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People new to motorbikes may presume that the best way to get insured is to go through their normal insurance company. This would make sense, as many insurance companies will insure you for just about anything, from your car to your kitchen sink, but despite the fact that your regular insurance company can insure you on all sorts of different things, it doesn’t mean that they can insure you well. Most companies have specialist areas in which they excel. A lot of the insurance companies specialise in home or car insurance, and naturally they offer particularly good rates for these things. You will find however, that these companies cannot be so competitive with things that they don’t normally insure.

I recently decided after breaking up with my girlfriend that there was no longer any need for me to own a car. I had only been driving a car because it fitted in with our lifestyle together, and now that we were apart, it would mean that I could indulge myself in what I had always wanted to do, which was to buy a motor bike!

I had passed my bike test a number of years ago, so I set right out to find myself a 250 – something with a bit of grunt, but nothing that was too hot to handle with my minimal experience. I found something pretty quickly, and I was so excited to get out on the street with it! Unfortunately, when it came to swapping my car insurance for a bike policy, I was very disappointed with the quote I received from my existing insurer.

When you are looking for bike insurance it can be difficult to choose who to go with. You can spend hours, days and weeks looking at what all of the different companies offer, but still be left confused.

The first thing to remember is to resist the temptation of contacting the insurance company that deals with your car insurance. The likelihood is that they will offer you a price which they say is discounted because of your existing insurance, but the reality is that it will still be a price that exceeds what a specialist bike insurance company would be able to offer you. The reason for this is that the normal insurance company are used to dealing with cars, and they don’t have any great desire to corner the bikes market.

Photo By Myles Noton

Your best bet is to make a note of all the details about your bike, including the age, make, model, the amount of miles it has done, and its value. You will also need some details about your previous experience and accident history, Once you have all of this information you should go online and find a specialist that is used to dealing with bike insurance. A great company to try is Carole Nash who have a history of offering great policies at great prices.

For the past five years I have been driving a slightly worse for wear but mechanically sound Golf Gti mark 1. The car dates from 1986 and is almost on its last legs. Despite this, I spend the money every year keeping it going because it is so much fun to drive! I must as a rule spend about five hundred pounds a year on the car, and it was more this year because I had a little prang in the car park at work, which was unfortunately my fault.

Photo By Edgley Cesar

The upshot of the crash was not only the price of the repairs. I also had to say goodbye to my no claims bonus, and therefore affordable insurance. Or so I thought!

I had been speaking to a mate of mine in the pub, and he mentioned after hearing my woes, that he thought that my car might now be considered a classic, and because of this I would be bale to find specialist classic car insurance, which may well be quite a bit cheaper than my current insurance. It seemed like a long shot to me, but worth giving a go, so the next day I called Carole Nash cheap classic car insurance and to my astonishment I was bale to chop off about thirty percent off the price of my insurance! This was fantastic news because I was starting to think that I would have to trade the car in to get something more affordable! Now I get to keep my golf and be able to afford to run it!

If you are anything like me you will like the idea of being able to won both a car and a bike, or, who knows, maybe more than one of both. If you love your cars and bikes then it is almost impossible not to own a few of these wonderful things if you have the means to do so.

Photo by Myles Noton

I started off with one car but as soon as I was earning decent money in my career, I bought a second car for the weekends. This sufficed for a few years, but a few years ago I decided to take my bike test so that I could get out on the road on two wheels too. It was a great decision and I now own three cars and two bikes. I have something for pretty much any occasion, and I have a lot of fun on or in all of them!

One difficulty of multiple ownership when it comes to vehicles is insurance. Some people like to shift their insurance from one vehicle to the other when they are using them, but for me this is just too fiddly and time consuming. I originally thought that the best thing to do would be to have an one insurance policy that covered me on everything at any time. I presumed that this would be the cheapest way to do it, but I have since discovered otherwise, certainly as far as my insurance is concerned. I came across a specialist bike insurance company called Carole Nash and they were much cheaper for me. For anyone with two or more vehicles I would highly recommend you have separate insurance for all your vehicles.