The day you buy your new car you need to begin doing things to protect the value of your car and keep it at a maximum.

These tasks can be as simple as your everyday habits and as complicated as what you need to do when its time to sell your car to the next owner. Even if you start out thinking you’ll keep your vehicle until the day it dies, that might change part-way through when you decide to sell or trade your vehicle. Let’s take a look at ten things you can do to protect your car’s value.

1. Choose the Right Parking Space

The best place to park your car is in a garage, but if you don’t have one there are some other options. You can put a cover over your car when you won’t derive your car for a couple of days. If a car cover isn’t reasonable, you’ll still need to think about the place you park. Avoid parking under a tree. Tree sap can damage your car and birds love to perch in trees and send droppings down on your car.

2. Keep Accurate and Complete Maintenance Records

The job or protecting the value of your car begins the day you take ownership of it. This means you keep complete and accurate maintenance records. If you always take your car to the same place for oil changes, tire rotations, and other regular maintenance items, they could have the records for you. This is one of the best ways to make sure you get top dollar for the vehicle when you sell it. These records could make a huge difference in the sale.

3. Protect Damage-Prone Areas of Your Car

The front end of your vehicle is prone to damage from rocks and debris on the road. While we don’t see many of the black plastic guards being used on cars today, you can have a clear one added to the front of your car. This allows you to have the look you want while protecting your vehicle from damage on the road. Mudguards also help reduce the amount of dirt and grime that gets on the paint, giving you a great way to protect the paint of the lower parts of your car.

4. Keep Your Car Clean, Especially on the Inside

Your car isn’t a trash can. Odors that get into fabrics can be nearly impossible to remove from the vehicle. Whether you have kids or you are a single person, you can and should keep the interior of your car clean and odor free. When you try and sell the car, the potential buyer will get in for a test drive and want to experience a car that smells good. Keeping your car clean is one of the best ways to protect the value of your car.

5. Smoking is Not Allowed in Your Car

Nonsmokers can smell a car that’s been smoked in as soon as they open the door. Smoking also dulls the look of the upholstery, by turning it a yellow-brown color that is extremely unattractive. If you’re a smoker, don’t do it in your car. This might be a habit you have to develop, but when you protect your vehicle by smoking elsewhere, you’ll have a larger audience that wants to buy your car when its time to sell it.

6. Protect the Paint to Keep Your Car Looking its Best

You want your car to look great while you drive it and to look almost new when you’re ready to sell the vehicle. Using a good paint protectant every time you wash or wax your car will keep the paint looking great and give you a car you can be proud to drive. By keeping your car looking great, you can protect the value of your car with the best looks, you’ll impress the next owner when it’s time to sell.

7. Keep the Miles Down if You Can

You might not have a choice but to drive your car several miles every day during your commute, but if you can keep your miles down, do so. The lower the number of miles on the vehicle, the greater the value. This is simple math and part of the calculation used by experts that determine a car’s value. Of course, you might not have this option, which you’ll have to accept.

8. Buy an Extra Set of Wheels When You Live in a Cold Climate

The best advice for winter is to have a cheap vehicle you don’t mind damaging when the foul weather hits, but if this isn’t possible, an extra set of wheels is the next best thing. By having a second set of wheels with snow tires on them, you can keep your summer alloys looking great and use the winter tires to enjoy better traction when the slippery stuff arrives.

9. Don’t Forget the Underside of Your Car

Snowy climates face salt on the roads and people that live near the ocean also face salt in the air. This salt is the enemy of the underside of your car. No matter where you life, you want to keep this area of your car clean and free of rust. One sure way to damage the value of your car is to let it get rusty. Avoid this by washing the underside every time you wash the rest of the car.

10. Drive Your Car More Conservatively

Yes, you should “drive like your grandma” when you want to keep your car’s value at its highest. This means avoiding sudden stops, hard acceleration, and hard turns. While you can go out and have a little fun pushing your car once in a while, if you drive easy most of the time, you’ll protect the working parts of the car and make them last a lot longer. Besides, smooth driving uses less gas and most of us want to get the most out of a tank of gas that we can.