Everyone in Northeast Ohio does their best to budget for
scheduled vehicle maintenance.
What’s hard
is planning for unexpected family car repairs.
The truth
is that our vehicles can stay on our Ohio roads
longer than ever before with proper maintenance.
That’s because of improved vehicle design and manufacturing
quality. But some of those same improvements also lead to
higher repairs costs for every family car or vehicle.
There’s
a tool that can be found on
Edmunds.com
that you can use to prepare your Northeast Ohio
service and repair budget.
Let’s suppose
you have a used Toyota Camry – a very popular car in the
Cleveland area…
 It’s now paid
for and you’d like to keep it running for the next three
years. You can go to Edmunds’ True Cost to Own
calculator and enter your vehicle’s data. The calculator will
provide estimates of what it’ll cost to service and repair
your vehicle in areas such as Berea, Middleburg Hts,
Strongsville, and Olmsted Falls over the next five years. The
estimate’s based on where you live in Ohio, manufacturers’
recommendations and repair experience for your particular
model.
Of
course these are just estimates – there’s no way to predict
what’ll actually happen to the car in your driveway, but it’s
a good starting point. The calculator also has
estimates for depreciation, financing, insurance, Ohio taxes
and fuel costs.
Let’s focus on maintenance and repair in the Northeast
Ohio area: This table at Edmonds.com shows that the
average monthly
cost of maintenance and repairs
for our example in Ohio is about eighty-three dollars. That
may sound like a lot, but compare it to a new car payment.
So if you set
aside eighty-three dollars a month, you’d go a long ways
towards taking care of routine maintenance and being prepared
for the unexpected repairs that arise.
Some folks in
the 44017 zip code area are afraid of what can go wrong with
their older car so they buy a new one. That’s fine if you
really want a new car, but if you properly maintain
your older vehicle, you’ll save a lot of money on new
car payments and insurance. It just makes good economic sense
when times are tight in Berea and surrounding communities.
Give us a
call for additional advice on how to keep your family car
running on a budget.
Parkway
Auto Care
137 Front St
Berea, OH 44017
Ph. 440-316-0093
At Parkway
Auto Care we install quality NAPA replacement parts. To learn
more about NAPA AutoCare, visit www.NAPAAutoCare.com.
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