Bought a 19 Silverado back in early March. They offered me a warranty that covered everything including regular maintenance for 4k. Don't remember the mileage terms. I refused.

I bought the extended warranty when I got my 2014 Avalon Hybrid. I bought it from the dealer and paid too much. I just bought a 2017 Tundra with 23,000 miles on it and bought a similar, extended warranty from my auto insurance agent for 1/3rd the cost of the warranty I bought for the Avalon.

My son helped his girlfriend shop for a new car. He found the best price for the car (Honda Accord) from a dealer in Las Vegas and he found the best price for the warranty from a dealer in New Jersey. As a bonus, she married my son four months ago!

Seems to be pretty much two solid camps:

- No, NEVER buy the warranty.

- And some who do.

If you've got cash/means to easily pay for major repairs (multi-thousands of dollars) no problem, extended warranty is probably not necessary.

But if a $3K+ bill would be problematic financially, especially if you need the vehicle for work, then a warranty is probably not a bad idea.

You've gotten some good avenues to explore if you decide on the latter.

Boss

It's like any other insurance. If you can afford to self insure do it. If not you may need to go the other way and pay someone else.

Vote for firmly against (Must be 100% consistent)

This has been working for me:
- I never by ANY extended warranties on ANYTHING. Not $5 extra on a $40 Harbor Freight Drill, not $1,500 on a new VW. Zip
- The sum of 20 years+ 100% I am certainly up.

A few things to consider / look out for:
- Do some googling; you will find a-lot of law-suits etc. of warranty companies that have gone under and left the consumer SOL.
- The big ticket ones (Like cars) Are not really say ~$12/month. They are really $900 flat paid in full on the front end to the dealer and the 3rd party. Maybe it covers from 36-60k miles but if the car is totaled or traded before you get any use out of it you just wasted $900. (Good luck trying to get money back or your trade being worth any more another buyer or getting a higher pay out on an insurance claim.
- Same goes for GAP insurance
- The only insurance I ever regretted not getting was I think it was ~$900 to cover the wheels and tires on a CPO BMW I bought. Those things were fragile as hell and I probably dropped $2-3 K just in replacement tires and wheels over a 3 year period.

My recommendation:
- maintain a small savings account for repairs. Set aside a couple bucks each month for unexpected repairs.
- - It would be awesome if you took note of all the extended warranty offers you declined, and saved the equivalent amount yourself then see where you stand after 10 years.
- If you are really sweating it, put a smaller down payment and finance more of the car or whatever.
- keep a credit card standing by to bridge the gaps on major ones that exceed your savings.
- Absolute worst case you can finance BIG ones thru the shop or installer. Example: We had to get new central hear/air on short notice ($7.5k). I wrote a check for $2.5k and the HVAC installer had a 3rd party that financed the balance: 0% for 5 years.