Costs and Responsibilities of Owning Your Car

Choose the car you want to own and drive

Click "Go Find It" to shop for a used or new car in your area.

Make

Model

Year

Price

Most people don’t pay cash for a car, they get a loan from a bank.

When you pay back the loan, you pay it over a number of years, usually one payment per month over 4 or 5 years. Each payment includes some of the money you borrowed and some interest. Interest is additional money you pay to the bank for the service of loaning you the money. It’s like the cost of the money you borrowed. Interest is computed using the APR, or annual percentage rate interest.

Annual percentage rate

Compute your monthly loan payment

To compute a car payment (or any other loan payment) requires some business math. Most people use a calculator. You’ll use a calculator on the web. Before you click, remember the price of your car and the APR above. You’ll need them for the calculation. If you have trouble here, you can call a bank. Ask for a loan officer and tell them the cost of your car. They can tell you the payment amount. If you need more help, ask your sponsor.

Loan payment

Just for fun, multiply the amount of the monthly payment by the number of months to pay off the car:

License plates for your car

Call your local Department of Motor Vehicles to get an estimate.

Costs of maintaining your car

Call a local auto service center to get estimates for your car, or look up costs in the newspaper. Enter costs per service.

Oil changes, each time:

Winterizing, each time:

Tires, for a set of four:

How much will gas cost?

Gas prices lately are skyrocketing. The costs add up quickly...

How many miles will you drive each day?

How many miles per gallon does your car get?

What's the current cost for a gallon of gas?