Q. I'm buying a Chrysler Aspen and they're offering me a lifetime warranty to cover all electrical parts on the vehicle for $30 a month with a $100 deductible per incidence. I'm going to have a six-year loan and, barring unforeseen circumstances, plan on keeping this vehicle beyond that time. Is the lifetime warranty worth paying for?

A. Extended warranties are big profit makers for dealerships, which is why the sales staff pushes them very, very hard.

But they're almost always a bad deal.

Your Chrysler Aspen will come with a 36,000-mile, bumper-to-bumper factory warranty that will cover virtually every part of the car, including the electrical system.

Then Chrysler's new, heavily promoted lifetime powertrain warranty kicks in and continues to cover the engine and transmission for as long as you own the car (and you bring it in for an inspection at every five-year anniversary).

That makes this one of the very best factory warranties offered by any automaker, period.

Although that doesn't leave your dealer much room to sell you an extended warranty, it sounds like it's trying to get you to buy one that covers the electrical system.

First of all, this isn't really a warranty, it's an insurance policy complete with deductibles and other insurance-like rules designed to limit what's actually covered and make it hard to collect if you have a problem.

You won't need it for the first three years because all repairs will be covered by the bumper-to-bumper warranty.

But you'll be paying $30 a month, or $1,080, for coverage you don't need.

Then, let's say a component that's covered by your policy breaks after five years. You'll have paid $1,800 in premiums and must pay the first $100 of the repair bill.

Just to break even on your extended warranty, you'd need to have an electrical problem that costs $1,900 to fix.

If you keep paying on the policy for six years and never need it, you'll be out $2,160.

You can see why car dealers love to sell extended warranties.