When it comes to registering your car, it can be tempting to procrastinate, especially if you're on a budget. When you're facing a tight budget, you can think of a lot better things than your vehicle registration to spend your money on. Unfortunately, if you don't register your car before it expires, you could be facing some serious penalties. Here are four potentially devastating affects of postponing the payment of your California vehicle registration renewal fees.
You'll Pay Increased Registration Fees
If you don't pay your registration fees when they're due, you're going to be looking at increased fees. In fact, the fees go up quite a bit the longer you delay payment. That's because they tack on late fees and penalty fees to the cost of your registration fees. In the state of California, those late fees and penalty fees can add hundreds of dollars to your original registration fees. Don't risk increased fees. Pay your registration fees as soon as they're due.
You'll Face Fines for Traffic Violations
If you're going to be driving your car without current tags, you may get away with it for a few weeks. That's because there's usually a short grace period before law enforcement will begin pulling you over for expired tags. However, once that grace period is over, you're going to start getting pulled over. You'll also start receiving traffic violations for driving your car without current tags. Each violation you receive will have a monetary fine attached to it. Those fines can run hundreds of dollars, and will increase with each subsequent violation you receive. You can avoid those traffic violations, and the stiff fines, by registering your car as soon as it comes due.
Your Car May be Impounded
If you continue to drive your car with expired tags, law enforcement may stop giving you traffic citations, and move on to impounding your car. Unfortunately, once they impound your car for driving your car on expired tags, you'll need to pay the fees to get your car registered. You'll also need to pay the fines you've received for the violations, the towing fees to remove car, and the impound fees you accrued while you're car was at the impound lot. Those fees could end up costing you thousands of dollars to get your car back.
You May Not Be Covered in an Accident
If you're involved in a car accident while your registration is expired, you may end up with problems regarding your insurance coverage. Some insurance companies will not honor policies if the registration is expired on the vehicle. If you're at fault for the accident, that could leave you personally responsible for the damage to the other vehicle, not to mention any injuries that were sustained.
Don't end up facing a financial nightmare. If your tags are about to expire on your car, make sure you pay the fees as soon as possible. The ramifications can be disastrous if you don't.