The Fix: Planning Ahead for Car Maintenance

: Image via Wikipedia Timing Belt.

Once in awhile I am smarter than I think, but only, of course, in hindsight.

Last month, after finally paying off the Volkswagen, we took it into the dealer for the 60,000 mile service. And were surprised by a $2,190 bill to replace the timing belt, water pump, and leaking cam seals. (Nothing compared to the new transmission my sister, a not-exactly-rolling-in-the-dough seminarian student at that, had to put in. Sorry, lady!)

Essentially that works out to another year’s worth of monthly payments added to our credit cards.

When we heard the estimate at the dealer, we panicked a little bit. What were our options? Our regular shop was closed, so we couldn’t call them for an estimate. We figured it would be cheaper to do the fixes there, although it would probably take longer. Did we want to take the risk of a possible more costly breakdown? (It’s a no-brainer that the dealership is more expensive, what with the overhead of a sales force and inventory next to the shop. I overheard other customer’s bills, and nobody was getting out of there for much less than a grand, on the low end.)

There was no reason to be surprised by this bill, or intimidated by the lingo. Or the service desk, the top of which just grazes my chin when I’m standing in front of it. (Yes, I am short, but still.) Car maintenance is what it is, and if we’d bothered to think about it, we could have anticipated what it might cost. In fact, I used to have a couple of car maintenance books that were very useful — so the instinct to plan ahead was there, if I’d just paid attention. (I even enjoyed reading them, oddly enough, since I’m not what I would call, “handy.”)

You might think I’m beating myself up over this, but actually I’m excited to realize what we can do for next time. (We will also have more money socked away for these expenses, but that’s for a future post.)

MoneyNing’s recent post on a related subject helped me put the pieces together.

Next time we’ll do a little research first so we can ballpark what we think will need to be done and how much it will cost. Then we can shop around and not have to wonder, “Could we have paid less?”