Saving money on car expenses

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I’ve talked before about how my family will never be a one car family. Given that, we have to do whatever we can to keep our car payments and car maintenance expenditures down. It’s not an easy thing to do considering my husband drives about 50 miles round trip for work every day, and if we want to visit family we have no choice but to drive. All of that puts a lot of extra wear and tear on the care.

However, because we’re on a pretty tight budget nowadays, there are some strategies we’ve started to employ to keep that budget in check:

• Regular maintenance, particularly on my husband’s car. Since he drives so much, it’s important to keep his car in excellent working condition. We just recently replaced all the tires and spent a large sum of money to repair a few other parts that were getting worn down (like brakes. OMG is that man hard on brakes). For my car, which is driven substantially less, the maintenance costs are substantially lower (although I do need to get better about remembering to get it done as well or it will not be lower). When we had different cars, we also kept costs down by doing certain routine maintenance ourselves, as well as used some good tips we’ve read.
• Combining errands, trips, etc. This really isn’t a new concept. Every personal finance writer talks about how this is a great way to save on gas and wear and tear. The reason we all talk about it is due to the fact that it really does work. Now that I’m home, I have a loop that I drive pretty much every day. Included in that loop are all of the stores that I need to go to. Yes, it’s annoying to stop and start the car (which, incidentally can burn more gas, particularly if you’re using the air conditioner. Which I do. Especially in 100 degree weather) but in the long run it saves time and having to fill your tank frequently.
• Having a car emergency fund. If there‘s anything having a 16 year old car taught us, it’s that cars breakdown even when you don’t want them to. It just happens. To prevent having to constantly dip into our emergency fund in those situations, we’ve established a separate fund just for the cars. This fund covers regular maintenance like oil changes and it’s there in case we need new tires (which we have), new brakes (which we have) and even need to replace a windshield or two. It’s a nice peace of mind knowing that those expenses are covered and we don’t have to fret about the money.
• Buying used. Two years ago, we celebrated because we were free from car payments. Unfortunately, that celebration lasted one whole month because the car my husband was driving was costing more to fix than the car was worth (before you get all upset, the car was 16 years old and needed to be replaced anyway). We opted to buy a used car for several reasons, including the fact that it was less expensive than buying new. Sites like Evans Halshaw Used Cars came in handy when we were attempting to get examples of what cars we could get on our budget.

There are others ways we’re able to save on our car expenses and fuel costs: taking advantage of days when the gas station has reduced prices, knowing which gas stations have the cheapest gas, filling up before the car gets to “E”…all the stuff that you already know. It’s worked for us thus far.

I just hope it continues to do so.