There are many ways to save money on your car. You can even start your cost-saving measures while you’re still selecting your car. In this article, we’ll tackle on how you can save money just by minding your driving habits.
Saving Money Tip #1: First of all, curb unnecessary driving habits that increase the consumption of your car fuel. Some ways you can save on fuel consumption are:
- Maintaining a steady speed especially on the highway,
- Increase your driving speed gradually and not abruptly,
- Avoid abrupt breaks and stops,
- Look out for traffic lights turning to red or the traffic ahead you to anticipate halts, and
- Avoid driving behind slow cars that will tempt and force you to slow down then drive fast.
Saving Money Tip #2: When appropriate, it is more practical to car pool to work. You can save up on gasoline purchases when you share the driving expenses with even just a single person. The more people you share the costs with, the greater your savings. The amount of savings depends on the distance from your homes to your workplaces. Maintenance costs as well as annual mileage also reduces when you car pool to work.
Saving Money Tip #3: Drive less to reduce gas consumption. When you can just walk to your destination, such as the grocery, and go home without hassle of bringing your shopping bags, by all means don’t drive your car to get there. You may also want to ride your bicycle instead of your car. This is also applicable when you park your car at the first free area rather than driving all over the parking lot to find a free space closer to where you want to go.
Saving Money Tip #4: Avoid short driving trips. When you can just move from one shop to another by just walking, then park your car and do your businesses rather than making a lot of short trips to one shop and another.
Saving Money Tip #5: Warm up your car’s engine by driving around. It will warm faster that way than allowing it to idle.
These are just some of the cost-saving tips that you can do in order to reduce your expenses related to your car and driving needs.
Your endeavor for the implementation of cost-saving measures with regards to your car often starts at the day you purchased your vehicle.
Normally, when you want to reduce your car expenses especially in the future, opt to buy smaller cars. The small model of cars often gets better mileage for your gasoline because they are lighter. Furthermore, these types of cars belong to the lowest category for the car insurance industry. This means that buying car insurance for your small cars are very much cheaper. Additionally, you save on your car purchases when you buy smaller cars because they are often sold cheap.
Consider the features your car has that can increase fuel consumption before you buy a new one. Air conditioning units will consume fuel when not used properly while driving, thus, increasing your frequency when in buying gasoline and increasing your expenses further.
It is advised that you should be cautious about buying a service contract as well as extended warranties when you buy new cars through your car dealer. Oftentimes, they offer very restricted coverage contrary to what salesmen want you to believe. Furthermore, they are often more expensive than the policies sold by warranty providers themselves.
Furthermore, do not buy disability or life insurance from your car dealer when you buy a new car. Like service contracts and extended warranties sold by car dealers, insurances may also be often sold more expensive than usual when bought from the car dealers. Be very careful though and do not be convinced by hard-selling dealers. Buy the appropriate and required insurance needed for your car from reliable insurance providers instead.
Last but not the least, buy quality cars and do not settle for trade-in cars with low values as much as possible. Keep your cars for at least five years with you and avoid trading in frequently.
For a girl like me who has not a lot of ideas about cars and mechanics, tips on oil changes and filters, brake and other parts maintenance can be too much for me to understand. So following are some tips I would like to share to other girls or boys like me who are not technically adept with cars and mechanics.
For me, there are three main areas in car that require money – car insurance, gasoline, and maintenance.
Car insurance – To save with your car insurance cost, just get the minimum required coverage by your state law. Most states only require the bodily injury and property damage liability coverage. These coverage aims to protect the innocent third party victims. So if you think you are less likely to be involved in car accident, then you can ditch the other coverage and stick with these two required liability coverage. In relation to car insurance, that is why it is practical to get a modest sedan type of cars because they are less likely to be targeted car thefts. As such, there is not much need to get a comprehensive coverage which can usually boost up your car insurance expenses.
Gasoline – Like me, you probably have read 101 tips on how to save gasoline. For a girl like me who is not so keen with the different types of gasoline, I only practice 3 fuel saving tips.
- Use the cheapest gasoline that is compatible to your car. You really do not need those speed enhancing fuels for the reason that you are not a race car driver.
- Go carpool. If you have someone to share the car with and so the gasoline expenses with, then go for it. It will let you save some cash and mother earth.
- If walk will do, then do the walk.
Car maintenance – There is nothing much to explain about this. As much as possible, follow the scheduled maintenance check up. As the saying goes, “Prevention is better than cure.” Aside from saving one time big expenses when your car would fail, you avoid the hassle of having no car.
When you have yet to buy your car, you have the chance to start saving your money for it. First of all, consider buying a new car of the smaller models or vehicles with smaller engines. Most often, they sell for a cheap price and since they weigh lighter than most cars, they normally get a much better mileage for gasoline. Furthermore, car insurance companies feel safe when they have to cover small compact cars, thus, it will save you in terms of car insurance premium costs.
When you are purchasing cars, also consider the impact that various car features have on your fuel consumption. Manual transmissions are known to get about five miles per gallon more than automatic ones. Additionally, engines with six cylinder get more or less five miles per gallon lesser than engines with four cylinders. Another example is that air conditioning units in cars can also increase fuel consumption when not properly used.
Do not buy cars with the hope of trading it for something every few years. Cars tend to depreciate fast and when you frequently trade cars, you are losing money over low trade-in rates in the long run. When you purchase quality cars, keep in mind to have it with you for over seven years or so. Thus, buy quality-made cars.
Avoid buying a credit disability or credit life insurance through the car dealers as it tends to be at a much higher rate when bought from them. Buy your insurances through traditional ways, that is, through an individual insurance policy or through your employer.
Making conscious efforts to save money while still purchasing your car is a good way to save further while you already own it. Cost-saving measures can be further observed through good driving habits, among many other ways.
Reader’s Question:
I’m afraid that getting cheaper car insurance here in Houston would just lose some important features of my coverage. A friend of mine advised me to maybe just hold back the truth about my annual mileage or something just to save. But I told him I don’t want to risk that. Now, what can I do to save on my car insurance without sacrificing the quality I can get and without lying to my car insurance provider?
Cathy
Houston, TX
It looks as if reasonable that some of the motorists give up other features of their car insurance coverage just to get cheaper premiums. Others would even lie to their car insurance provider about important information just for them to save. But they do not realize that the consequences for doing these things are extensive.
Missing out on important things or lying on your car insurance coverage is deemed as fraud by car insurance providers. By doing that, you would almost be sure that you would invalidate a car insurance claim. Although saving money is very important, compromising the quality of your car insurance must not be thought as answer. As an alternative, you must be careful and look at other possible solutions to save.
The answer to have car insurance savings is to be hands-on. Don’t sit on a car insurance policy for so long — you have to shop around at least once in a year and visit comparison Websites to compare car insurance quotes online to make certain that you obtain an inexpensive deal. Even if you still have a commitment with your car insurance provider and it doesn’t expire soon, you can still make savings. Get in touch with your car insurance provider in Houston and request to recommend car alarms, immobilisers or tracking devices. These security features can give you enough savings in one year to pay for the costs of some of these devices. Also, pay your car insurance premiums yearly if possible to slash interest rates and take into account increasing your deductible to save more.
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