To ask, if you have a car, how much you pay per month?

[Threeflyingducks]

I've had three cars in my lifetime, each one so far has been budget/secondhand and paid for outright. For the first time I'm looking to buy a car and pay per month (PCP). My days of cheap runarounds are done, I need something that is reliable for high mileage/long journeys and can fit a gaggle of children/friends in when required, with good safety standards.

Having never had a monthly car payment going out I'm a bit daunted tbh, and would appreciate views! I know it's going to be relevant to respective incomes, I'm just curious what other people see as reasonable. I've heard that lots of the very fancy cars on the road are bought by people on very low mileage/leasing so their options are more affordable than they might appear. But then a work colleague proudly told me that his car (a top of the range SUV, to be fair) was 'only' £300 a month and I thought cripes thats more than my half of the mortgage!

I know how much I'll be paying will be skewed by needing to do a lot of miles (unavoidable currently due to rural-ish location and using the car for work) but I'm curious about what people consider a typical range. Right now everything seems like such an indulgent amount, but that's probably because it's not that long since my travel expense was a weekly bus pass!

Peugot.

I don't really like PCP because , just like I'd rather own my house than rent it I I have the deposit, I'd rather have an asset at the end if I'm paying out each month. Personally I think if you're even considering the balloon payment you should get car finance instead. Interest rates are very low, so the only downside is if you end up with more maintenance costs than expected.

I've got a toyota aygo on pcp, pay £142 a month. My last car was really old and costing a fortune to keep going and I never knew if the bloody thing was going to start. My monthly payment includes servicing so apart from tax and insurance I never have to fork out anything and it's so much more economical than my previous car it costs me hardly any extra money. Will def keep with the PCP, for me it's the best way to always have a reliable car.

@OhNoNoNoNotThatOne when you say 1% of the house value, do you mean in total?
Because outside of London that means the average person will be spending between approximately £1,200 and £3,000 on a car. That isn't going to get you a decent or reliable motor these days.

Excuse me? You do realise that not everywhere outside of London is a shithole right?! The average house price where I live is between £700k - £3mil

5 hours up north from London

And some house round here go for £8-9mil

You do realise that not everywhere outside of London is a shithole right

And do you realise that some very expensive houses are in shitholes?

You could get a near mansion for about £500k where I live, and perfectly nice family houses in perfectly nice areas for about half that, or less, because prices aren't ramped up by ridiculous over-demand.

My car is worth about 10% of the value of my house and in the past has been as high as 40% but that's more a function of driving a modest company car, cost subsidised by my employer so it makes financial sense and saves an awful lot of mental load in booking hire cars every week and dealing with the hire car companies, which is a whole thread in itself, combined with house prices in line with normal earnings.

@HavenDilemma *
Excuse me? You do realise that not everywhere outside of London is a shithole right?! The average house price where I live is between £700k - £3mil*

5 hours up north from London

Pray tell where I said outside of London is a shit hole!?!? I don't live in London, in fact about 2 hours north.

My house is worth £172,000 - my car worth considerably more than £1,720, and I would not describe where I live a shit hole! Houses vary from £100k to several million here also. So please don't be so fucking precious!!!