Keep Above
Repair or replace the car
The car needs work, and there are two ways to be driving again. This calculator takes what the repair would cost and how much longer it would keep the car going, against what a replacement would cost and how long that would last — and counts each side over its own span to a cost per year, the only figure the two share. No winner is declared; the estimates are yours and so is the call.
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Your estimate, not the page's
Not counted while this is $0
Comes off the replacement
Put in what the fix would cost and what a replacement would cost. Nothing here is read from your accounts, and nothing is saved.
| Repairing | Replacing | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | — | — |
| Running costs over its life | — | — |
| Total over its life | — | — |
| How long that covers | — | — |
| Cost a year | — | — |
| Cost a month | — | — |
This is one of the tools built into Keep Above
Keep Above is a budgeting app where you enter your bills and income and it works out the balance you need to keep — so you can see what's safe to spend. No bank connection, no ads on your data.
About this calculator
What counts as the repair cost for a car?
Everything it would take to have this car back on the road — parts, labour and anything the same job would have to include. If the quote covers several things at once, the figure that fits the arithmetic is the whole of it, because the cost per year spreads that full amount over the extra years you think it would buy.
What goes into running costs a year here?
Whatever it takes to keep each car on the road for a year — registration, insurance, servicing, tyres, and fuel where the two would differ. The same kinds of costs belong on both sides so the comparison stays like for like; a box left at $0 simply isn't counted.
What is the matching time?
The number of years the repair would have to carry the car for its cost per year to match the replacement's — a position in the arithmetic, nothing more. When running the old one already costs more each year than the whole replacement does all-up, no length of time would match, and the page says so.
What about the trade-in?
Whatever the old car would fetch — trade-in, private sale or scrap — comes off the replacement's cost. The up-front figure can't go below zero, but the lifetime total can: a trade-in worth more than the replacement genuinely pulls it down.