I drive a 2015 Chevy Malibu, with about 100k miles (mostly highway miles). Usually, my family rents a car to “save miles” and “protect our car”. I’m leaning towards driving my own car to save money. Is there any reason why I shouldn’t do this, as in it would greatly decrease the longevity of my car?
Can anyone give me a summary of what I should get done to my car before taking the trip? I don’t really do much beyond routine oil changes and getting my tires changed every few years. Winter weather is a concern. Thanks!
Saving the car is ridiculous. If you’re not breaking down every week, then it’s safe to say you should be able to take this on a trip. Of course, now that I’ve said that, you’re going to break down exactly 3 hours into the trip and you’ll need a part that’s on backorder.
It’s a math exercise, does the cost of the rental exceed your depreciation + maintenance on your current car, if so, take your current car. If the cost is less, rent one. Recently took 3000 mile trip, would have impacted my vehicle to the tune of 1200 bucks, i instead rented a Tahoe for 800.
What’s your math breakdown on the $1200?
(Truck value - residual value at 150k miles)/150k = depreciation per mile (I don’t keep them past there, and it’s fairly easy to get a residual value using kbb and a few assumptions on time till I get to 150k miles.
That comes out to 30 cents a mile…or $900 for this trip.
Maintenance costs that I calculated were mostly oil changes and tire wear, both of which I have a good understanding of the cost and life expectancy of them. I replace tires roughly every 40k miles at a cost of $1200 or $90 in tire wear for this trip.
Oil change is $100, of which I do every 5000 - 6000 miles….so $50
Lastly, the mileage difference between my vehicle and the Tahoe was 5mpg, over 3000 miles that saved me 36 gallons of gas, at $4.00 a gallon roughly at the time, or $144 in gas savings.
Totaling….just about $1200. Now there are other things that would have cost maintenance….but I’m not about to calculate the cost of every filter and fluid…so I left that all alone.
IRS gives you 65.5 cents per mile for business purposes…
Yeah, it’s probably closer to accurate, but the irs grossly overvalues miles driven in a Prius, and undervalues mileage in an F-350. It’s the best average they can calculate. It also pays the same in a $30k f-150 and a $85k f-150….so I like to roughly calculate my own.
Drive your own car. I’m not up to date on Malibus, but you are getting close to needing some routine maintenance. Water pump, timing belt, transmission fluid change. Stuff like that although maybe not exactly that. Talk to your mechanic about stuff like that. I want to be clear this is stuff that is going to need to be done soon if you take the trip in your car or not. Go ahead and get that kind of stuff taken care of then drive your car.
Why give any money to a rental company if you have your own car… Drive it and use that money for fuel. No reason your car shouldn’t make it based on the information provided. Good luck!