Car Maintainance

Everyone knows that keeping your car maintained keeps the costs of repairs down. Put your savings on what your repairs could have been into your cash reserve. Even if you don't know what would have happened had you not changed your oil, replaced the timing belt, or got a tune-up, you can make an educated guess and put what you have saved by maintaining your car in your cash reserve.

A regular oil and filter change at your local Jiffy Lube costs around $30. If you don't change your oil every 3,000 miles or the mileage recommended by your owner's manual, then you could cause yourself a major repair. Failure to change your oil can cause sludge to build up in the engine, cause excessive wear on your cams and lifters, and overall cause early engine failure. Engine failure can only be fixed by buying a new engine or buying a new car, take your pick. Both are extremely expensive fixes to a problem that could have been prevented with a $30 oil change. Replacing the engine costs an average of $5,000 with parts and labor, while a new car can easily cost twice that. If you spend $30 for an oil change every 3,000 miles, then you are saving yourself around $4,970 worth of repairs. You don't have to put all of that in your cash reserve at once, but putting the cost of the oil change in your reserve every time you do one can still add up.

Regularly replacing the timing belt according to your owner's manual's recommendations can save you thousands. If your timing belt is replaced as part of the scheduled maintenance, you'll end up paying an average of $500 for parts and labor. However, if your timing belt snaps, your bill can double or triple depending on how much damage is done to the rest of your engine as a result and the make and model of your car. When a timing belt snaps, it typically bends some valves along the way, all of which need to be replaced for your engine to run properly. Replacing your timing belt according to a scheduled maintenance plan can save you $500 or more on repairs down the road and usually only needs to be done every 60,000 miles. The average person drives just over 10,000 miles a year, so you can put the $500 savings into your cash reserve a little at a time if it's too much to handle all at once.

Giving your car a good tune-up once a year can improve gas mileage and keep all your car's systems working properly. Just doing a tune up for the improved gas mileage saves you money. The average cost of a tune-up is around $150, depending on where you live and what all is included in the tune-up. If your car got twenty-five miles per gallon before your tune-up and thirty-five miles per gallon after, you could put $95 in your cash reserve if the average cost of gas is $2.15 per gallon ((10,000 miles per year/25 miles per gallon) - (10,000 miles per year/35 miles per gallon) x $2.15 - $150). If the price of gas goes up, you save even more to put into your cash reserve. Maintaining your car all around keeps the price for repairs low and saves you money over the long run all of which can be put into your cash reserve.