Thursday, July 5, 2012

How to Budget for Car Maintenance

Owning a car requires you to spend a little money periodically on maintenance. Since maintenance typically occurs randomly on your car, it can be difficult to save enough money for this cost. If you can effectively budget for your car maintenance in advance, you can avoid many of the financial problems that people have when a car repair bill comes up. Once you determine how much you need, you can set aside a certain amount of money every month for your auto maintenance.

Instructions
 
  1. Add up the total amount of money that you spend on car maintenance over the course of year. For this process, you may need to get a copy of your bank statement to determine how much you have spent in this area. Add everything that you can think of such as oil changes, new tires, wiper fluid and tag renewals. Try to be as detailed as possible so that you can avoid any surprising expenses that you have forgotten. If you had any major repairs done over the course of the last year, you may want to still include the amount of the repairs in your figure. It is always a good idea to overestimate because you never know how much you will have to spend in car repairs in any given year.
  2. Divide the number that you came up with by 12 so that you can see how much money you spend per month on average. If you wanted to break it down even further, you could divide it by 52 so that you can see how much you spend every week on car maintenance. By doing this, you can determine how much you need to set aside on a regular basis to get enough money for your car maintenance.
  3. Open a savings account with your bank or with an online bank. Now that you know exactly how much you need to set aside on a regular basis, you can get in the habit of transferring enough money into this account. The easiest way to do this is to set up an automatic transfer with your new bank account. For example, if you determine that you need $100 per month for car maintenance, set up a $100 transfer from your main bank account to your new savings account every month. If it is more convenient, you could set up two $50 transfers per month so that it does not take as much money out of your account at once.

Read more: How to Budget for Car Maintenance | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_7607189_budget-car-maintenance.html#ixzz1yTH1VCA2

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