Happy New Year from the team here at Cash For Cars! We hope you had a great holiday spent with friends and family and are feeling refreshed for a brand new year.

As we all know, the new year is a great time to set new year’s resolutions or goals to help better yourself throughout the year. What are your new year’s resolutions? Some of us here at Cash For Cars have new year’s resolutions focused on improving our running and some of us have resolutions to read more books.

Whatever your new year’s resolutions may be did you take your car into consideration, too? While making resolutions to improve your health and overall lifestyle are great, adding a few for your car is an even better idea! You use it everyday, don’t you? Make yourself a better car owner and keep your car in the best condition its been in this year with these 6 new year’s resolutions every car owner should have for 2019.

New Year’s Resolutions For Every Car Owner

1. Don’t Neglect Car Maintenance

If you were lax about making regular maintenance appointments for your vehicle in 2018, your first new year’s resolution should be to call your mechanic! Yes, I know keeping up with car maintenance can be a pain, but when you don’t keep up with it bigger problems can arise. And it isn’t cheap.

The most important car maintenance you will need to keep up with this year are oil changes, tire care, brake pads, and your car’s air filter.

Changing your oil regularly is important because it keeps your car’s engine properly lubricated. The longer you wait to change your oil the more it corrodes. When your oil starts to go bad it can no longer effectively lubricate your engine – resulting in more car problems. Check your owner’s manual to see how often your need to change your oil, and keep in mind that the older your car gets, the more oil changes it will need.

Your car’s tires – very important! Keeping up with tire rotations and alignments and continuously checking tire pressure are vital to your tire’s longevity and your safety. Low tire pressure can be dangerous at high speeds as they are more prone to blowouts, especially at high speeds.

Maintaining your brake pads is an easy new year’s resolution to complete as it’s typical to have them replaced only once a year. However, it’s a very important part of your car to maintain, so don’t forget this one.

They experience a lot of friction as your brake while driving, and these pads are the only thing that keep your braking mechanisms and rotor from grinding together. Over the year they can become thin, causing serious damage. And if your brake pads wear out it could be detrimental to you and the drivers around you.

Replacing your air filter is an easy part of car maintenance to knock out while your getting your oil changed. They usually need to be changed around the same time. The air filter filters the air that your engine takes in. Over time it becomes clogged, decreasing the fuel economy by making your engine work twice as hard.

2. Learn To Do Basic Maintenance Yourself

Tired of scheduling appointments and spending so much on auto maintenance? Why not make it a new year’s resolution to learn how to do it yourself? While there are some maintenance tasks that should be done by a skilled mechanic, there are simple tasks you can do by yourself to keep your car maintained this year.

Start with something small, like learning to replace your windshield wipers. It usually needs to be done twice a year and is important for road safety. It’s an easy goal for the new year to accomplish quickly.

A couple other car maintenance you can learn to do yourself is change the oil, check the tire pressure, change the air filter, and maintain your car’s battery. And when the time of year comes around you can also change the coolant by yourself. These are great ways to save you money this year and learn something new!

3. End Distracted Driving

Did you know that on average 9 people are killed by distracted driving every day? Yes, that’s every day. Most people think that distracted driving means texting and driving but it actually refers to anything that can take your full attention away from the road.

According to the DMV there are many things that can cause distracted driving such as:

Reaching for something
Changing the music
Using an app
Checking your GPS or map
Taking a photo
Checking email or posting to social media
Eating and drinking
Putting on makeup/grooming

Distracted driving is an epidemic that is completely preventable. All you have to do is put down the phone and pay attention. Make it a goal for the new year not to add to these distracted driving statistics, but to make them smaller.

4. Be Courteous To Other Drivers

We all know driving can be frustrating especially with traffic jams, highway construction, and novice drivers. It’s easy to let that get to you causing road rage and potentially accidents. Make it a new year’s resolution to be patient with the people you share the road with.

Everyone has somewhere they need to be and sometimes we just have to accept the fact that not every driver drives like the should. If you can let that roll off your back while driving you’ll find your commutes less stressful and safer.

A helpful tip to accomplish this: leave 10 to 15 minutes early for your destination so you can allow for traffic, construction, and novice drivers.

5. Keep Your Car Clean

For some of you keeping your car clean comes naturally, but for the rest of us it is a daily challenge. If your car is a mess going into the new year learn how to declutter your car and prevent future clutter.

First, remove everything from your car that you do not need. Be frugal here! Do you really need that book you’ve been meaning to read the past few months or those three extra jackets taking up space?

Second, organize those important papers in your car and rid of the papers you don’t need. Throw out old receipts, coupons, and other miscellaneous papers. Then find the important documents like your registration, insurance, and owner’s manual and put them in a safe spot.

Third, give your car a deep clean after you’ve decluttered it. Vacuum the seats and floor, wipe down windows, and take it through a car wash.

Lastly, one of the most helpful things you can do is prevent the mess. Keep a small trash can in your car, plug the “black hole” between your seats, and make for easy clean up in your cup holders.

6. Finally Get Rid Of That Junk Car

Do you have a junk car that has been sitting in your driveway for a while now? Make it a new year’s resolution to finally sell it. Find out how much you could get for your junk car from CashForCars.com by calling us at 1-800-227-2893 or by filling out our online form.

We are the fastest, easiest, and safest way to sell your used, unwanted car. With competitive offers, award-winning service, and free nationwide towing, this new year’s resolution will be the first to get checked off your list.

What Are Your New Year’s Resolutions?

The whole point to a new year’s resolution is to improve your life. When you take care of your car and drive safely your life is most likely going to improve. You’ll have less car maintenance headaches to deal with and hopefully no tickets since you’ll be a better driver! There’s another goal for this year… no traffic tickets in 2019.

Do you have any different resolutions and goals than we do for your car? While the resolutions we put together are great goals for everyone, we realize that it’s important to have goals specific to you. Maybe you are aiming to save money for a new car or maybe there’s specific maintenance you need to have done to your car. Whatever your resolutions are let us know on Facebook and Twitter! Here’s to a safe and happy 2019 on the roads!