![]() ![]() Yet another simply change that can save you from having your battery spontaneously die, which would in turn either require you to spend money on a tow or spend a lot of mental energy waiting to get someone to jump your car. You can find that amount on the piece of metal between the car door and your car seat on the driver side door and it’s on a sticker, likely yellow and white. It’s easy to fill your tires full of air at any gas station or car wash but it’s very important to make sure that you’re filling them to the correct PSI. It’s such a simple thing that you can check and legit takes less than 15 seconds, and you should just go ahead and do it at the same time that you’re checking your other tires (which also should be monthly!)Ĥ – Check your actual tires for the right air This will seem like a waste of time 99 times out of 100, but that 100 th time that you decide not to check it is when you’re going to get a flat tire, your spare isn’t going to be inflated, and then you’re going to have to call a tow truck and be charged an arm and a leg. If I had changed it every 3K I would’ve wasted a ton of money, and I felt confident going to the full 7,500 miles because that was the number that Ford was telling all of their Taurus owners to use when changing the oil, so I figured even that was a conservative number. For instance, my old car was a Ford Taurus and it was every 7,500 miles. ![]() Look at your owner’s manual to see what is actually recommended. This seems obvious, right? “Change your oil every 3 months or 3K miles, I know, I know, Andy.” Well, don’t necessarily do that. It wasn’t a major concern of anyone, but it gave me a ton of peace of mind to know what was causing the light to come on. I did this once when I was in high school for a different sensor and it was because air was getting into my gas tank because the cap wasn’t suctioning it tight enough, so the sensor went off. Sorry for the tangent, but that part of the podcast really hit home with me and I wanted to drill down on it a little bit more, but alas, let’s get started with my simple vehicle checklist to save your budget!ġ – Don’t ignore the ‘Check Engine’ light on your dashboardīelieve it or not, if the check engine light comes on you can simply go to AutoZone and they will hook this machine up to your car and tell you a general idea of why the light is on. This isn’t me advocating for everyone to buy a new car,īecause I promise I will never ever buy a brand new car with how fast theyĭepreciate, but just me saying that the math of evaluating a new car is moreĬomplicated than just looking at the car payments alone, so, as always, really This is important to know because if your car payment of the 2020 Civic is going to be maybe $100 more than the 2014 Civic, maybe it’s worth it knowing that you’re going to have to pay about $60 more in maintenance and repairs each month, so you’re really only paying about $40 more for a newer car. So, the 2014 Civic is going to cost you about $60/month more in repairs and maintenance over this time-period. The total for those two sections for the 2014 Civic is $7,655 over the 5-years while the 2020 Civic total is $4,051. The area that I really want to key in on, however, is the “Maintenance” and “Repairs”. If you’re like me, you’re going to instantly go to theīottom right corner and see that the “True Cost to Own is just over $2,000 moreįor the 2020 Civic than it is for the 2014 Civic, over a 5-year period, soĪbout a total of $34/month – essentially negligible in my eyes. I found a really cool cost of ownership calculator at Edmunds where you can simply put in the year, make and model of your car and it gives you a 5-year breakdown of anticipated expenses based off driving that car for 16K miles/year, see below: Now, I’d doubt it’s a perfect offset, but even if it’s close, you’re essentially paying the same amount for an older, crappier car – no Bueno. Maintenance, so it could just offset the savings that you’re getting by having That’s true, your car maintenance is going to be much higher than if you wereĪ $5000 clunker being bought outright might require a lot more repairs and You likely can get that thing well over 200K and close to 300K miles if you continue to take care of it and it was taken care of for the first 150K. Like, maybe find an old Honda Civic with 150K miles on it for $5000 and then pay cash outright and drive it nonstop. In episode 140 of the Investing for Beginner’s Podcast, Andrew and Dave talked about a lot of different ways to save money on vehicle maintenance and I wanted to add to that with an actionable checklist to help you save money on your budget.īefore I get into the checklist, I want to comment on something that I’ve heard on other podcasts and Andrew and Dave somewhat spun it on its head on their podcast.Īnyone in the financial independence community is going to tell you to buy a clunker and drive that thing until it dies.
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