Many people are eager to keep their cars much longer than before. This is especially true when we consider that cars can still be useful even after 10 or 15 years as long as we maintain them properly. In fact, trading our cars after 2 or 3 years may not be the greenest decision. Much of the relatively newer used cars can be kept in the dealers and storage facilities, because no one is willing to drive or buy them. It takes a lot of resources, energy and effort to create a new car, despite the massive mass-production process. This is a habit that many people seem to have, despite the fact that they need to apply for car loans. It is better to use money spent on interest to repair and maintain our current car. It is even possible to perform various customization projects to make our car more functional or capable than its original design. In this case, despite the prevailing culture and habit; we should keep our cars until they die. If many people are willing to buy used cars; why don’t we keep our new cars for many years to come?
Keeping our old car makes a lot of economical sense, especially if we need to apply for car loan; when purchasing a new car. Once the car is purchased and contract is signed; the depreciation will start to occur, even if we haven’t driven the car yet. In this case, we should embrace the depreciation in value and use the car until its value reach zero. As our car gets older, the overall costs can come down. While it is argued that the maintainance car is higher, it will be much less expensive to register and insure our car when it gets older. Depending on the state, the saving in costs can reach more than $1,000. The insurance costs are much lower, because it will be less expensive to cover the car financially, when it gets wrecked or stolen. High mileage cars can still be useful and functional when perform proper maintainance tasks. Some cars can be used for more 15,000 miles each year. In this case, we will need to perform rigorous maintainance tasks.
To drive our car until it drops, we should have important priorities in the maintenance plan. It can be quite daunting to keep our old car to run well. This is especially true, if we are somewhat unfamiliar with our own car. In this case, we should know what we need to do first. It is a good idea to ask dealers or official mechanics about simple maintainance and repair tasks that we can do at home. We should also know things that we shouldn’t and can’t ignore. If we want to simplify things, we should be able to break down everything into much more manageable bits. There are priority areas that we can consider. They need to be addressed properly and each car may have different way to maintain. There are many things to think about when we want to maintain the car.