for treating financed cars as unaffordable?

I’m with you OP. Loads of friends lease/finance their cars and that’s totally fine of course. But I have always owned my car outright and always bought secondhand within whatever budget I had at the time. Consequently, my current car is very boring, but equally I don’t have to answer to a leasing company about the minor dents and scratches I’ve managed to collect 😝

I always got finance for cars, but managed to keep them tidy so trade in was never much less than I'd paid. I put £200 a month into a separate account each month to cover MOTs, servicing and repairs and that built up to pay towards my next car. So every time I changed cars, I traded up, but my loan/monthly bill was less. The last car I bought was in2019 and I had enough built up, plus my well looked after trade in to mean I could buy outright.

I just returned my leased car in September and bought a 10k second hand car. I have mixed feelings - i really enjoyed driving the new leased car and never worrying about maintenance. Buuuut I love having that £400pm back in my pocket for savings/holidays/home improvements.

Going to keep it for at least a couple of years and see how it goes. Agree with other posters though that the cost of 2nd hand cars are just insane now.

In my mind the best option is to get a car that’s 2-4 years old that you pay for in full. very few people are able to do this, so the next best option is to get a loan from the bank and pay it off as soon as you can.

I have always been the same and saved and bought cars outright but I can no longer afford that sort of lump sum and also need a bigger car this time around, and even spreading it out with a loan, I'd be paying it off over the best part of a decade and hoping the car was still running well. As it is, I'm now looking at a cheap lease around £200/month for 2 years then I can reassess my car needs. I can add a service/tyres/maintenance plan to that so I don't have any unexpected costs whatsoever. When I work out the actual cost of my current old car (what I paid for it minus what I'll get for it, divided over how long I've had it, average servicing costs, MOT costs, new tyres, other repair costs) it's actually much the same. I'm still feeling weird and nervous about it but I know it needs more expensive work in the near future so it will be worth it!

I’m with you, OP.
‘Don’t spend money you haven’t got on stuff you don’t need to impress people you don’t know’.

@WhateverTarrance this is what GAP insurance is a lifesaver for! I think mine worked out as £10 a month for the duration of the finance so I don’t need to worry about it, definitely worth the small cost to me. I think it’s definitely got more popular too.

But a lease car isn't owned by the person that leases it. The lease is a monthly fee for the pleasure of driving it... and if the car is a write off due to an accident, this can be very costly indeed. There will be a discrepancy between what the Insurance will pay out and what the lease company said the car is worth.

I've just paid off my first car, honestly it became a sinking money pit at the end. Never again. Even if it means I can't have an as nice car.

New cars ain’t cheap any more, even a moderately spec’d M4 is north of £100k these days. I saw a Porsche recently with £300k of options alone.

I’ll never own a home, don’t own music or tv series or films

i’m just thinking of the hassle that is going to mechanics etc

leasing a car takes that all away from you

This comes up quite a bit.

Many people prefer a newer car, but don’t want to own a depreciating asset so wouldn’t spend £££ in one lump sum.

Why on earth anyone would spend one hundred thousand pounds on something they use to go to Tesco or do the school run is beyond me, absolutely pointless

I buy a year old car via bank loan , keep it for double the length of the loan so have several years of no monthly loan or finance payments.

We’ve done both in the past….had a lease car…very nice, brand new etc etc…when it came to handing it back ( in 2020) we were “ billed” £300 for a few dents inside the footwell where the seat belt buckle had hit it…..so we bought our next car and the one after that and I think we will carry on being an owner driving family….x

I had a similar thought last year OP. Realising the that people have new kitchens, bathrooms and cars because they're less risk averse than me and are ok with paying out via HP/loans each month for newer things.

I don't like the idea of all my pay being spent before it's earned but the price of second hand cars has rocketed over the last few years so it's increasingly harder to save for something newish so I think we'll end up on some monthly payment when we need a new car.

10 and 12 year old cars here, both over 100k and doing ok so far...

I see your thinking, but even if you had 100k to spend on a car you shouldn’t buy it outright because it’s a depreciating asset, unless you know it’s a car that’s going to increase in value - but if your car was likely to increase in value it would cost far more than 100k in the first place

I think a lot of new cars are priced to be leased rather than bought.
But I agree, I would rather pay for 2nd hand and own it outright after a few years than add to my monthly outgoings indefinitely via leasing.

Google "You will own nothing and be happy". It's the way the work is heading. However, I feel the same as you and would rather own my tangible objects.

I've just switched to SIM only as this time round my phone is still functioning at the end of the contract. But I own my vehicles and no one can take them from me!

I like leasing. I get a lovely car. I don't own the depreciation and I hand it back when its getting older for someone else to deal with the sale of it. I dont need to worry about MOTs, breakdown costs or repairs as everything is under warranty. I just need to put it in for servicing and replace the occasional tyre.

My eldest worked it out between what you loose in depreciation and interest you pay in the loan there’s isn’t a great deal of difference you pay/loose each month
except for he has a brand new 29k car that won’t need mot for 3 years with manufacturing warranty
against a 5 year old plus car that he has to maintain and mot

I have always avoided car finance and would agree with your thoughts about it. But I have had a massive change of heart. I have always bought second hand but prices have gone up so much and to be perfectly honest I want a new car. I'm done with worrying about MOTs and sick and tired of clapped out old bangers that may or may not start. I'm going for a three year lease on something brand new and I'm ever so excited.

I own my car. It’s 12 years old. I brought second hand when it was 4 years old. I also prefer to own and have no debt. But when I need to replace this car it’s going to cost a lot more than it did last time! Second hand car prices have rocketed. I have the option of a company car which I might consider.

It's a status symbol for some people.

See: all the white Range Rovers.

If you can't afford the car, you find a way to afford the monthly payments so people think you can afford the car.

(My car is a 2009 Fiesta. It cost £1500 to get through its last MOT. But I reckon there's a couple of years left in it!)

Some people are more into cars than others, I've had a classic and a new sports car but very happy with my elderly Merc now, its reliable (touch wood) and doesn't cost me much to maintain beyond tyres (flipping potholes around here) and the occasional oil change and I bought it outright at two years old so no finance/lease payments over the years - the way i see it a car literally has the job of getting me from a-b, but who has the best car is almost like a competition among some of my male colleagues.