Do You Need Extended Auto Warranty Coverage?

Do you need extended auto warranty coverage?

Purchasing an auto extended warranty is a decision that can impact your long-term financial goals. Either you don’t buy one and suffer the brunt of continuous damage to your car for the next year or so, or you buy one and end up reeling in budgetary pain over unexhausted premium payments. But wondering if you need extended auto warranty coverage is an easy question to answer, you just need the details first.

To know whether you need extended auto warranty coverage, consider these basic tips to understand what it means to enter into such an investment. Understand that purchasing an extended warranty for automobiles may sound like an easy decision to make, but it does have several underlying circumstantial factors many misguided people do not understand.

But first, what really is an extended warranty?

An extended warranty serves as a protection against the viciously-costly cycle of sending your car in for repairs, typically by extending the effectivity of your manufacturer’s bumper-to-bumper deal. The insurance company offering such a deal hold the discretion over putting in more useful add-ons owing to your car’s time-sensitive durability, but all the previous benefits stay.

Your dealer can sell you an extended warranty for your car, albeit primarily for earmarking greater profits on their end. Typical of every dealership’s selling point about extended warranties run along the lines of extending your car’s current warranty deal, but such reasoning is in itself contingent to many other factors related to time and money – things that dealers usually won’t tell you.

Assess the need to purchase an extended warranty

Back in the old days, extended warranties would have elicited a flood of “yes” answers due to the general unreliability of vehicles back then. But seeing as extended warranties have come to venture forth in an era where more insurance options and better reliability among vehicles proliferate, anyone would probably entertain extended warranty offers with a grain of salt.

Despite pressure tactics coming from your dealer, you need to ask yourself about purchasing an extended warranty – whether it’s totally necessary or just a waste of your hard-earned money. The need for an extended warranty comes from a peculiar set of circumstances that vary from person to person, so pay attention to your needs more than anything else.

Say, for instance, the coverage itself doesn’t just cut your present issues with your car (add to that your intent to let it go after a few years), or that you’re residing in a location with precarious weather conditions the coverage doesn’t include. From a situational point of view, look at an extended warranty as an additional benefit that can cost you more or turn into a worthy purchase. That alone will help in understanding if you need extended auto warranty coverage.

In case you find it difficult to determine whether an extended warranty is something that you might need in the future, then keep yourself first within these considerations:

• You plan to use your car for years beyond its manufacturer’s warranty
• You’re looking to increase your car’s value by putting it up for sale
• You purchase a secondhand car whose manufacturer’s warranty has already expired

Make it a point to keep a more skeptical approach to auto extended warranty offers from your dealers if you’re confronted with these kinds of situations:

• You have plans to sell the car right before its manufacturer’s warranty ends
• Your car is under leasing and running under a manufacturer’s warranty coverage
• Your leased car doesn’t go past its mileage limit under its manufacturer’s warranty coverage

Tips for purchasing an extended warranty

An auto extended warranty is truly beneficial as far as your financial health is concerned, but is contingent on several factors. But just to play on the safe side, it’s always important to heed the following tips when you’ve finally set your sights on an extended warranty purchase. These would surely enable you to make the most out of your extended warranty:

• Maximize your money allocated for purchasing an extended warranty by picking the highest coverage it can afford
• Make sure to prioritize looking for exclusionary coverage – the highest your car can get outside its manufacturer’s warranty coverage, over named component coverage
• Go for an extended warranty that includes both wear and tear and mechanical breakdown under its coverage