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049: Maintaining your car
506 Plays4 years ago
This episode will give you Mia and Dinah’s top hacks for fuelling the admin for your car maintenance and repair.
The average two-car household in Australia spends around $17,000 or 13-14% of their income per year on car-related costs, so keeping on top of all your car admin not only saves you money but also gives you peace of mind that your car is in good repair.
In this episode Mia and Dinah discuss:
- Car registration (“rego”)
- Insurance
- Service and repairs.
In recent years, all states of Australia have abolished car registration stickers and so it is important to ensure you have a good system to make sure you receive your registration payment reminder so you don’t inadvertently drive without. You can set up your preferred method of bill notification by logging into your state's vehicle registration organisation, such as Vicroads or Transport for NSW.
When thinking about car insurance, Mia and Dinah discuss the things you need to consider:
- if you need comprehensive or third party insurance
- if you want to insure for agreed value or market value
- cover for personal property (eg child seats in the car)
- road assistance to be included
- how far you will drive as you may be able to get a cheaper premium
- if choice of repairer and provision of rental car is important to you
- who will be the primary driver - this does not need to be the owner
- increasing your excess can be a great way to reduce your premium
- paying annually in advance is another good way to reduce your premium.
The comparison sites Mia and Dinah recommend to compare car insurers are Canstar, Choice and Finder.
When getting your car serviced things to keep in mind are:
- you don’t need to go to the authorised dealer to get your car serviced - any qualified mechanic can service your car and fill out the log book as long as they're using quality parts
- it is important to do your regular service to keep your car in good working order and save $ in the long run even if you aren’t regularly using your car
- add a reminder to you to-do list for 6-8 weeks before the service is due to book your car in so you can get the day/time of your choice and have the best chance of securing a loan vehicle (if available)
- capped price servicing often does not include critical service items and may not provide the best value.
For regular car maintenance:
- check your car owners manual to see how often and what regular checks you should do on your car (eg checking oil, tyre pressure, tyre tread)
- establish a system of when you will check, consider pairing it with something else or adding it to a to-do list
- buy a tyre pressure gauge so you can check you pressure at home and it will be more accurate that the gauges available in petrol stations
- consider getting your tyres rotated and balanced every 5,000kms to lengthen their life.
You can also consider if you need to own a car or have two cars in your household. Car share services like GoGet, Flexicar, Popcar and ride share services like Uber may provide a viable alternative for you.
RESOURCESGet Reminded App - App to set reminders for when bills are due
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips, and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money, and improve your household harmony. I'm Donara Roberts, an operations manager who still relies on my dad for advice about everything relating to cars.
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm Mia Northrop, a researcher and writer who doesn't get excited about cars or driving and will be first in line when the driverless vehicles go mainstream.
Focus on Car Administration Hacks
00:00:29
Speaker
This episode will give you all the hacks you need to fuel your car admin system. Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. Before we dive into today's topic, thank you to our latest reviewers on Apple Podcasts. A special shout out to What Nicknames Aren't Taken?
00:00:45
Speaker
He says, so many good hacks. I'm feeling more organized than ever after putting in place some of these life admin hacks. Thank you. Well, thanks to you for taking the time to rate us and flag to other podcast listeners that this show is worth their time. If you know someone who was feeling like their life admin is a little chaotic, do them a favor and send them our way. So for this app, you're going to want your to-do list ready to catch the tips because I've had some
00:01:11
Speaker
Thank you for watching. Dada has, yeah, schooled me. Thank you. And if you're driving, be ready to put the show on pause and summon Siri to answer reminders to your list.
00:01:26
Speaker
Yeah, so car maintenance and repairs and all things car, you know, why is it life admin? Well, it's actually a really big expense. So the average two-car household in Australia spends about $17,000 a year on all the costs related to cars, and that's some serious money. So it's about 13% or 14% of people's income in Australia.
