Ignoring the little things, however, can prove both damaging and expensive. Fortunately, the small tasks you need to do for your car won't leave you feeling as taxed.

Replace your air filter. This is one of the more commonly overlooked maintenance tips for keeping a vehicle running smoothly. Replacing the air filter is both easy and very beneficial to your car. The air filter's job is to stop contaminants from getting into the engine. This can include dust and leaves. If enough debris gets into your air filter, the engine won't be able to suck enough air into its combustion chambers, causing the car to run roughly and frequently lose power. In highly neglected cases, cars will stop running entirely. Most vehicle manuals will recommend changing the air filter at certain designated mileage intervals. For people who drive in heavy stop-and-go traffic or frequent dirt roads, it's a good idea to cut those mileage recommendations in half.

Stick to your oil-change schedule. Routinely going past the mileage recommendations for oil changes will eventually and inevitably lead you down a road no one wants to go down: the major repair road. Oil changes are inexpensive and typically take less than 30 minutes to do (if you don't do them yourself).

Rotate your tires. For new-car buyers, a tire rotation is often a perk of buying a vehicle from a dealership. Most dealers will provide free tire rotations (in addition to other services such as oil changes) whenever necessary. For those who don't have such deals or prefer to go to their private mechanics, rotating your tires should be on the docket just like oil changes and changing the air filter.

Change your transmission fluid. This is another commonly overlooked maintenance tip. Since the mileage recommendations for changing your transmission fluid can be up to every 100,000 miles (for automatic transmissions), it's no wonder this is overlooked. However, that doesn't mean it should be forgotten.