We are spending this week. And spending big. We are having routine maintenance done on our Honda vehicles. The van went in today for alignment, oil change, tire rotations, a couple of fluid changes, including the transmission fluid. The charge today was about $389.
It was suggested we do the timing belt for $775 since the vehicle is six years old. However, it is also recommended at 90,000 miles and the van only has 61K. I think we can wait a bit longer to hit that one. Maybe next year or late this year.
The truck goes in tomorrow. The charge is expected to be about $300. Seems like a lot of money, but we never have any problems with our vehicles...just the routine stuff that has to be done on any car.
Our new and current dealership seems to be really clear on what needs to be done when, and doesn't ask us to do extras. Love that!!
We don't specifically save for maintenance, but in recent years seem to have the money in our slush fund. If you don't spend it, it is easy to save it! This time we will put the charges on our Chase Freedom card, earn the rewards and then pay it off right away.
Do you keep up with your vehicle maintenance? What kind of plan do you have to save for these types of expenses?
Maintenance Spending
March 20th, 2013 at 02:28 am
March 20th, 2013 at 02:30 am 1363746657
March 20th, 2013 at 02:33 am 1363746831
For perspective, if you drive the car a lot, you can get 15 to 20 years out of a new car. Assuming $300 payments, you're saving $67K to $90K in payments you are NOT making during that time.
March 20th, 2013 at 03:22 am 1363749723
March 20th, 2013 at 03:34 am 1363750452
March 20th, 2013 at 06:25 am 1363760713
We were able to find an excellent, self employed, journeyman mechanic who checks our vehicles at the start of season change overs. She does any needed repairs for about half the 'book' rate and uses the best parts available. I particularly like her view 'if it's not broke - don't fix it.' Fluids are checked and replaced if dirty or require top-up.
We drove our Accord to 202 km before the timing belt went. She had explained that it had reached it's lifespan and what would happen when it gave-out. We were not to attempt to drive it, just tow to her shop. If you drive a car when the timing belt has gone you can damage lots of other things.
March 20th, 2013 at 07:37 am 1363765057
Either do the maintenance or sell the car. I bought my Jeep (mentioned earlier) because it didn't have a timing belt. It is gear-driven.
March 20th, 2013 at 11:11 am 1363777892
March 20th, 2013 at 02:38 pm 1363790326
We rely on our trusted mechanic to inform us if it is wise to change a belt ahead of time, to be on the safe side.
All of the above to say, our approach to car maintenance is pretty hands off. We are sticklers on keeping the oil changes, the tires and fluid levels checked. Other than that, our attitude is to not fix it if it is not broken. We have kept several cars in our families for 20 years. So, it definitely works. & I am talking cars built in the 80s and 90s - they probably easily last longer these days. The key in this equation is having a top notch mechanic who does not recommend work that doesn't need to be done.
We try to save around $1500/year for car maintenance. IS probably a kind of worse-case scenario. Our average spending the past 4 years was about 50% of that (for two vehicles). But our cars are getting old enough that I don't think a larger repair here and there would be surprising, so we leave breathing room in our budget for the "very foreseeable."