00:01:49
Speaker
really paying attention to where you can save money is really important. Yes, so there's definitely money savings, but also peace of mind that your car is going to be insured. If you happen to have an accident or damage it in some way, we're going to cover off that in this episode.
Car Registration Process Changes
00:02:04
Speaker
And you obviously want peace of mind that your car is running well and not going to let you down in a moment. So this episode, we're going to talk about car registration, insuring your car and maintaining it, getting it repaired.
00:02:16
Speaker
Yep, so Mary, should we kick it off with car registration? Yeah, and this is one of those areas that's quite transformed in the last few years in Australia. We all used to have those stickers in the corner, the left-hand corner sticker, different color each year. Yeah, and they've been abolished in every single state and territory in Australia. I had thought maybe it was just Victoria.
00:02:37
Speaker
But all states have done it and this is actually resulted in thousands of motorists who'd never previously had a problem with the law being fined for driving unregistered vehicles, including one of our very close friends. So it's pretty funny actually and I guess it's really where life admin comes into it. If you haven't got that under control, you can easily inadvertently drive without your car registered.
00:03:01
Speaker
Yeah, because you used to get a letter in the post that would have, here's your sticker, here's how much you need to pay, and if you often pay it, you peel off the sticker and try and get it on the glass or smooth without any lumps or bumps. It's stressful enough in itself. But that envelope doesn't come anymore. You don't get a sticker.
00:03:18
Speaker
So you either, well, depending in your state, you can still actually opt in to get the mail. There have been people who have been called out because if you've moved house and don't have mail forwarding set up, then you might not get that letter and so you don't get the reminder. But you can also get notified by email or SMS.
Managing Registration Reminders Effectively
00:03:38
Speaker
I literally actually just got this last week. I got a little email from Vic Rhodes that said, it's time to pay your regjo with my registration number there. I loved how they call it regjo. I know that was his talk. A little link to pay online through BPAY or credit card.
00:03:55
Speaker
You can log in to VicRoads to get your certificate of registration. You can also see how many merit points in your driving history when you log in. So it was pretty smooth. I was, you know, the only stickers I have in my car now are parking permits these days.
00:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, so you should be able to log into whatever your state's road authority is to set up whatever is the best notification system for you. So obviously Mira and I recommend going for email. And if you've got a really humming life admin email address, using that is obviously going to be the best way. But you can, as Mira said, also get it in the post. I did laugh, though, when I was researching
00:04:32
Speaker
There's a company that set up that you can actually get like a pretend Rejo sticker where you can write the date that it's due as a reminder if that's what is really important to you, but certainly not what we would recommend. That's kind of, that's cute. It's pretty nostalgic there. I'm sure the designs are awesome.
00:04:49
Speaker
So if you use a note with your registration, if you have a healthcare card, you're eligible for a 50% concession in Victoria. Well, that's national, I guess. Healthcare cards are national. In Victoria, you get a $100 discount if you have a hybrid or electric car.
Insurance Options and Savings Tips
00:05:04
Speaker
So if you have one of those or you know someone who's getting this, my mum's about to get a hybrid car and I don't know if she's aware that she gets a discount. And you can also get short term rego. So you can actually get three or six or 12 month registration
00:05:17
Speaker
So if that's helpful for you, less money upfront compared to an annual lump sum, then you might want to take that option. And within the my account section, you can actually also adjust your reminders. So it tells you that you're going to get one at six weeks, two weeks, and then one week after your radio was due. That's when the emails and SMS has come out. So you can set those notifications to be convenient for you. And they also have the same options for licensing as well when your license is about to expire.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, so you can rely on those or you could use your own to-do list system or if you like it, there's that app that's called Get Reminded, which also allows you to set reminders up for things like registration and car insurance. Yeah. Okay. Car, insurance, let's do the deep dive.
