Four Additional Costs You Need To Keep In Mind When Choosing Your Next Car

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surya wang

By : Steve Carr   
Submitted 2010-10-31 15:52:17 One of the problems that people have when purchasing a car is that they don't budget properly.

They put money aside to pay for the car itself, but don't think about what additional costs they're going to have to pay afterwards, usually spending their entire budget on the car, without realising just how much money it's going to cost them throughout the year.

For instance, you could walk into Audi dealers today and stretch your budget so that you could drive away in a new A6.

Now that might seem fantastic and you might get a great feeling as you drive away from the Audi dealers, but if you've spent all of your money on the car, how are you going to afford all of the additional costs throughout the year?

This might not be a problem for some, but if you're concerned about the additional costs you're likely to have to pay out for, taking a look through the following four points and try and budget for them when you're next looking for a car.

1. Insurance - if you're buying your very first car, you're likely to know that your insurance premiums are going to be high and so you'll spend hours trying to find the cheapest quotes possible for a car before you even buy it.

When you've been driving a while, you will often skip this part, as the prices for a similar car are going to be roughly the same.

If you're spending your money on a different car to what you're normally used to, especially one that's high up the cost ladder, it's strongly recommended you check how much the insurance is going to be before you hand over your money for the car.

2. Fuel - generally speaking, the first few cars that you own will have a relatively small engine, so to keep the costs down on everything, including fuel.

If you're about to upgrade to a car with a larger engine, however, you really need to work out how much fuel you're going to go through each week, as where you might have spent 25 or 30 pounds a week previously, a bigger engine could easily see you spend 20 percent more on fuel.

3. Vehicle tax - something that is becoming the bane of many people's lives who purchase new cars, the way vehicle tax is calculated changed from 1 March 2010 and there are now two rates for cars less than 10 years old - one for brand new cars and one for cars that are between one and 10 years old.

Based on vehicle emissions, the less environmentally friendly your car is, the higher your vehicle tax is going to be and in an effort to deter people from buying cars that are harmful to the environment, the cost of vehicle tax for the first year for a car that falls into Band M is 950 pounds.

4. Maintenance - for most cars, standard maintenance is going to be roughly the same cost. However, if you're looking to get your Audi, for example, serviced annually at Audi dealers, you need to be aware that the cost could be several hundreds of pounds - average for a service for this quality of car, but considerably more than if you're used to getting a cheaper car serviced at a local garage.

Author Resource:- Jardine Motors Group UK operates a large portfolio of specialist franchises of the world's most prestigious marques, including Audi dealers.