Why don't you ask the person that paid for it last year?

http://www.edmunds.com/apps/cto/intro.do
provides an estimator for annual car costs back to model year 2000 by geographic
location.

In my area (out West but not California), for a 2000 4-dr. Accord LX Sedan, 60k
miles, bought today, assumed to be driven 15k mile each year, the average
maintenance and repair cost over the first five years of ownership was estimated
to be about $1500/year.

For fun I threw in a Manhattan, NY zip code. The maintenance & repair costs
there appear to be about the same. Hm.

I gotta say that $1500/year figure does seem high. Yet the Edmunds site claims
these figures are from actual data.

I do almost all my own maintenance and repairs on my old 1991 Civic (156k
miles). I am trying to estimate what I would have paid in the last few years if
I'd had a shop do the work I've been doing. I'm doubtful the average over the
last five years would be over $1000 a year. Maybe $500 a year, worst case, on
average. Then again, my 91 Civic is manual transmission, no air conditioning,
and is no where near as electronically extravagant as newer cars.

The estimator includes all other costs of owning a car, such as insurance, fuel,
depreciation, etc.

But anyway, good for you for laying out a montly budget! If you're into saving
carefully, I recommend the book _The Millionaire Next Door_. IIRC it mentions
that many people who became millionaires for a long time laid their monthly
budget out on a spreadsheet.

I'm going to google a bit more on this point...