00:06:05
Speaker
Wow, that's more comparison shopping to do. Yeah, so there's lots of car insurers in Australia, so it can very easily become overwhelming. There's more than 30 now, more than 30. You've got all your basic insurance brands, you've got supermarket brands, random names, random brands, female-only insurers now as well, which we'll talk about in a moment. But essentially, when you're looking at car insurance, you want to think about whether you're going to go comprehensive car insurance or third party.
00:06:35
Speaker
The major differences there are that comprehensive
00:06:38
Speaker
Car insurance will provide you with coverage for things like accidents and theft, but also weather events like hail or fire or storm. And if you're involved in an accident, the insurance will cover your car and property. So if you bash into a pole or a wall or a house or something, and also the other person's car and property are covered, even if you're at fault. If you get third party car insurance, on the other hand, it'll only cover you for damage you caused to someone else's vehicle and property.
00:07:07
Speaker
not your own property or vehicle. And you might take that option if you've got a really old car and it's actually not worth paying out, it's actually cheaper, just go buy a different car.
00:07:20
Speaker
So if you are going for the comprehensive policy, there's a few things you need to think about before you start going comparison shopping. So the first one is whether you want to go market value versus agreed value, because quite often the market value might be lower than what you think your car is worth. So really thinking through what might happen, particularly if your car gets written off completely and understanding what the outcomes are there.
00:07:46
Speaker
Also, whether you want to recover from personal property that's in the car, if it's stolen or damaged, so that this might be if you've got, you know, if you leave an iPad in the car, someone breaks in and steals all of your music, or your sunglasses, which is happened to people I know, or, you know, whatever random awesome stuff that's in the car, someone's decided they wanted Nick, or car seats as well. If you've got multiple car seats in the car and you've shelled out for those and they get damaged in accident,
00:08:14
Speaker
you want those covered. And you can also have a think about whether you want road assistance included within your insurance, whether that's something you might get outside of insurance. And another thing also to really think about is how you're going to use the car. A lot of insurers now will offer significantly reduced premiums if you don't drive your car very often.
00:08:34
Speaker
So you might also want to have a think or really understand how many kilometres a year you drive on average, because that can be a factor in determining your premiums. So other special features might be whether you want to choose your own repairer or you're happy to take the car to one of the preferred repairers and whether they provide a rental car after theft or accident. So I've had a couple of occasions, some flashbacks when I did the research for this.
00:09:02
Speaker
When I have had to have the car repaired and they have provided a service where you drive to the repairer, a taxi will then pick you up and take you to the rental car company. You drive the rental car around and then when it's time to collect your car, you take the car back to the rental place, the taxi will take you to the mechanic and you can pick up your car. And all of that was organised and paid for by the insurer, which was incredibly convenient when you're trying to get to work and ferry children around.
00:09:30
Speaker
Yeah. So in terms of looking for the different insurances available, there's a couple of comparison sites you can have a look at. So Canstar, as we often recommend, Finder, and you can also have a look at Choice. Yeah. So we recommend these sites because essentially you don't have to supply a lot of personal information to get a quote. Nothing really above what they need to determine what kind of risk factor that you might be as a driver.
00:09:57
Speaker
as opposed to some of the other comparison sites out there where you provide a lot of personal information and you're going to get the hard sell with a phone call follow up and you can start to get hassled. And often those other comparison sites don't have all the products that represent the whole market. They have a subsection of providers and they heavily promote specific products that those providers want to push.
00:10:21
Speaker
So Canstar find a choice pretty good at indicating which products are sponsored or they have promotion and just take a sort of softer sell attitude. Yep. And it's also worth noting that you can insure a car that isn't registered to your name if you're the primary driver of the vehicle. So really thinking about who's going to be the primary driver before you go and start getting quotes because it's the primary driver's risk information that you're usually, or that you are putting in when you're
00:10:50
Speaker
applying for car insurance. This has a major impact on cost. If you are a household where if you're a heterosexual couple and there's a female driver and a male driver, women drivers statistically a lot less risky. They have fewer accidents. They drive better. They have fewer traffic violations. They can walk careful drivers. So women have much cheaper insurance premiums.
