So you've just bought a car, which you've saved up for for months. Buying it has pretty well cleaned you out, but you still face a massive hurdle; you have to insure it! A quick look at the car insurance websites online has convinced you that there is no way that you can afford pay the ridiculous prices that they are asking; so what you do?

Well, you have a mate down the road who has been driving successfully without insurance all year, so could you not get away with that? The answer to that question is that your mate is about to have a very great shock. It is now not only illegal to drive a car on the road, but also to own one which is not insured, unless a SORN declaration has been made! Okay, no problem, the car is registered in the name of someone else! That makes no difference whatsoever, the police know which cars are not insured, and they have cameras all over the country recording the numberplates of the vehicles that go by and comparing the registration numbers to their central database. Drive past one, and your mate will very soon see a blue flashing light in his rearview mirror, and a short while later his car will be towed off to a secure compound, where he will have do eventually produce a full insurance certificate plus a whole bundle of money before he can get it out! That is if he has got any money left of course, after the huge fine and possible loss of his driving licence that the court will impose.

Well, perhaps you can afford to pay after all, provided that you can make monthly payments. This is not a problem; there are a number of insurance companies that allow you pay monthly, and some of them make no extra charge for this service although others do, so it pays to shop around to find the best deal. One easy way of doing this is to use a price comparison search engine which specialises in no deposit car insurance, you will find one here or you can try www.carinsurancedeposit.co.uk. This type of site not only allows you to find the cheapest repayments, but you can also check on what the premium would be if you paid in full, in the normal way; sometimes there can be substantial benefits in doing this.

In order to drive legally on our roads you need to have as an absolute minimum third-party cover, but if your car is particularly valuable you may wish to go far fully comprehensive insurance instead. It is easy to say that you should never take the cheapest policy, because it is not always the best one; but it is still very good advice. Buying a cheap insurance policy only to find that you are not covered for every eventuality that you expected to be covered for can prove very expensive..

Copyright Graham Durr 2008