5 Tips to Cut the Cost of Maintaining Your Car

Paying out for car maintenance repairs can be a pain and yet you feel like you're getting nothing back from it as your car was working perfectly fine before you handed it to the garage, and it's working exactly the same when they give it back to you! However it's something that all car owners have to do or risk getting a huge bill down the line when something major goes wrong with it due to poor maintenance. Follow these simple tips and you can cut the cost of maintaining your car.

1. Find a reliable local garage and stick with them! Normally, local independent garages will do maintenance jobs cheaper that nationwide franchise car garages as they're smaller firms and want to keep the local business. Build trust and rapport with them, you might find the more maintenance jobs they do on your car's the more discount they will give. You will find that their usually isn't a price list in a garage and therefore the price for you may differ the more you return.


2. Do it yourself! This is a great way to save money and if you have the knowhow then your maintenance costs will be cut at least in half. Simple break pad and oil filter changes you may want to have a go yourself, but don't go out of your depth as usually you end up doing more damage than what was there originally.


3. Tyres are expensive and making sure you get the most out of them is important. They need to be inflated to the correct level otherwise it will cost you in both fuel and new tyres. Over inflating your tyres can cause excessive wear down the middle and you will find yourself changing them sooner rather than later. Under inflating your tyres can cost you more in fuel to get from A to B and this isn't recommended ether. Check your car's user manual to see what the correct tyre pressure is and check this at least once a month to ensure you're getting the most from your fuel and tyres.


4. Another tip to cut the cost of your maintenance bill is to negotiate! Get a number of different quotes when you need any car maintenance doing and use the cheapest quote to play them off against the more expensive ones and see if you can get them down any further. Ask for a breakdown of the work and how they have concluded the final quote and make sure it all adds up.


5. You will notice that in the window of the car you take your driving lessons in there is a tax disc, which another cost of being on the road. You can pay for this every six months or every year however we recommend that you pay yearly as it's cheaper! They place the extra charge down to administration costs and add around another 7 pound on the final charge.

There you have our 5 tips for cutting car maintenance costs, this sort of information isn't given out on your driving lessons however if you ask your instructors may be able to tell you.