00:11:15
Speaker
If you're a one-car family and you can legitimately say that the female is a primary driver of the vehicle, then put the policy in her name because you will get cheaper premiums. The same thing goes if you've got a big age difference, insurance is cheaper for older, more experienced drivers. I'll often argue with anyone under 25 who's going to be driving. If you're in a situation where
00:11:40
Speaker
primary driver legitimately is older and more experienced and put the policy in their name because they will also get cheaper premiums.
00:11:47
Speaker
And there are now insurance companies in Australia that offer policies specifically for women. And there's actually an insurer called Stella that is just for women. And I had done the price comparison and the leaf fell off my seat. I didn't have no idea. So that's definitely something for me to have a look at too. There's other ways you can also save on your car insurance. So usually you get a discount for paying annually. So it's worth checking what the price difference is and if you can afford it paying upfront.
00:12:17
Speaker
taking advantage of safe driving rewards programs for consecutive years. Also, one of my favorites is varying your excess. As a general rule, if you put a much higher excess, you'll get a lower premium. That's particularly useful if for some reason you've had an accident, it was your fault, and then your premiums jump a lot.
00:12:37
Speaker
You might want to think about increasing your excess to try and absorb some of that difference, obviously, as long as you can afford to pay the excess if you do need to make a claim. Yeah. And that's safe driver rewards on low claims bonus. That starts to make a big difference if you stay with the same insurer for several years and you haven't made a claim.
00:12:56
Speaker
Make sure that when the renewal comes up, you can give them a call and chat to them about that because that can make a significant change. The other thing is if you just buy a car insurance online, you often get a discount. So if you don't actually call a call center and do the transaction on a call, you will save money doing it DIY online.
00:13:16
Speaker
Yeah, it's also worth really looking at some of those challenger brands for car insurance. So I recently got our car insurance through Woolworths and not only is it a really cheap price, we also get 10% off our groceries once a month, which you know that can really add up over time.
00:13:31
Speaker
having a look at some of those is really worth it. Yeah. And with mine, like, so we are getting multi-quality discounts because we have our home insurance, like a home content and the car in the same provider. And they have been seamless in the past where if I have had an accident or I just handle it really well, but I just did a price check through Stella. The Stella came out more than $1,000 cheaper than what I'm currently paying.
00:13:58
Speaker
And when I went onto the website and pretended I was a new customer, that was also hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars cheaper than what I'm currently paying. So I'm going to be switching as soon as we finish doing this podcast. I do think that often what you think when you're getting a multi policy discount, it actually isn't one, just its appearances. So it's definitely one of those ones that's worth shopping around, you know, if not every year, every couple of years to make sure you're getting the best deal.
Car Maintenance Importance and Scheduling
00:14:29
Speaker
Okay, Mia, so now let's move on to car servicing and maintenance. Yes. We are laughing. So maybe we'll start with car servicing. So I think the first thing to really know is that often when you buy a car,
00:14:47
Speaker
The dealer may try to make you believe that you need to take your car back to them for servicing and often they even offer you the first service for free. But you really don't have to go to the car dealership to get your car serviced.
00:15:01
Speaker
I think that some people believe you need to go to the car dealer to keep your warranty intact, but the ACCC is very clear on this point. Any qualified mechanic can service your car and fill out your log book as long as they use quality parts and going to an independent servicing shop will not affect your car warranty.
00:15:24
Speaker
So it's interesting to see the stats around this because most, like half of people think they have to go to the dealer to maintain their warranty. On 90% of people, if you buy a new car, about 90% are servicing at their dealer and you were possibly paying a premium for doing so.
00:15:40
Speaker
Yes, it's definitely worth shopping around. It is still really important to do your regular services. So what's in the logbook is really what you should do to maintain your warranty, even if you don't regularly drive the car. And I know a lot of people who've been working from home because of COVID and
00:15:58
Speaker
often a second car's not getting used, and so they might think they can just skip a scheduled service. But it's really important to do that service even if you're not driving the car, at least on an annual basis, to really save money in the long run. Yeah. So shopping around for a mechanic, definitely. Skipping a service, no, stick to that schedule.
