Money, money, money: it’s all we’re thinking about this year as we’re tucking into the turkey we bought on credit and watching our ungrateful kids open presents that they’ll never use. So the time has come to think a little bit about how to reduce those expenses and get financially lean in the new year. First stop? The car.
Here are some ideas for how to save money on your car in 2017.
Cut Out Hard Braking
Aggressive driving doesn’t just cripple your gas mileage. It also destroys your brakes. Slamming on the brakes hard all the time can reduce their lifetime by 20,000 to 30,000 miles. If you own a higher-end car, they’ll wear out even quicker.
Pro tip: stop slamming on the brakes all the time and allow your vehicle to come to a gentle stop at the lights. Saving? If you can avoid having to replace your brake pads three or four times, you could save between $600 and $1,000 over the life of your car.
Rotate Your Tires
Because front tyres on most cars bear more weight and propel the vehicle forwards, they suffer a lot more wear and tear than the rear tyres. It’s not unusual for the front tyres on a car to wear out in half the time.
One way to reduce these costs, according to Edmunds.com is to rotate your tyres so that they wear out more evenly across both front and back. According to the website, doing this could net you more than $120 annually, assuming you cover more than 12,000 miles a year.
Alex Gutierrez is a senior market analyst of automotive insights for Kelley Blue Book. He says that by insuring your car and you home through the same provider could bag you a 10 percent saving on your car insurance. Consumer Reports surveyed more than 700 companies and found that the average motorist could save more than £80 a year by switching to a new insurance provider. But uniting both home insurance and car insurance led to savings of more than £200. Not bad, eh?
Ask For A Mileage Discount
The risk that you’ll make a claim is directly correlated with how many miles you drive in a given year. But some insurers don’t take how many miles you drive into account when they’re calculating how much to charge. So what if you’ve started working from home? Or what if you’ve decided not to travel hundreds of miles by car to see your family who you hate? Then you need to ask your insurer for a mileage discount. According to the data, a person who drive 5,000 miles a year, can save 8.4 percent on their car insurance compared to an individual who drives 15,000. That works out at about £70 a year.
Don’t Let Your Teenager Drive
Adding your teenager to your car insurance policy at age 17 is a lot more expensive than adding them at age 19. Adding them, later on, could net you £300 in savings.