When it comes to Secaucus, New Jersey, owning and maintaining a car is taking a new turn. Car ownership has changed, with the driver now carrying a greater portion of the financing.

S&S Automotive, a nearby repair shop, is currently struggling to maintain reasonable prices for its loyal clientele. The task has grown more challenging, according to owner Keith Skaglione, and the numbers tell a powerful story.

Just a few years ago, the cost of maintaining a car might have been a fraction of what it is today.

Skaglione stated, “The minimum of his shop's services is at least 10% more than it was just two years ago. Before, we would just do it yearly, but now it's a dance every three to six months.” The key query relates to a new car's annual cost as well as its ownership and maintenance costs.

The bill last year broke the $12,000 mark, which is out of reach and over $11,000 of the previous year. It is noted that this doesn't even include the monthly car payments, which have seen a spike due to rising interest rates.

Additionally, Heather Trumkey, a mother of six from Atlanta, found herself reluctantly parting ways with her SUV. She claimed that the cost of maintenance and operation, along with monthly bills, continues to surge. Trumpkey's insurance soared north of $100 every month. Regrettably, she's not alone: car insurance rates were up more than 20% last year, the highest yearly increase ever seen by insurers as prices for claims rose. Reasons for this surge are manifold; reckless driving increases the number of claims, while climate-related events multiply on the roads and total the cars. This combination has insurers shelling out more money, and drivers like Trumkey are left with higher premiums. Since 1969, Keith Skaglione still worked in the shop that's been a Secaucus fixture. An old-style body-repair man, he faces a changed automotive landscape.

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Your modern-day car is far from the type of car your grandparents used to drive. It is well equipped with sensors and cameras of all kinds that make the road much safer but also more costly to fix should something eventually go wrong. He said some of the cars in his shop have as many as 60 computers, making it more complicated to repair them.

For long-time customers like Alan Bonin, the rising costs are an unavoidable reality. Bonin is frank to admit that at the end of it all, it is the customers who feel the pinch of soaring fuel prices and labor costs. Though it's a very tough road to hew, such as that of S&S Automotive, a local repair shop, this sets the mind to hunkering down and keeping on keeping on, offering the community stable service. In a world where with every mile driven, the bills just keep on adding up, the future of car ownership has turned into a big if for many. For the drivers who fight it, so too do local businesses and the communities that these drivers visit, who can only hope for anything but a potholed road ahead.

In conclusion, From roughly $11,000 the year before, the total annual cost of owning and maintaining a new car increased to over $12,000 last year. Along with rising interest rates came an increase in monthly car payments is becoming unsustainable for some drivers.

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