When running your vehicle, you want to ensure that it’s street legal and remains so. For instance, if your number plate (either front or rear) gets damaged or has a non-legal plate design, the car will likely fail its next MOT. Also, you could receive fines for a non-standard plate of up to £1,000, and no one wants that.
In this article, we provide some pointers for car owners to keep their car affordably on the road.
Are Your Vanity Plates Legal?
If you’ve bought a private registration mark – otherwise known as vanity plates – then you’ll have needed to get a pair of number plates to affix to the car. However, not all plate suppliers produce number plates that meet the British standard.
It’s a sad fact that many UK drivers are caught out in this manner because they weren’t aware of the rules for number plates. The reason for this rule is simple: standardising number plate design avoids those that are not easily readable. This includes CCTV cameras that through software can now automatically read number plates when they meet the current standard.
If you’ve swapped over your number plates previously and are a bit concerned, then you can always change them. Replacement plates are easy to get and this website lets you create your own but still get a legal plate design. Then a new set can be sent to you to resolve the problem once and for all.
Number 1 Plates guarantee that their replacement plates are all UK legal, and they even offer next day delivery if you need to use your car imminently.
Are You Paying Too Much at Your Local Garage?
For UK car owners, they paid on average £342 in 2018 for garage costs. While that’s the average across all car owners, 10 percent of unlucky owners paid as much as £1,000 in garage bills. What was your bill like last year? Higher or lower than the average? If your garage costs tend to be higher than this, it’s worth considering whether you have a pricey garage or a vehicle that’s seen better days? Either one will end up costing you more than you should be paying. Don’t overpay to keep everything in working order.
Car Insurance on the Rise
Car insurance is a tough one. We all must have it, so it sometimes feels like we’re victims to the insurers in this respect – there’s no way to avoid them.
To give you a point of comparison, in 2018 the average car policy cost £758. This was a 6% increase from the previous year (£715) and is expected to continue the inflation-beating increases in 2019 too.
Use an insurance shopping comparison site to seek out the best priced insurance you can for the vehicle type and coverage that you need. Bear in mind that it’s usually a false economy to drop down to ‘third party, fire and theft cover’ to save money unless your car isn’t worth much to begin with.
Smaller vehicles are less expensive to purchase, repair and insure. See if you can downsize with your next car purchase to lower the total cost of ownership to something more reasonable. This avoids the possibility of needing to use public transport because your car is costing too much to keep on the road.
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