00:16:19
Speaker
So that's definitely one that's worth putting as a reminder in your to-do list. Often the way you get your car service will put a little sticker on your windscreen, but just having that also in your sort of to-do list system were really easy because if you set it for, say, six weeks or eight weeks before the car service is due, you've got the best chance of getting the appointment time that's suitable for you
00:16:43
Speaker
And if the car servicing shop offers loan cards, you've got a much better chance of being able to secure a loan card if you book well in advance rather than trying to book in a hurry before you head off on a road trip or something like that. The other thing to realize is that sometimes car manufacturers will also offer a capped price service, which sort of sounds enticing. You think, okay, well, there's a maximum I know what I'm up for for each of my scheduled services. But often when you actually look at the nitty gritty,
00:17:12
Speaker
The cap price service, in reality, won't often cover some of the critical service items specified in the schedule. So it still means that replacement parts can cost extra. So we don't automatically think that that cap price deal is going to be better value.
00:17:28
Speaker
This is where asking friends is really helpful if you don't have a service centre that is reputable and also just checking whether they're within the licensing scheme of your state or the Motor Traders Association that they're a member to make sure that they're reputable. Yeah. When you're getting the car serviced, you want them to contact you before all the planned work is carried out.
00:17:50
Speaker
If the car's in for servicing, they should be calling you and say, look, we've picked up this, we've picked up that. Do you want to do this now? And I did get my car serviced this month. I got the inevitable phone call. Would you like to change your windscreen? I can't say that word. Do you want new tires? I'm like, no, the blades are fine. The tires are fine. But you know, they are going to call and upsell you possibly.
00:18:16
Speaker
So, you've got your car serviced, but there's still some things you need to do on a regular basis at home to make sure that your car is safe and in good repair. So, Mayor, how often should we be doing at-home car maintenance? Well, I didn't think I did have to do any at-home maintenance.
00:18:36
Speaker
I rely on my dashboard, little indicator lights coming on and saying, you need more oil, or you need to top up your windscribe or windscreen. Oh my God, a Canon windscreen lights are fluid. And dinosaurs were like, no, you need to type chunky. You have to check that stuff. And I'm like, there's computers in the car.
00:18:57
Speaker
Raina made me run out into the street in my pyjamas with my hoodie on to get my owner's manual from the Govbox to read what it says about putting your oil. And what does it say, Mia? Okay. It's 365. I guess these owner's manuals are so dense.
00:19:16
Speaker
Depending on how you drive and the conditions in which the car is used, oil consumption can be up to half a liter per a thousand kilometers, yada, yada, yada. For this reason, the engine oil must be checked at regular intervals, preferably when refueling. So basically they're saying, every time I refuel, I should be checking the engine oil. I have never known it is supposed to happen so frequently. The time of pressure, it says once a month.
00:19:43
Speaker
and tradition before starting a long journey. Yeah. I do think for most cars, you should be regularly checking oil, the water and the tire pressure and also the tire tread. How often, you know, I did, I went back and asked my dad, who's the expert in all things car, like how often really should we be doing this dad? And he's like every two months, like unless you drive a lot,
00:20:06
Speaker
Every two months is probably enough just to make sure that all of those things are in order. So I think it's about being realistic and setting some sort of system around how you do that, but certainly also before you go on a long journey.
00:20:19
Speaker
I guess the tip there for me is the idea of preventing cataclysmic engine failure. First, having the vehicle running optimally to save on fuel costs. Tire pressure is all about if they're at optimum tire pressure, they need less fuel to get around. I hadn't really thought about it in that way. I'm like, wow, I think car manufacturers should do a lot more nudging and prompting of drivers
00:20:46
Speaker
If that's what's actually required to keep it optimal running this dashboards can do a lot more than just have my apple car play last on it they should be telling us because i have no idea no idea viable and feasible to do it that often that's a lot of maintenance.
