Your Auto Liability Limits Are Probably Still the State Minimum

Oregon requires bodily injury liability of $25,000 per person and $50,000 per accident, plus $20,000 for property damage. Those numbers are the floor to be legal. They are not a number anybody picked based on what an emergency room bills.

One ambulance ride, one surgery, and a few days in a hospital clears $25,000 without much trouble. When your limit runs out, the other party's attorney doesn't stop. They look at your wages, your savings, and your equity. The insurance company defends you up to the limit you bought, and then their obligation ends.

Property damage is the same story with newer math. Twenty thousand dollars was a lot of car once. Now it's a mid-trim SUV with a dozen sensors in the bumper, and a modern headlight assembly alone can run four figures.

Moving from state minimums to 100/300/100 usually costs less than people expect, often a few dollars a month, because the expensive part of an auto policy is the first dollar of coverage rather than the last. Claims that reach high limits are rare, so the price of the upper layers is low.

Oregon also requires personal injury protection, which pays your own medical bills regardless of fault, and uninsured motorist coverage at the same 25/50 as the liability minimum. Underinsured motorist is the one to look at hard. If the driver who hits you carries state minimums and you're hurt badly, your UM and UIM coverage is what stands between you and a $25,000 ceiling on somebody else's decision. Carry it at least as high as your own liability limits.

Once liability is at 100/300, an umbrella policy stacks on top for a million or more, and the carrier will usually require those underlying limits before they'll sell you one. That's the order: raise the auto and home liability first, then add the umbrella.

Look at your declarations page. If the first number is 25, you're carrying what the state made you carry, and the odds are good nobody has looked at it since the policy was written. Ask your agent to quote 100/300/100 and the umbrella together, and decide with the two prices in front of you.