Running your car can be one of the biggest drains on your yearly budget but there are ways to cut the cost on petrol, car insurance, MOTs and breakdown cover.

Cutting the cost of petrol

Petrol or diesel is the largest expenditure for most, especially with the average price of a litre now well over £1. Yet by buying your petrol cheaper, paying the right way, maintaining your vehicle and driving better, you can cut costs by around 30%, saving £100s a year.

Step 1: Clear your car of clutter

Roofracks, air conditioning that's constantly on, not having your tyres pumped up, having excess weight in the boot; all these things make your car less efficient and can add 10% or more to your annual petrol costs.

For more info read Martin’s full Cheaper Petrol article.

Step 2: Drive more efficiently

Driving less aggressively can massively reduce petrol costs. Simply not over-accelerating, especially in city driving, allowing the car to slow down more gradually rather than heavy breaking and general road awareness can cut 20% off petrol costs.

Step 3: Find the cheapest petrol supplier

A nifty website called www.petrolprices.com is a simple and free way to check out the cheapest filling station in your area. Simply sign up, enter your postcode and it will list the cheapest petrol stations in your area.

Step 4: Pay the right way

Also look out for any petrol promotions and use loyalty cards when buying fuel. If you’ve got a good credit rating you could get paid every time you fill up by getting a cashback credit card and, provided you pay off in full by Direct Debit each month, it won’t cost you a penny. This can make you £100s a year.

Read Martin’s guide to the Best Cashback Cards.

Slash the cost of MOTs, insurance and breakdown cover

It’s not just the fuel cost that adds to the annual motoring bill, but savings are easy to come by.

• Car insurance. Using a combination of web comparison sites and cashback websites can slice your costs to the bone. The current cheapest MoneySaver’s record is £26 for a year. Can you beat it?
  
  Read Martin’s full Cheap Car Insurance article for more info.
  
  
• Breakdown Cover. Don’t automatically jump for the big famous names. There are roadside recovery firms with similar call-out plans to the better known beasts who can give you policies at a fraction of the cost.
  
  Read Martin’s full Cheap Breakdown Cover guide.
  
  
• MOTs. If you’ve a high spec, reliable new car that’s unlikely to fail on any counts, go for the cheapest MOT test you can find. Yet if you are likely to need repairs, anecdotal evidence strongly suggests taking it to a council run MOT centre that doesn’t do repairs is a lot cheaper.
  
  For full details and a list of council-run MOT test centres go to Martin’s Cheap MOT guide.

We invited a volunteer into the studio to find out how much she could slash her diesel bills by. Claire, from Derbyshire, spends £3,300 a year on fuel by driving 30,000 miles a year. By following Martin's steps she could slash £750 from her annual bill.