My 21-year-old son passed his driving test on Friday.
I was relieved for about a day. Then I remembered that I had to call our car insurance company.
He got his permit several months ago. Because safety mattered more to me than getting the process done cheaply, I supported him through driving school. It cost about $900.
After that, though, we did not schedule the road test. A few months passed.
One month in the passenger seat
For roughly the past month, we finally made driving practice part of the weekend. About an hour and a half on Saturday. Another hour and a half on Sunday.
That meant I spent around three hours each weekend in the passenger seat while he built enough experience to take the test. On Friday, he passed.
Passing changed something immediately. He no longer has a permit. He is now a first-time driver at 21, living in our house and expecting to drive our cars.
But passing the test did not erase my concern about freeway driving. I still want him to take at least two more professional lessons focused on driving safely on the freeway.
The license says he passed. It does not require me to pretend that every kind of driving now feels equally comfortable.
Now I have to call Liberty
I had been with GEICO for almost 20 years. In early July, my wife and I switched to Liberty Mutual. The new premium was roughly one-third of what we had been paying.
That felt like a substantial win.
Now I keep wondering how much of that savings will disappear when I add a new driver under 25. How much will our insurance go up? Will the $900 driving school qualify for a discount? Which of our cars will Liberty use when it calculates the new rate?
Liberty’s own guidance says that an adult child living at the same address is not automatically covered under a parent’s policy. To be covered, the child must be added as an authorized driver. It also says that adding a young driver to a parent’s existing policy is often more affordable than buying a separate policy, although the actual answer depends on the household and the quote.
So this is no longer something I should leave until later.
On Friday, my son came home after passing his driving test. This weekend, I came away with a new item at the top of my list: call Liberty, add my adult son to our car insurance, and find out what new-driver insurance at 21 will actually cost us.
Sources: Liberty Mutual on adult children and a parent’s policy and Liberty Mutual on insurance for new drivers under 25.
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