To ask if DS’ car plan is realistic

[Dsdriving]

So DS is 17 (18 next month) and desperately wants a car. To be honest I’m not sure he wants it for the right reasons, he’s very insecure and think he likes that it will make him look cool. Me and his dad cannot afford to contribute and he knows this so he will buy one himself from his job he says. He earns £9.81 an hour and has been working practically all summer plus some savings from before that so he now has £1,500 in the bank. When he goes back to college he plans on working 15 hours per week so that would be £147.15 for petrol, insurance, etc. So I have to ask is this all realistic will he actually be able to afford this and what kind (if any) car will be able able to get for £1,500. I would really prefer he didn’t do this but as it’s his money and he’s almost an adult I don’t feel I can say no. I absolutely can’t afford to be bailing him out or giving him petrol money or anything like that and also he’s quite naive at times and I don’t want him scammed. Any advice?

Road tax too

If you get the right car at the right age (pre 2017, not sure how far it goes back, but it's a good few years, so probably enough, road tax can be had for £30 pa or less, so a good saving when running a car on a low budget.

You just need to look for a small low emissions car, probably petrol.

I would say he can only afford it once he's saved enough to pay upfront for the whole year's insurance (works out cheaper this way) and tax as well as buying a car. That way it's certain he'll be able to afford to actually run it (fuel, repairs, MOT, service).

Whatever he does make sure he gets fully comprehensive insurance.

Has he even got his license?

It's not realistic at all

Insurance, tax and fuel will be more than that every month.

And for £1500 he would struggle to get a car that's not falling apart at the seams

My first car was £1600 an old VW Polo. I loved it. He earns £600 a month and has few outgoings, it's a good first step with financial responsibility you should be proud of him, he's not out blowing it on drinking etc

This.

Be proud of him. He has a goal and he is working hard for it. If he fails it will have been a good life lesson.

So out of interest I just did an online quote with Direct Line for a fake 17year old male at my address, i picked the reg plate of a small car on autotrader that was less than £1500 and comprehensive insurance was £4300 a year!!

Hi OP....so my DS (now 17) worked all last summer when 16 and bought himself a car. It's changed his life and he has had the most amazing summer out and about with his friends. It is an incredibly beautiful car and has definitely upped his cred. He paid £2k and insurance is about £1.2k. It was a cat S so that's why it was cheap. However...and it's a big however...the exhaust just fell off and he is getting quotes around the £1k mark to fix it.

Overall, if he has the cash to buy and insure it up front, with income to cover the fuel, then it may be doable. However unexpected costs may blow the idea out of the water.

It's still not enough

I've just done a dummy quote for a 17 year old male and the insurance costs were over £400 a month.

Plus tax, and fuel that's more than £600 a month

A word of warning about getting insurance dummy quotes. Make sure he gets the quotes for a new driver with a full licence (even if he hasn't passed his test yet), not a learner driver with a provisional licence. Insurance will be cheaper for a learner driver with a provisional licence (which might feel counter intuitive) because they have to have an experienced driver in the car with them.

I bought my car for £950 last October. 10ys old. A genuine 40k on the clock, FSH and one previous elderly owner. It's a 1.1 and fuel efficient. To that end he won't necessarily be driving an old banger that's falling apart.

So don't be put off by comments saying he can't afford to buy a car thats any good. Its running it which will be the expensive part but make sure he gets a black box fitted and the insurance will be a tiny bit cheaper.

People love to put folk down on here. He CAN afford it as long as the car he gets doesn't need major repairs but that is a risk everyone takes with buying a second hand car.

Both of my adult children have got their first year's insurance for around 1-1.2k. A £100 a month. That's fine from his £600 earnings. Fuel is expensive but if that is what he wants to spend his money on then off he goes.

Well done him for working through the figures and being willing to work each week to pay for a car.

Get him to do some insurance quotes with random cars little 1.1 / 1.2 ones.

When dc passed although it was a 1.6 it was 1800 a year insurance with black box.
Fuel around 100pcm as uses for college

Some older cars are better.
Mine and dcs are 2013 and 2016.
Apart from normal wear and tear, brake. Pads, servicing etc. Weve never had any issues. Dcs 2013 car was £650 and apart from 1 tyre, a ball joint and service its cost nothing. Its passed every mot except 1 since new.

