Hello readers, it is a sad time in a car's life when it reaches that 8 and 10 year old mark (so young) when the inevitable replacement of items starts to happen. If your shop has not been proactive in the recommendation of wear items, they can start to add up. $900 for struts, $600 for hoses, $500 for ball joints, etc. If that is all recommended at once, with some fluid maintenance, you are sitting at $2,100. The question we get asked, mostly by newer customers of ours is...."The car is not worth that much, is it?" In all fairness, some are not, but most are, depending on how you look at it. If you have a car that selling value is only $2,500 but needs $2,100 worth of work, what questions do you need to ask yourself? We have a couple. How has the reliability been? Do you still like the car? If the answers are good, and yes, the answer is "yes" it is worth it. Here is why....if you go to buy a new car, let's say 30K or so, the dollars lost are $2,400 in sales tax, not counting the immediate loss of value, and a payment of $500 or so (unless you can just write that check). If you want to calculate the cost for the year on that repair, it is $175.00 per month, for only 1 year or $5.85 per day for you to utilize a car that you are already familiar with and registration is affordable! In short, there is a point in a cars life when you have to look at the value as ownership value over selling value. Cars are basically public transportation that you can utilize whenever you want, to go wherever you want, any time you want. So if you can determine what your cost per mile works out to be, you will see that even with repairs, your older car is more likely "worth it"