Tending to your car is one of the best ways to improve your household budget. For instance, one thing worth mentioning is the fact that a car that you’ve properly maintained always has an easier job of achieving great fuel economy. Apart from this, by regularly tending to your vehicle and fixing small issues once they occur, you’ll avoid having to tend to a major issue.
In other words, by trying to save money by not fixing your car and ignoring its maintenance, you’ll cause a much bigger, more expensive problem. All in all, here are the top five car maintenance tips that will definitely suit your budget.
Keep an eye on the fluids
When it comes to car maintenance, you need to understand that keeping an eye on the fluids is perhaps the most important thing to keep in mind. For starters, you have the oil, the radiator fluid, the transmission fluid, the power steering fluid, the brake fluid, the air conditioning coolant and the washer fluid.
All of these need regular inspection and replacement. Nonetheless, you don’t have to tend to all of them as frequently. Fortunately, each inspection and replacement takes barely several seconds or minutes of your time.
Rotate your tires
Over the course of time, your car tires get worn out, which is one of the primary reasons why you have to replace them. Now, you can’t avoid replacing tires but what you can do is postpone the inevitable by quite a bit. Depending on whether your car is an RWD, FWD or an AWD, your tires will get worn out unevenly.
So, in order to prolong their useful life, what you need to do is rotate your front and back tires. This way, you get to even things out and really get the most value out of your tires. As for the frequency of this rotation, a general suggestion is that you should go for something between 6,000 and 8,000 miles. For an average driver, this is about six months’ worth of driving.
DIY repairs
While there are a lot of decent mechanics out there, sometimes, you can perform minor repair projects on your own. We’re talking about wiper blade replacement, spark light replacement or some similar project for you to handle. We’re not suggesting that you attempt a windshield repair. Even when it comes to fixing a scratch on your car’s paint, this is something that you can easily do on your own, provided that you have all the right tools and supplies.
Fortunately, you can easily find a company that specializes in cheap car products and get what you need there. This way, you can easily overcome one of the biggest obstacles in your otherwise frugal project.
Know when to let go
Keep in mind that while we’ve already suggested DIY repairs as a way out, sometimes this just won’t be the best solution possible. You see, sometimes the problem is too complex and by trying to fix things, you’ll only make them worse. So, you need to recognize when something is outside of your scope of expertise in order to entrust it to a professional.
Also, sometimes, the general state of the car is just so bad that repairing everything would end up costing you more than buying a new car. The same goes for the repair vs. the replacement of a certain part.
Have a reliable mechanic
Taking your car to a mechanic is an inevitability, so, what you need to focus on is learning how to recognize a mechanic who is overcharging you or not doing their job well enough. For instance, if they’re reluctant to list all the work that they’ve done, refuse to show you the old car parts (the ones that they’ve had to replace) and avoid showing you receipts for the car parts that they’ve bought for the repair, they might just be deceiving you all the time. This is common malpractice where a mechanic charges you for the tasks that they haven’t really done. The list goes on.
Conclusion
In the end, you need to see your car as an asset and make sure that you get the most value out of it. The way this works is fairly simple – you make a list of regular expenses and maintenance tasks and try putting their costs on paper. Then, you start roleplaying some of the less common scenarios and think about how you would react if they were to come to life. Just by having a plan in advance, you’ll already be ahead of the curve.
