AIBU in thinking that owning a car is very expensive?

[Plmoknijb123]

I’m not from the UK and am shocked at the cost of buying and owning a car here! AIBU in thinking car ownership in the UK is very expensive? Or am I missing something? And by expensive I mean it will cut into a family budget considerably.

Of course I know everything is relative, but I’m in London and from what I’ve researched it seems car ownership is very much a luxury.

Totally depends on your budget and needs. I have an 08 plate car, £13 tax a month, £75 insurance (I’m 25 and a newish driver) and then petrol can be £25-£50 depending on my mileage. £25 gets me 250/300 miles. If you’re looking at buying a new car or have a lot of parking costs then yeah it could be expensive but I don’t see how it could make a considerable dent in your budget when you compare it to rent/mortgage/food bills.
You need to shop around

Recently I looked into learning to drive. I live in London. I get travel privileges through work but I was fed up of being limited to Public Transport outside the Capital.

Mayor Sadiq Khan wants to eventually ban cars through the CC zone, even electric ones. I looked at electric cars and they are a bit more expensive. Insurance is astronomical in my area (car thefts are rife). Then tax, charging it up, all the rest. Driving lessons are expensive too. Just couldn't justify it.

I take public transport still with the occasional bicycle journey to/from Tube station. I want an electric bike to replace the pushbike. I hate hills.

The price of PT in the rest of England is ridiculously high. My parents still live in the commuter village where I grew up. They are retired and have a bus pass. But there is only one bus every two hours to the nearest town with a NR station and it costs £15 return for two adults and a young person (14). It only costs me £45 to get all three of us from London (off peak using a NR card) on the train so I think this is a pisstake. No wonder everyone drives in everyday.

Where are you from where it's cheaper?

Wouldn't call a car a luxury, more a necessity! Pretty cheap after you have bought it in my experience - insurance for my car is £350 a year, tax is £180, mot and service was £145 last year. Wear and tear (brakes, tyres) works out on average at £200 a year let's say. Cars cost from a few hundred pounds (expect more repairs!) but my car was £16000 new and after 14 years is still going strong, minimal repairs, under £1500 excluding wear and tear

Yeah I couldn’t be bothered getting a car in London tbh!

The public transport is great and I can cycle pretty much anywhere for free.

The amount of times we’ve needed a car it’s been cheaper to just rent one for the trip we are taking.

Or get a zip car if I need to do an IKEA run or something

It all depends on personal circumstances. I lived in London years ago & could have managed quite easily without a car. My car is fully paid up in August this year which is currently 160.00 per month & I plan on keeping it for a least a year afterwards as its a 10 year old diesel with only 83000 miles. Where I live is what could be regarded as semi-rural & the public transport is not great. I currently put 10.00-20.00 in my car a week, bus fares would be more expensive & I need my car for my job. Road tax is free & insurance is 30.00 per month. I'm fully prepared for it needing a couple of hundred spending for its MOT in March & its overdue its annual service, roughly 150.00.
For me though the costs of running my car are well worth it as I like my independence & the comfort of my own vehicle.

The price of PT in the rest of England is ridiculously high.

Definitely. I was spending around £200 on transport a month before I got my car. £60 bus for me, £25 for each DC - and that's just for one bus company. If we'd got on a bus owned by a different company we'd have to get another ticket as well! Then there are times when you have to get a taxi because you can't get to where you're going by bus in the time available eg school events straight after work. Or when the bus doesn't turn up and you need to be somewhere eg hospital appointment. Add on buses and trains for days out ... it really wasn't cheap at all. And there were loads of things we didn't do during those years because going to places by bus took so long we couldn't fit them in after school/work, or couldn't get to them because they weren't on bus routes. A car is very much necessary imo.

I don't have a car because I can't afford one

This is a silly post on what planet does a £2k car last 10 years but cost £600 to insure? Figures plucked out of thin air.

(sorry, I meant to quote the third post in).

Zone 3 london- most people I know have a car.
Public transport just used for going into central london mainly.

Public transport is expensive here.
It’s cheaper to
Drive and pay congestion then tube for 2/3 people example

I have no idea about the costs involved in buying and running a car in any other country, so can't help you on the comparison.

