hjteo - Personal Finance and Learnings in life: When to Replace your car.

Last weekend, our pastor talked about temptation and one of the temptations for me is to replace the car. It's coming 5.5 years old and have covered 150 000 kms. The kids are getting older, bigger and looking into getting a bigger car for touring as the current Accent is kind of a subcompact. It does give good fuel economy (at 14 -15 km/l) and have been reliable so far considering it being Korean. (Not that I am biased, this is my 2nd korean car but the typical mindset here is Japanese cars are more reliable.)

In order to fight the temptation and say NO, a list of reasons compiled so that we will be objective. We will change a car when :

- Repair cost hits $1500 and more. The dealer offered only $500 above the scrap value for the current Accent.

- When the car hit 7 years and 200 000 km. High mileage may have higher repair/replacement cost. Used to have a 16 year old bike and the maintenance is high.

- Freed from car loan and saved the extra into a 'replacement car account' - done

- When a good condition replacement car that fits the requirement of FC, size for touring, manual gear box preferred and $2-4K above scrap value is found with no car loan.