Buy a new car or keep driving an old car?

Things that can be fixed

This is a list of the fixable stuff you can do. If you can get most or all of it done, you should get another 50,000 miles out of your car.

Oil change

An oil change for conventional oil is about a $40-$50 service, and full synthetic is $60-$70.

I run full synthetic in my car using Castrol GTX Ultraclean. If I had any shop do the service for oil + filter, I'd be paying 70 bucks. When I do it myself, 30 bucks. And that's with sales tax included.

Oil changes are necessary and they must be done. It's cheap if you do the oil change yourself. But if you don't, you're going to be shelling out $40 to $70 twice a year for the service.

Tires

There are a lot of people driving on bad tires out there. Don't be one of these idiots.

When you replace your tires - and I cannot stress this enough - REPLACE ALL FOUR. And be certain to have the tires rotated every 6,000 miles. Most tire shops will include the rotation service free of charge.

The cost of this will be anywhere from $350 to $1,500. Big SUVs pay the biggest price. If you remember to do your rotations, you should be able to get at least 40,000 miles out of the tires. The initial cost of the tires is big, but you don't have to pay it again for a while.

Brakes

People ignore bad brakes even more than bad tires, and the #1 reason for this is cost. Brake service for many cars just isn't cheap.

However, if there is anything you should put big money into on an older car, it's brakes. You must be able to stop your car reliably.

Brake replacements for all four wheels usually start at $1,000, but can ramp up in price to $2,000 or even beyond that.

The only way you can save cost on brake replacements is to replace them yourself. There are plenty of YouTube videos on this, and yes you can do it. If for example you have a big SUV like a Chevrolet Tahoe, you're going to pay big for brakes at a shop. But if you do it yourself, you can slash the price to well under $400.

You need good brakes, but if you don't have a lot to spend, start watching YouTube videos on how to change the brakes on your car, then go do it...

...but remember that changing brakes yourself is usually an all-day job, especially if you've never done it before. Much cussing and swearing will most likely be involved, but it's worth it.

Also remember that even if you factor in the cost of the tools and stands and whatnot that you need, you're still saving huge over having a shop do it.

Published 2020 Sep 22