Spending approx 3k on a car, what would you expect?

[DeathMetalMum]

Just that really. I'm looking at new (to me) cars at the moment and slightly disappointed at what I can find for this amount. It's mostly around 10+ year old cars (or slightly newer with v high miles) that I can find in my price range. Is that normal? When I bought my current car (approx 2 years ago) I had less than 1k to spend but it seemed like there were much better options then!

Depends what you are looking for I guess. We keep buying unfashionable cars as then we can get very low mileage ones for a decent price.

What type of car are you looking for?

You should decide the above and do some research into
A) what's available
B) what common problems you need to check for with A

High mileage isn't necessarily a problem; lots of cars will do 500,000 as long as they're properly maintained; the trick is to find one that has been