You are right, when you first start driving, it is a bit distressing to work out how much it will cost in a year, particularly if you are young, when your insurance premiums are going to be high. However they do come down fairly rapidly over the first few years.
For many though, it is a necessary expense. It is also a darn site cheaper than not having a car, once you have more than one person to move about especially.
For many people it is essential as there just isn't public transport to get you to where you need to be - be that your work or the shops or your social life or wherever you need to go.
Lots of things 'take a noticeable % of your income'. I'd say a car is usually less than your rent / mortgage, and is less than childcare if you pay that and is less than some people spend on 'going out'.

Only 30pc of households in my London borough have a car so it's definitely a minority thing. The further out you go, the more people have one.

I have a zip car membership so use that to flexibly rent a car for an hour or two (garden centre/IKEA/heavy stuff etc) or for a couple of days when doing weekends out of London.
If I go further afield on holiday, I take the train and rent a car at the final destination.

Much cheaper to do that than own a car.

It’s only a luxury if you don’t need it.

We run 2 cars for around £550 a month max-that’s one brand new, leased fully electric (inc charging) and an older ICE inc fuel. Also includes tax, insurance and maintenance.

We live in the countryside with no public transport so it’s essential. We usually actually have 3 cars but sold one due to Covid rendering it unnecessary (tow vehicle).

It’s about 15% of our takehome pay. It’s our 4th biggest expense after mortgage, nursery, horse.

It depends on the type of car etc. I have a 2015 Volvo which was not cheap at all to buy second hand but I’m in my late 40s so my insurance is pennies (fully comp, protected no claims) and its diesel so pretty economical. Tax is £35 a year.

It's definitely expensive this year for what I'm getting out of the car!

Car was bought new in 2009 for £9k (never required repairs)
Insurance: £280 per annum
Road tax - £125 pa
MOT - £30 pa
Tyres - £100 pa
Petrol - usually £30 pm but less in lockdown

So usually reasonable but I shouldn't have renewed insurance in 2020.

Yes it is and in london even more s insurance tends to be high and often you have to have a permit parking
Just had a repair bill for one part on £1000 basic family car 7 years old
Where we live though a car is a neccessity

I must be very unlucky then all these people running cars for 10 years and never spending more than £200 , seeing as average 1hr labour here is £50- 80 i find that quite hard
2 tyres in dh car cost £200
2 tyres on my car cost £120
These were mid range
Our old car diesel needed clutch £900 and thats not unusual
Current car £1000 on part and labour - fuel pumo
Yearly oil change costs about £50
Some of you seem to be very lucky

The fixed costs can be expensive. Cost of the car itself. Depending on where you live insurance can be a killer. Plus any maintenance costs. Doing your own maintenance helps, but you really want a house with a decent sized drive or garage for that.

But the cost of fuel, even with the high taxes on it, is still cheaper than the cost of public transport to cover the same distance, especially if more than one person's in the car. Which means once you own a car, you'll normally use it.

Overall personally I'm worse off as a driver. But driving to the branch office takes 20 minutes, the bus took an hour.

YANBU. I only run a car because I'm now self employed and need to shift an unreasonably large amount of kit around at once (more than can be accommodated by a cargo bike / bike trailer, for anyone wondering)

Insurance £1200 / year (the car itself isn't worth that much ffs - I just live in a rough area)
Petrol £60-80/month (two tank fulls)
MOT
Maintenance
Tax disc

UGH

If I was no longer self employed, the first thing I'd do would be to get rid of the car and go back to cycling locally, with trains for intercity trips.

YANBU. I don't own a car and I don't live in London (shock!) I live in the Midlands.

I think it depends on where you live and work. I work a 10 minute walk from my house so I don't need to use transport to get to work. I live in a large town and there are 4 different bus services plus a train station if I want to go anywhere on the weekend. Which obviously isn't happening at the moment! Right now with Covid my travel costs are zero, in normal times it would be about £10-£20 a week for the bus or train depending on where I wanted to go. Still much cheaper than a car.

I’ve lived lots of places in the world and no, it’s no more expensive than anywhere else.

I bought my car secondhand 4 years ago for £6000, some of that was part exchange. Insurance is £200 a year and there is MOT and tax and repairs. But these are no different than anywhere else I’ve lived (most places have similar systems of inspections and registration and of course insurance).

The only thing that is expensive relative to other places is fuel, but you can just sensible about how much driving you do. At the moment, I spend maybe £80 a month on fuel. Where we live there is no public transport at all and not even a shop in walking distance.

That said, I spend more (in normal times) commuting to London in the train than I do on my car, which I use everyday.