The only thing out there more important than making sure your car is properly insured is making sure your home is properly insured, and since local government isn't handing out fines (yet) for not carrying insurance on your home that's debatable! The problem is, it isn't enough just to know that you need car insurance. You also have to know what, and how much, you need to insure your car against! Here's a sneak peek at the main types of car insurance being offered by today's insurance companies and how much you really need.

Liability Insurance-Just about any car insurance explanation that you're going to find is going to start with a look at your liability insurance coverage. Why? Because that's the stuff the state says you have to have! See, every time you cause an accident you're going to be considered responsible for the damages that follow. Makes sense, right? Not that big a deal-until you start thinking about how much it's going to cost to pay for emergency car for five or six people, plus vehicle repairs, plus…

You see where we're going with this.

Liability car insurance will take care of property damage and bodily injury (medical bills) resulting from an accident you caused. Each state has their own minimum when it comes to liability, but the bare minimum usually isn't enough. Most experts recommend you carry at least $100,000 in bodily injury per person, $300,000 in bodily injury per accident and $100,000 in property damage-just be safe.

Collision Insurance-Liability insurance will pay to fix everyone else's cars, but who's going to pay to fix yours? That's where you need collision insurance. Even if your car wasn't extremely expensive ($5,000 rather than $50,000, for example) that's still a large investment you probably don't want to have to make again anytime soon. Collision insurance will take care of repairs to your car after an accident and replace the car (at its depreciated value) if it can't be saved.

Comprehensive Insurance-Whether you believe in a God or not, it's impossible to deny the amount of havoc an "Act of God" like a hurricane, mudslide, earthquake, hailstorm or ice storm can wreck on your car. Comprehensive insurance will take care of the costs associated with helping you repair and/or replace your car after Mother Nature has a go at it so you don't have to pay the entire thing out of pocket. Like collision insurance, the amount of this reimbursement is going to be determined by what the car insurance companies say your car is currently worth.

Uninsured Motorist Insurance-There's no getting around the fact that we're currently sitting in the middle of a global recession-or that that recession has had a huge impact on the ability of Americans to afford car insurance coverage. Experts estimate that by 2010 the number of drivers running around without insurance is going to be at an all time high-the highest anyone has ever seen it. When you're in an accident with an uninsured driver you could spend years in court trying to nickel and dime your reparation costs out of them.

Uninsured motorist insurance lets your own insurance pick up the slack and get you back on the road as quickly as possible.