Costs and pricing
Repair or replace calculator
Repair cost against vehicle value, framed as months of payments rather than a verdict.
A private-sale figure for the car in its current condition, not a dealer trade-in price.
What you would actually pay each month for the next car — the real comparison, rather than its sticker price.
“Is it worth fixing” is the wrong question
The usual rule of thumb — never spend more than the car is worth — sounds sensible and falls apart immediately. A car worth $3,000 that needs a $2,000 repair is not obviously a bad deal, because the alternative is not free. The alternative is payments on something else, plus tax, plus insurance that usually goes up on a newer car.
The question worth asking is narrower: how many months of payments on a replacement does this repair buy, and will the car last longer than that? If a $1,800 repair equals five months of payments and the car has two more years in it, the arithmetic answers itself.
Spread the repair over the time it buys
The bottom rows are the useful ones. A repair is not a $1,800 event — it is a monthly cost over however long it keeps the car going. Spread over two years, $1,800 is $75 a month, which is almost always less than financing something newer.
Be honest about the horizon, though. If the car has other things brewing, the repair is buying you months rather than years, and the monthly figure climbs fast.
What this cannot tell you
This is money math and nothing else. It has no idea whether your car is safe to drive, whether the repair is the right repair, or whether something worse is about to fail. Those need a mechanic looking at the actual vehicle.
It also will not tell you what to do. Two people with identical numbers reasonably decide differently, depending on whether they can absorb a surprise bill or need certainty for the next three years.
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