocking on your door to ask for a £100 fine that you have been given for not declaring your car permanently off the road. And as for getting caught behind the wheel without insurance; just ask yourself how you would feel not been able to drive for six months or a year, and then have to face insurance premiums at least double what they are now, and then reconsider that possibility.

Still, you can always console yourself with the fact that this year the insurance premium is only about 75% of what it will be next year. You never know, you may have won the lottery by then.

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John Rutter, Feb 2010