A saying says, “Our homes reflect who we are, and our cars reflect who we wish we were.” Sometimes a person has to check if the vehicle satisfies his real needs. Maybe before the car was just fine, but with time life-style changed and the car remained the same. People grow up, get married, move to other places, and find different jobs. With time it becomes obvious that it is hard to travel with babies in a coupe, carry building materials in a trunk of a compact car or drive a long luxury car in a city with narrow streets and with traffic binds.

If you want a certain car, you should calculate if it fits your budget. Monthly payments and fuel costs cannot interfere with food and some other life necessary things. Add up what you spend on the car in a month and see if it takes more than 8% of your budget. If it does, increase your finances by changing a job or find a car that will work better with your budget.

A car owner should know if his vehicle has been taken to the shop in order to be fixed more than three times in a year it is not a healthy vehicle. He has to think of getting rid of it, other way he just has unnecessary expenses on car repairs. However it is not necessary to consider this factor if the car problems were caused by the driver (wreck, for example). And it is surely not a car’s fault when the shop workers try to pull money out of your pocket by not finishing the job right or causing the other car problems by advising other work on the car.

The last thing you have to pay attention to thinking of a car change is engine and transmission problems. It is never cheap to change either of them. Though transmission cost is not nearly as high as engine change, you still have to consider this. If you have a slipping transmission (you shift gears, but the car does not gain speed) or your engine burns oil (you see a blue smoke coming out of the tailpipe when the car is running) it is better to think of a car change.