Owning a car is rarely about paying for fuel, insurance, or even your car’s finance payments. And when you’re considering if you can afford to own a car, it’s often those smaller expenses that add up and eat into your budget over time that are overlooked.
While most drivers factor in the obvious expenses, they can be caught off guard by those costs that have flown in under the radar and catch them unexpectedly. And it’s these that can increase the cost of car ownership for people.
Bodywork Repairs
It’s so easy to overlook those small scratches or those dents that appear each time you park in Tesco’s car park. And on the whole, they don’t impact how your car drives. While they don’t look great, are they really causing massive issues? On the face of it, not really, minor surface scratches can be T-Cut out, but those bigger dents or chips to the bodywork, this is where the issue arises and the cost too.
Ideally, you want to get a dent repair or deep scratch buffed out immediately to avoid them causing further issues down the line and being more expensive or worse, impacting the safety of the vehicle should you be involved in an accident.
Tyre Replacements
Everyone has put off checking the air in their tyres from time to time. That’s normal, but ignoring wear and tear on tires or neglecting to correct misalignment is more serious, and these issues can impact safety and handling, not to mention how the car drives and your fuel efficiency. And the more you neglect your tires, the more expensive the repairs will be in the long run.
Parking Costs and Fines
Parking costs can quickly add up, especially if you live in a city centre or popular tourist area where private car parks charge extortionate fees.
And initially, the odd day’s worth of parking doesn’t seem too significant, but over the course of a year, it can add up exponentially if you need to pay for parking for work.
And this is before we even get onto the issue of overstaying or forgetting to pay in car parks. And with a fine amount around the £40 mark on average, this can be pretty expensive if its a regular occurance.
Upkeep
All drivers know that you need a yearly MOT, and that annual servicing is recommended (or every 12,000 miles, whichever comes first). But you can often forget the cost of the small repairs and upkeep tasks you need to perform. From cleaning the interior to the air in your tires, water for the wipers, valeting, new brake pads and oil, the costs of upkeep can accumulate over the year, and while individually they’re pretty small costs, you’d be surprised at how much they can cost you when you add it all together.
Owning a car, while extremely convenient, isn’t always cheap or cost-effective. But in the long run, the more careful you are with how you drive, the more you can keep these overlooked costs of car ownership down.
