I usually keep my work/blog life pretty separate, and don't explicitly talk about what I do (because I'm a stripper...kidding), but today I'm going to lay it all out in the open for you. I work at a really cool start-up, like my brunch-table bio says, but if I were to write a straight blog about it, it wouldn't actually sounds that cool. Because we're all about car insurance. Please stop yawning; we're only in the first paragraph.

So why do I think this start-up is so cool? Because the whole goal of our company is to make that boring subject easier to understand, more transparent and way easier to buy. We're working to change the way an entire industry works. It's exhilarating, and there's a real need for our service.

Raise your hand if you like to compare prices before you buy something. Okay, everyone (and yes, I know it's everyone), put your hands down. We all do it. Before I bought an electric toothbrush, my mom price compared in multiple stores and online (thanks, Mom!) before I committed to one. Even for little things, I compare, like driving down the road, "Oh, Shell is two cents cheaper, let me fly across five lanes to get gas there instead."

It'd make sense then that we'd want to compare prices on an investment as large as car insurance then, too, right? Yup. So once day, I put in my information into our site, compare.com (the name of the start-up where I work, which I neglected to mention until now), got a few rates back and called it a day. Then, I was assigned the task of putting my information into 10 different insurance sites to see what the range of prices were for my exact current coverage and how much time it would take to compare without compare.com.

I spent literally a half of a day getting all of my rates. Hot damn did I almost lose my mind. I ate through an entire jar of jellybeans in one sitting and only took breaks to betch about how tired I was of giving my A/S/L to companies. What I learned though was pretty valuable. My range of rates went from $450 to $1750 for the exact same coverage. That's a crazy spread that I got, but most people don't realize how much you could be getting ripped off, because yours is probably just as bad. Have you wasted that amount of time to compare?

I know I didn't when I was initially deciding to buy car insurance. As I've admitted before, my mom three-way called me and our insurance company so I could get my own insurance. I knew I should compare rates, but was I ever going to non-company-sponsored spend my entire afternoon comparing rates? Nope. So I went with that one carrier my mom hooked me up with.

So, now that I know my range, and know that I could be saving, what's the end of my auto insurance story? I stuck with my current insurance company. While it's good to see what's out there, and I know I could be saving, I like the amenities I have currently, and I trust them. Plus, when I called them and said, "Look, I did 10 quotes and I know I could be saving elsewhere. What can you do for me?," they reviewed my policy, shaved off a bit of money, and told me exactly how to lower my rate through other means.

Knowledge is power, people. And knowledge comes from doing your homework before you buy, which compare.com is now doing for you, because we're cool like that.