00:21:04
Speaker
What doesn't take very long it's like a two minute check the oil in the water and i think the tire pressure it's one of those things i think often people do neglect and they do end up running their tires their tires wear out much faster than that otherwise wooden and you set of tires is really expensive so.
00:21:22
Speaker
Go out today, Mia. Buy yourself a tire pressure gauge. Do I get that at the car at the petrol station? You probably can get one at the petrol station or one of those, you know, auto parts stores. There's loads of them around. And it just means that you don't have to rely on the pressure gauges at the petrol stations, which are often broken because people throw the pressure gauges down on the ground.
00:21:45
Speaker
It also means you can do it at home so then you know when you get to the petrol station whether you actually need to go and put air in the tiles or whether they're actually okay. I'm just thinking about how often when you refuel your car, how often do you see people checking their oil? I'd never. This is a thing. I think there's an opportunity for one of the petrol stations to bring back full service petrol pumping where someone comes and does this for you.
00:22:10
Speaker
more things to do. And I think the other thing that I have actually been guilty of not doing, but my dad is always good at reminding me, is making sure you think about getting your tires rotated because they wear differently on the front and the back. So really every 5,000 kilometres, if you go and get your tires rotated and rebalanced, it'll actually get a lot more wear out of your tires. So they'll last for a lot longer, which is obviously good for the environment and good for your hip pocket.
00:22:37
Speaker
Oh, gosh, do they do that during your normal service or is that normal? They might do it as part of your normal service. Some of them you might have to ask, but you can just go to any of those tire stores like Beaux-Rappuis or Tire Power or a bunch of them and they can do that while you wait. That can be a half an hour job where you sit there and do some life admin on your phone. It's not a huge burden and it will save you lots of money in the long run.
00:23:01
Speaker
Clearly, my poor little vehicles have been very neglected. Maybe it's because my car doesn't have a name. Maybe I should give it a name and not care about it all. Does your car have a name? No, it doesn't have a name.
00:23:15
Speaker
But I do find that we really think about pairing it as part of any kind of longer trip. So we have put it on our holiday checklist, which is sort of at the beginning of our sort of holiday planning checklist, which is check the car, which often reminds us, oh, let's actually go and get the tyres rotated, things like that, because it's a trigger that we're about to do more kilometres.
Exploring Car Share Services
00:23:37
Speaker
So I think it's thinking about what can you pair it with that makes sense. It's on a regular, you know, that same kind of cycle. All right. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to pair it for if I go down to the holiday house, I'll do my checks then. Yeah. I know one of the things we're going to talk about in this episode is whether you actually need a car.
00:23:55
Speaker
Yeah, so it's quite interesting because we are one car to adult household and lots of people often quite flabbergasted that we managed to live in the suburbs with one car. But I do think it's a huge saving when you look at how much people are spending every year on a car. So there's lots of car share services now around which can make it much more viable to not have a car like
00:24:17
Speaker
you know, go get our flexi car or we use pop car because that's the car share service that's closest to our house. And you can also use things like Uber to really fill in the gap for any second car trips. And you have to actually spend quite a lot on Uber. If you think it costs $8,000 a year to have a car, that's a lot of Uber trips before actually it costs more
Summary and Social Media Engagement
00:24:39
Speaker
money. So certainly something worth thinking about. Excellent. Okay. So what are our top hacks this app?
00:24:45
Speaker
Log into my account at your state's road authority and set up your car rego notifications so you don't forget to renew. Set up a reminder system to at least every two months do maintenance at home on your car, checking your oil, water and your tire pressure. And don't forget to buy yourself a tire pressure gauge. And consider which primary driver might get the best deal on your insurance next time your comparisons shine.
00:25:12
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. And if you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend, or review us in your podcasting app. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.