10 Tips to Save Money on Your Car

1. Buy a cheaper car

The best thing you can do to save money on your car is to buy a cheaper car. You have to think of how much time you spend in your car and how much you are driving it around.

Most people are not spending that much time in their car. Therefore, they can sacrifice a little comfort by not needing leather seats, state of the art sound system, cameras, and TVs.

Buying a cheaper car have several advantages:

• It is cheaper when you buy it.
• It is cheaper to insure it.
• It is sometimes cheaper to maintain.
• It is cheaper on taxes.

Now, this does not mean you should buy a crap car. If you buy a vehicle that will require too much maintenance, you will not make a good deal. You should still buy a good car.

Some expensive car brands will indeed require little maintenance and last longer. However, you will pay so much upfront that you will not end up being even. And even a great luxury car is not protected from being destroyed or have a big problem.

For instance, I bought a Hyundai i20 seven years ago for 12’000 CHF. I bought it new and had very few issues with this car. It is quite cheap, and it saves me a lot of money!

2. Avoid leasing and loans

If you want to save money on your car, you need to avoid leasing and loans.

The only reason people like leasing so much is that they allow them to buy cars they could not afford. If you cannot save money for a car, it means you cannot afford it! In Switzerland, most people lease their cars because they do not want to wait to have the cash to buy it. And most people think they made a good deal.

I recommend paying for your car in full directly. Buying your car in cash is the best way to ensure you can afford this car. Only this is ane excellent reason to buy rather than lease! If you purchase it cash, you will very likely buy a cheaper car than if you lease it.

Now, there are several other reasons not lease it:

• It is more expensive than buying it.
• You do not own the car. You will still have to pay to own it at the end of the lease.
• You are forced to buy maximum insurance for the duration of the lease.

Some people could finance it instead of leasing it. But car loans are generally significantly higher than leasing. You could save some money on insurance. But you would lose it on the interest payments. So, financing makes even less sense than leasing.

So, you should wait until you can buy the car you want. And as we have seen on item 1, you should consider cheaper cars.

3. Buy a less powerful car

In Switzerland, you need to be careful about buying powerful cars. The first obvious reason is that a powerful engine will consume more gas.

But the second reason is less obvious: taxes and insurances! Indeed, in Switzerland, the circulation office will tax you based on the power of the car. If you have a massive engine, you will pay more taxes. It is also based on the value of the vehicle, but we have covered that already.

Also, having an extremely powerful car when you have slow limits on the road is not helpful. Many people do not use half of the power of their car!

So, if you want to save money on your car every year, you should opt for a standard car, not a huge racing car or a pickup truck.

4. Do not over-insure your car

When you buy a new car, you want to have proper insurance for it. But to save money, you want to reduce the coverage over the years.

However, as the car loses values, you can reduce the insurance you need. If your vehicle is worth a few thousand Swiss francs, you do not want to have it covered for everything. In most cases, it will be better to scrap it instead of fixing it.

In Switzerland, there are several layers of insurance for cars:

• Civil Responsibility Insurance. This layer is mandatory for every car.
• Partial Casco Insurance. This second layer will cover some natural damage to your car.
• Full Collision Insurance. This insurance will cover all the damage due to a collision with another car.

It is good to start with all the layers with a brand new car. But once it gets old and loses value, you should reduce the coverage to save money.

There is no rule of thumb about which coverage you should have for which car. For me, I would not keep full collision insurance for more than five years on the cheap cars I buy. And I probably would not keep partial casco insurance for more than seven or eight years.

To learn more, read my article about car insurance.

5. Pay your car insurance annually

You will have to pay car insurance, but you could save money by paying it annually.

Most car insurance in Switzerland have options to pay it in several times. Generally, you can pay it annually, quarterly, or bi-annually. But splitting it will cost you something.

So, it is always better to pay your car insurance once a year instead of several times. Of course, you need to plan for it and make sure you have the cash available to pay it. But it is not difficult to do and worth to cut your expenses down.

6. Find a good mechanic

Even if you are very careful with your car, you will need to maintain it regularly. And if something is broken, you will need to replace it.

There are some considerable differences in prices between different car mechanics. For instance, here are the costs for my three first car checkups:

• Hyundai car shop in a closeby village: 350 CHF
• Hyundai car shop on my way to work in a larger village: 650 CHF
• Our family car mechanic: 250 CHF

These are some significant differences for essentially the same service. So, yes, the bigger shop cleaned up the floors of our car. But this is not worth several 100s of CHF! I can clean my car myself.

Of course, be careful that you still need to find a good car mechanic, not only a cheap one. And you may have to try several of them until you find a right balance of expertise and price. But in the end, you can save a lot of money on your car expenses if you find a good car mechanic.

7. Find a cheap gas station

Most of the time, you will buy your gas at the same gas station.

So, it is essential to find a cheap gas station that is easily available to you. If you have the same commute every day, you can compare all the gas stations on your trip. And then, you can pick the one with the cheapest gas price.

There are some very significant differences in gas prices between different gas stations in Switzerland.  For instance, in my short commute, there is a 10 cent difference per liter for gas. The choice of this gas station makes a difference of almost 100 CHF per year. It is nearly 10 percent of our gas budget. And we are driving very little.

Of course, once you need gas, you should take the closest station. I am talking about regular trips to your work or clients.

For people driving their cars more than us, it makes a significant difference to choose the cheapest gas station available.

8. Take care of your car

It may sound obvious, but you should take care of your car.

I am not saying you should polish it every month and have it pristine clean. But you should take care of it. By this, I mean, if something is wrong, you should not wait too long to make it checked.

You should also wash it regularly to avoid permanent damages. And you should not delay checkup and maintenance. For instance, you could check the pressure in your tires from time to time. Making these checks early on will help save money in the long-term.

9. Do some repairs yourself

There are also a few things that you can do yourself in the car to save money.

Of course, this will depend on how handy you are. Here are some car repairs that most people should be able to do:

• Change car tires.
• Change windshield wipers.
• Change the lights if broken.
• Change the air filters.

Maybe you will able to do more than that. But only these could help you save money on your car maintenance. But be careful about not making it worse. If you are not handy and knowledgeable, you should not change the brake pads yourself!

10. Drive economically

Finally, you can also save some money by driving more economically. You could save on gas.

The first thing you can do is to slow down.  You spend less gas when you are at 80 km/h than at 90 km/h. So, by keeping to the speed limit, you will save money and stay within the boundaries of the law.

If you have a manual car, you can save gas by changing gear earlier. Do not wait until your engine is at 3000 RPM to change gear, change it at 2000.

Another thing you can do is to avoid having useless things in your car. Do not keep things around. All the weight in your vehicle will make you consume more gas.

If you want more tips on saving gas, there are tons of articles about that like this one.

Conclusion

As you can see, there are many ways to save money on your car expenses. If you are careful, you can keep your car budget lower than most people think. I hope that these tips will help you save more!

Including parking but not depreciation, we are spending about 4500 CHF each year for transportation in our car. It is not negligible, but this is not that much either. Our transportation budget is quite low in our budget. Most people I know are spending significantly more than that on their transportation budget.

Some of you probably think that I should have mentioned not having a car as a way to save money. But I am talking about people that have to have a car. And I do not believe that cars are evil like many people. And I especially do not think that everybody should leave in cities and use public transportation.

If you want to learn more about the way we are going around, I have an article about our means of transportation.

Do you have any other tips to save money on car expenses?