Five signs your car is costing too much

Published on 28 April, 2026

Is your vehicle trying to tell you that it’s time to get something newer?

Overview

With everyone tightening their financial belts and protecting their wallets these days, running a car can be one of the most expensive outgoings in a household’s budget.And it might well be that you’ve also noticed that, recently, your vehicle seems to be draining your funds faster than previously. Here are five signs that your car is beginning to cost you too much.

1.    Raised fuel costs
Petrol and diesel prices have been on a rise for years anyway, so you might think that you can explain away increased fuel bills through that mechanism, aside from wars and invasion of course. However, as internal-combustion cars get older and are showing higher kilometres on the odometer, their engines can become less efficient than they were when they were new, increasing fuel bills. Worn suspension componentry, also more typical on older vehicles, might also be throwing the alignment and balancing of the car out, so that it’s not rolling down the road in as smooth a fashion as it was originally designed to, concomitantly raising fuel consumption in the process. It might be time to switch to something more efficient like a hybrid – or even something with no engine at all, like an electric vehicle (EV).

2.    Raised insurance costs
Once cars reach a certain age, insurance companies tend to view them as higher risk. As a result, the insurance firms jack up premiums on older cars, even if the market value of the vehicle in question is on the decrease year-on-year.

3.    Raised taxes
Again, not one that should come unexpectedly to you – after all, if you did plenty of pre-buying research then you’ll have known what the motor tax implications of any vehicle would have been when you first purchased it. However, as the government can change tax requirements as time goes on, you might find your car is requiring a bigger bill annually just to keep it on the road. For instance, if you’ve got any car registered before 2008 and it has an engine bigger than 2.3 litres in capacity, you might be fed up of paying out a four-figure motor tax bill each year. Even newer cars can land you with big tax bills, though, as the 2008-2021 system heavily penalised anything registered in this time period that emitted more than 190g/km of CO2 (you pay either €1,250 or a whopping €2,400 per annum if so). That continued with the present tax system, which has been in force for all cars registered from January 1, 2021, but the flipside is that it rewards cars with lower emissions ratings. Therefore, if you’re looking to minimise your motoring budget and you’ve got an old gas-guzzler, it might make financial sense in the longer term to switch up to a newer, lower-carbon car from a taxation perspective.

4.    Raised repair costs
Nobody wants to damage their car, but as we know, accidents can happen. In the wake of such a thing occurring, you might have discovered that the prices of car parts are higher than ever right now. As a result, you could decide not to repair the damaged vehicle at all, instead either keeping it and driving it in a less-than-pristine state, selling it at a reduced rate for a quick upgrade to something with flawless bodywork, or even (if going through insurance) writing it off if the repair costs are too high.

5.    Raised servicing costs
More commonplace than the above point is the expenditure of ongoing maintenance on older cars. As they start triggering NCTs, initially on a two-year cycle but then annually once they’re past ten years old, that’s an added expense on its own – but if it keeps coming back from its testing with a lengthy advisory list of items that need either repairing or replacing to make the car road-legal, it can start to become a chore to get it sorted out. Servicing schedules, too, can see garages telling you there’s a pricey to-do list on the car once they’re older. So even if you keep the car out of trouble in terms of accident damage, if your ongoing basic maintenance costs are creeping up and up, it might well convince you it’s time to get something newer to mitigate that expenditure.
 

Shane O'Donoghue

Shane grew up in his dad’s garage in Cork, sparking a lifelong love of cars. After studying engineering in the UK, he turned to motoring journalism in the late 1990s. He now runs CompleteCar.ie and a motoring editorial agency, writing for top outlets like CarsIreland and Carzone.