On March 13, the Sienna rolled over to 200,000 miles on Frederick Avenue with Tina at the wheel and Lainey filming the dashboard on her phone. We had cake that night. Lainey insisted. Two weeks later, I was at the kitchen table with a calculator, working out whether we should keep paying to fix that van after a crash.
It's a 2011 Sienna LE, fifteen model years old. It has 200,000 miles, a new battery, an AC compressor from last summer, and front brakes I did myself. It runs great. It's also not worth very much anymore, and that's the point of this post.
What the van is worth
I checked three valuation sites with the honest condition: high miles, some dings, clean interior, good mechanical shape. They came in between $4,400 and $5,200. I called it about $4,800. That's what a private buyer might pay, and close to what an insurance company would base a total-loss payout on.
That number matters because collision coverage pays to fix your own car after a crash you cause, up to its actual cash value, minus your deductible. If the van were totaled in a crash, the most our insurer would pay is about $4,800 minus our $500 deductible: around $4,300. And it goes down every year as the van gets older.
What collision was costing us
On our policy, collision on the Sienna cost $412 a year, or $206 every six months. That's with the $500 deductible.
So I set up the comparison like this.
- Most we'd ever collect on a collision claim: about $4,300, and less next year.
- What we pay for that coverage: $412 a year.
- Years of premiums to equal a full payout: a little over ten.
- Collision cost as a share of the van's value: about 8.6 percent a year.
One rule of thumb I've seen is to look hard at dropping collision when its yearly cost gets to around 10 percent of the car's value. We aren't quite there, but we're close, and the van loses value faster than the premium drops. By next year, it will be over.
The other way I thought about it: in ten years and about 139,000 miles of owning this van, we've never filed a collision claim on it. If Tina or I back into a pole next month, we'd fix it ourselves or decide it's not worth fixing. A $412-a-year policy that we're unlikely to use, on a vehicle we'd likely repair cheaply or not at all, is the kind of cost I'd cut at work without much discussion.
What we kept
We kept everything else on the Sienna. Comprehensive stays. That covers hail, theft, fire, falling branches and hitting an animal, and spring hail is a real thing here. After the deer hit on the Silverado in November, I'm not about to drop the coverage that paid for it. Comprehensive on an older car is cheap.
Liability stays at 100/300/100, because that protects other people and our savings no matter what the van is worth. Uninsured motorist and the roadside add-on stay too.
The one thing I worried about is Garrett. He's listed as an occasional driver on the van, and teens crash more than adults do. Our agent asked about that, and it's a fair point. But if Garrett wrecks the van, we'd be out a $4,800 vehicle. We wouldn't be out a $30,000 one. We can handle that from savings without it being a catastrophe. If we couldn't, I'd keep collision.
Our agent made the change effective April 1. Our six-month premium went from $2,216 to $2,010, a drop of $206, matching the collision line on the van exactly.
That's the third change this year. Garrett's license added $1,140. His report card took off $164. Now the van's collision takes off $206. We're still well above where we were before he was licensed, but the gap is getting smaller.
I'm not saying anyone should drop collision on their car. It depends on what the car's worth, what the coverage costs, and whether you could replace or repair it without coverage. For us, the answer was yes.
When I told Tina, she asked if it meant she had to drive more carefully now. I said she already drives more carefully than I do. She said, "I know. I just wanted you to say it."