Tired tyres

When we got our second second-hand car, I was worried that it would pass WOF due to its little issues that might be considered major by inspectors. Gladly it did pass WOF but its tyres are too wide that they are not really good for the mileage and our pockets.

The previous owner installed these mega-wide tyres that I can tell which car is ours in the dark just by looking at tyres. We requested for a quote from Tony’s Tyre Service and J thinks we should get the second quote for $200 each. I was trying to save us money by asking if we could just get 2 tyres first but apparently we can’t put 2 new right-sized tyres while the other 2 have the old mega-wide ones.

As we plan to save as much from October to December for our international trip, shelling out almost $1k for the tyres isn’t really easy to go ahead with. However, we’re moving to a house that's 18km north of the city where we work. How much that would cost us in petrol using the mega-wide tyres for the next 3 months?

That question has been nagging me. I’m starting to consider using our bond from our current apartment to finance the new tyres. J says the tyres are not threats to our driving safety but in my mind they are, to our money! There are associated costs with tyre installation such as wheel alignment, but the quote we received included that and GST. Whew!

I always prefer Tony’s over Beaurepaires. I did not see any difference in their services but Tony’s is cheaper. We even got away with haggling last year, saved us some $10 or so dollars for each tyre when we installed new tyres in our first car. Pretty awesome.

It is our goal to be smart about money and common sense tells me to get the new tyres. What do you think?