How did you buy your car?

[littlebylittleandlittle]

I do a lot of driving and I see so many big, really nice cars on the road and sometimes wonder how the majority of people buy cars these days? Do people use PCP or HP deals to buy/lease them monthly or tend to buy outright?

I'm looking to buy a new (er) car but have always preferred to buy my cars using trade-in value plus cash so that I own it up front, usually in the region of 8-10k.

But when I see lots of cars worth 30, 40, 50k upwards on the roads I wonder if most people buy cars on PCP now? How do you get round the mileage allowance? Some seem to be set quite low at 6000 miles a year.

So yes just curious as to how people pay for cars these days. On monthly payments or buy up front?

Outright now, but used to do a company car which was actually shocking, and prior to that the £500 car, had 3 of those over 4 years…. cheap as chips.

We took a loan out with bank 10k. Bog standard family car. Nothing fancy 2015. 65000 miles.

Just popped back to the thread and it appears to have become a bit of a brag-fest. 😂

I think the PP who said that MN isn't really representative of the nation, is correct. I too am not a fan of debt when it comes to something that depreciates so fast but it looks like I'll need to borrow some this time as my standard 10k budget really isn't getting me what I need and I'm reluctant to put savings at it as it feels like I might as well put the cash down the loo.

Interesting to hear how others approach it though.

If you have savings to pay for it it doesn't make any sense borrowing money. It there's interest on it as you end up paying more. I'd pay with savings and then put back into savings a monthly amount. Loan it to yourself and repay it to yourself!

Same as you, trade in and chuck some cash at it too. I have an ex-Motability car, had under 5k on the clock when I bought it at two and a half years old. The previous two were also ex-Motability too.

I think the Idea is if you have £10k in savings and amcan get a 0% loan, then you keep your £10k to earn Interest and pay the £10k to finance over the period.

The idea is that after X years you'll have £10k + interest and the car.

Otherwise you have £10,000 and a car if you pay in cash at the beginning.

Yes, hence saying (okay I mistyped it 😅) "if there's interest on it."

0% loans are like unicorns aren't they? At least for the extended period of time I might want to pay back 10 grand. But I suppose everyone's circumstances are different, maybe banks just hate me 😂

The 0% deals for cars are usually PCP... I don't like them, as they "trap" you into a cycle of trading in your car and spending more money overall, because you don't want to pay the final payment because it's still £15k left to pay (or whatever!) So you go "oh okay, take the car, I'll pay the charges and trade it in for £10k off the next one" and sign up again for another few years.

If they weren't making money on the PCP they wouldn't be offering them, even at 0%!

I got the Volvo deal and it's a normal 0%.

We bought our cars outright, we normally get 1-2 year old ones and drive them until they are too expensive to maintain, so around 10-12 years. That means we have enough time to save up again.

We got a finance plan offered for our current one but I wasn't impressed by the conditions.

I know several people who lease their cars and then trade them in a couple of years later. I personally don't like it as I would be utterly afraid to scratch it or be in an accident.