Lifestyle

The Best Practices for Maintaining Your Car’s Value

Published

4 years ago

October 21, 2021

Second-hand car sales are booming right now, and at the best possible time – with new car availability dwindling, the value of second-hand vehicles is on the rise. The market shows no signs of slowing, making the future very bright for used car sales. But you can’t rely on the market alone to sell your car. If it isn’t in the best possible condition, it will still depreciate a significant portion of its initial value. But with these simple steps, you can maintain your car and its value at the same time – ensuring your car sells for the highest possible price.

Keep It Clean

Hoovering your car might not sound like a sure-fire way to keep it from losing value over time, but failure to keep up with simple cleaning tasks can quicken the wear of certain materials. For example: if dirt remains baked into your foot-well carpets, the fibres in your carpet will suffer over time, especially if they receive continual use. Worn interiors cut into your car’s value, and re-upholstery can be expensive. So be sure to keep up with regular car cleans, interior and exterior.

Grime left unchecked on your exterior windows can become a problem if hardened – an action as simple as switching on your windscreen wipers could result in a scratched windscreen. Something as simple as keeping your car in the shade can prevent the paintwork from fading, keeping your car looking new as possible prior to re-sale.

Keep It Serviced

Whether or not you’re selling your car, it is crucial that you send it in for regular servicing. This way, you are more likely to discover any potential issues with your car before they present themselves – usually as a nasty noise or smell, meaning they’ve caused further damage in the process. For example, timing belts or cam belts are very important for regulating the mechanical elements of your engine, and are recommended to be replaced every 4 years or 40,000 miles. Cam belt failure can cause serious problems with your pistons, and a service would be sure not to miss a cam belt due for replacement.

By that same token, booking your car MOT before sale can be beneficial to the sale. While it may seem counter-intuitive to spend money on your car before selling it, being able to advertise the car as having passed a recent MOT is a big bonus to buyers – not only indicating that it runs fine, but also that they don’t have to book their own for a while.

Keep It Stock

An easy way to accidentally throw money away in a used car sale is to keep your car modified. Used car buyers are usually looking for a car in pristine original condition, and extras such as a new stereo system or modified bodywork like spoilers and flared arches – while themselves expensive – are more likely to turn buyers off, and force you to lower your price in the process.

Keep Your Fluids Topped Up

Last but certainly not least, be sure to check your fluids regularly. Oil is especially important for your engine, and regular top-ups and oil replacements can keep it ticking over like new for some time. Brake fluid is also important to monitor, and even your coolant fluids can have a marked effect on your engine’s performance.

Lifestyle

Wanda Knight on Blending Culture, Style, and Leadership Through Travel

Published

8 hours ago

December 24, 2025

Michelle Langton

The best lessons in leadership do not always come from a classroom or a boardroom. Sometimes they come from a crowded market in a foreign city, a train ride through unfamiliar landscapes, or a quiet conversation with someone whose life looks very different from your own.

Wanda Knight has built her career in enterprise sales and leadership for more than three decades, working with some of the world’s largest companies and guiding teams through constant change. But ask her what shaped her most, and she will point not just to her professional milestones but to the way travel has expanded her perspective. With 38 countries visited and more on the horizon, her worldview has been formed as much by her passport as by her resume.

Travel entered her life early. Her parents valued exploration, and before she began college, she had already lived in Italy. That experience, stepping into a different culture at such a young age, left a lasting impression. It showed her that the world was much bigger than the environment she grew up in and that adaptability was not just useful, it was necessary. Those early lessons of curiosity and openness would later shape the way she led in business.

Sales, at its core, is about connection. Numbers matter, but relationships determine long-term success. Wanda’s time abroad taught her how to connect across differences. Navigating unfamiliar places and adjusting to environments that operated on different expectations gave her the patience and awareness to understand people first, and business second. That approach carried over into leadership, where she built a reputation for giving her teams the space to take ownership while standing firmly behind them when it mattered most.

The link between travel and leadership becomes even clearer in moments of challenge. Unfamiliar settings require flexibility, quick decision-making, and the ability to stay calm under pressure. The same skills are critical in enterprise sales, where strategies shift quickly and no deal is ever guaranteed. Knight learned that success comes from being willing to step into the unknown, whether that means exploring a new country or taking on a leadership role she had not originally planned to pursue.

Her travels have also influenced her eye for style and her creative pursuits. Fashion, for Wanda, is more than clothing; it is a reflection of culture, history, and identity. Experiencing how different communities express themselves, from the craftsmanship of Italian textiles to the energy of street style in cities around the world, has deepened her appreciation for aesthetics as a form of storytelling. Rather than keeping her professional and personal worlds separate, she has learned to blend them, carrying the discipline and strategy of her sales career into her creative interests and vice versa.

None of this has been about starting over. It has been about adding layers, expanding her perspective without erasing the experiences that came before. Wanda’s story is not one of leaving a career behind but of integrating all the parts of who she is: a leader shaped by high-stakes business, a traveler shaped by global culture, and a creative voice learning to merge both worlds.

What stands out most is how she continues to approach both leadership and life with the same curiosity that first took her beyond her comfort zone. Each new country is an opportunity to learn, just as each new role has been a chance to grow. For those looking at her path, the lesson is clear: leadership is not about staying in one lane; it is about collecting experiences that teach you how to see, how to adapt, and how to connect.

As she looks to the future, Wanda Knight’s compass still points outward. She will keep adding stamps to her passport, finding inspiration in new cultures, and carrying those insights back into the rooms where strategy is shaped and decisions are made. Her legacy will not be measured only by deals closed or positions held but by the perspective she brought, and the way she showed that leading with a global view can change the story for everyone around you.