Is there anyone out there that isn't a pro at bargain hunting online by now? Honestly, in today's society there's almost no reason to ever step out into the big, wide, wonderful world of retail. Why waste the gas when you've got Amazon sitting right at your fingertips? All right, so there is the little matter of shipping charges, which theoretically could outweigh the advantages of not putting wear and tear on your car at some point. But one thing that hasn't been ousted from the top ten list of coolest things to do on the Internet is shopping for homeowners insurance online.

All right, granted, most people don't fly out of bed Christmas morning hoping they got the latest gadget from their homeowners insurance providers. Santa hasn't been put out of business-yet. If you're a homeowner who's just woken up and realized they're spending way too much on their homeowners insurance, however, shopping for homeowners insurance online might seem like the hottest thing since sliced bread.

Here's how online insurance shopping works. You touch base with a professional quote finder, who takes down all of your information and distributes it down the long, waving length of their networking tentacles to the country's hottest insurers. Those insurers look over your information, put together a preliminary quote based on what you gave them and send that quote back to you. You flip through your quotes, pick three or four that look promising and give them a call to start haggling down your premiums.

May the best homeowners insurance company win.

Shopping online definitely beats the old system of spending hours on the phone with your insurance company before you get results. Back in the Dark Ages (a.k.a. the pre-Internet era-is there really any other name for it?) you had to personally call each and every company you were thinking about doing business with. You'd meet with their agent, who would then spend the next three or four hours bouncing back and forth between you and their supervisor to see what kind of deal they're authorized to give you.

It's suspected that this is when Excedrin's market share began to climb, but that hasn't been confirmed. Suffice it to say that shopping for homeowners insurance quotes got a lot easier when shoppers had the Internet to help them out.

Of course, like all things there's a catch. The first number you get from your homeowners insurance company is a preliminary number-a starting point, if you will. From that point they expect you to step in and start haggling down your homeowners insurance rates by pulling discounts out of your little white hat.

The catch is, most of those preliminary forms you fill out (and usually rush through) for these online quote finders ask you about information that would make you eligible for homeowners insurance discounts. You're going to save more money by haggling with the company that's willing to start at the lowest number, but unless they have all the information they need you don't really have a clear picture of who, exactly, you want to work with. That means you might ending up paying far too much for your coverage without ever knowing it, all because you didn't have all the information you needed from the very beginning.