Thanks for sharing your thoughts on that Marc.

Clearly, having more knowledge rather than less is usually good thing. Thus, knowing how to maintain and repair your car is not a bad idea.

Having said that, if you review the Edmunds cost estimates for say the hybrid Camry, you’ll see that the average annual cost of maintenance and repairs for the first 5 years are about $870/year, and for the next 5 years are about $1570/year.

Since the costs are not zero (parts and supplies cost) even if you do them yourself, let’s say you save 75% of the above costs through DIY. That puts your savings at an average of $915/year for 10 years of ownership.

Though nothing to be sneezed at, this saves you just about 16% of the average full cost of ownership. It also doesn’t affect the math that makes buying new and driving for 10 years rather than buying used and driving for 5 years.