All the people saying fuel is expensive- how does he travel now? In the late 90s when I passed the £10 I needed for school bus fare far exceeded the £4 or so used in fuel (plus a five minute drive vs almost an hour using the bus, time you don't have spare in A level year) and it's way cheaper for me now to drive to town than use the bus!

A £1500 car will be fine, it's understanding the insurance cost. Add a parent as named driver- I imagine there is plenty of legit advice on Moneysavingexpert to make it as cheap as possible.

@nutellachurro There are cars which will cost less than that to insure and there are cars available to buy for less than £1500 that are perfectly fine, as many have have already mentioned. It is doable. He can save up for a few more months so he can pay more towards the insurance upfront thus taking the monthly cost down making it manageable.

On the figures provided - £1500 saved and income of £600 minus other bills - is less than many many people across the country buy and run cars with. He has shown to be driven and worked hard to achieve buy a car. That is a goal OP should support him with and be proud of. It is not impossible or unachievable.

I am so not the person your DS aspires to be. I view cars as a tool for getting about, and not as a status marker. Eight years ago I bought a 90k mileage Golf diesel (it was a steal), and I sort of plan to get it to 250k; I'm at 150k now. I paid £3,000 for it and it's secondhand value is still £1200-1500, so I have already had eight years of usage, for about £300 each year plus maintenance and fuel.

It's not glamorous but it still does 85 mph on a motorway and gives me almost 50mpg, and fits in the dawg comfortably. Which is all I want from a car.

Look on line at what he can get for £1500 and I would say don’t bother. Anything that isn’t falling apart has gone through the roof lately.

If you can find something that has had only 2 or3 owners, full service history, 12 months mot and below average mileage then maybe have a look.
Check out leasing a car. We did this for Dd when she first passed her test as by the time I had added up depreciation, mots, mpg and breakdowns etc it worked out at the same amount of buying then selling a car 2 years later I didn’t even need to put any money down.
Although prices have gone a bit crazy lately on everything
Insurance is a small fortune as an 18 year old first time driver and then petrol, toll charges, tax etc is more expense as well as breakdown cover. (I think Dd was paying £2400 per year for her first year but was quoted as much as £36000)

I don’t know where you are but you might want to look around London and the Home Counties for Diesel cars that are having to be got rid of because of the expansion of the ULEZ ZONE in the next few months.

Go into it with his eyes wide open. Everything from the cost of a tax disc to how much a particular aged car depreciates to insurance number categories. 1-50 I think with 1 being the cheapest and 50 being a Tesla and the most expensive and problems older cars of particular makes have
Also petrol if you haven’t got a Costco card or a Costco filling station near you then make sure he has all the loyalty cards for all the petrol stations and checks out the cheapest petrol in the area when he fills up.

Just had a look on eBay at what is for sale
for £1500 with a 2l or less engine, up to 12 years old, that has less than 100,000 on the clock and I would say at least 20% or more of the 80 cars that fit that description over the whole of the U.K.are non runners/no mot or spares and repairs.
That is just in the description. Take out the ones that are advertising the lease payments and the ones that are up for auction which will go for more than £1500 and the ones that have already been written off but can be driven and you are looking at very very few cars available

We were looking earlier in the year for Dd and it has definitely gone up so much.
I used to swear by my cheap and cheerful cars but there isn’t anything that could be described as a cheap run about now.

For that sort of price, if you think of the car as disposable and buy one with as near as possible to 1 years MOT with the least possible advisories and it lasts 10 months (probable) that's £150 a month (cheaper than a lease car/pcp). Then insure with Marmalade (insurance paid for per mile) he'll be building up his no claims. You just have to make sure he constantly checks the oil and water levels in an old car, has jump leads and treats the car kindly. Driving at an early age has improved my son's self belief no end (painfully shy). Wishing your son many happy miles on the road and bags of confidence!

I would fully support and encourage him, the money will be tight but it's possible.

Regarding insurance, it's worth thinking outside the box about what type of car you consider, it's not as simple as smaller & less powerful equals cheaper. Often bigger uncool 'dad' type cars can be cheaper as they aren't crashed much so the statistics show them as lower risk. Stuff like old Volvo saloons etc.

Fixing and maintaining knackered old cars is a right of passage for teenage boys, getting a car won't be a problem but there will be hours of trawling the internet to find the one which is insurable, accessible and in a suitable state.