to ask how you afford your posh car?

[SteveHarringtonsChestHair]

My DS (22) is becoming increasingly frustrated by the disparity between the life he aspires to and the one he thinks is possible!

As a car enthusiast on a good wage, he is constantly surprised by the number of brand new premium brand cars (BMW, Mercedes, Volvo etc) that he sees on the roads, which he feels he has no hope of ever affording.

He’s asked my to ask you all, if you drive a premium brand car, paying presumably £400-500 a month to buy or lease, what type of job do you and (if it’s not too rude to ask, what sort of salary are you on?) And if your spouse also drives a similar car, what do they do/earn?!

I know there are lots of factors here including whether you’re paying a bit mortgage, is it a company car etc? But just a snapshot of who is driving these expensive new cars might help him put it all in perspective. TIA

btw I earn NMW and drive a 10 year old car so I’m no help here!

At 22 I would be grated to go have any car and to have passed my test!

@TinfoilTwat sums it up nicely for me:
I think twice about buying fancy fruit teabags instead of own brand. I do spend time wondering how on earth we got things so wrong financially when apparently every other bugger in the neighbourhood has 40k to spend on a car
As a retired nurse some of these salaries are eye-watering to me.
The most I have ever spent on a car was £20k and that took years to save for (old bangers before that) and I loved it.
I cannot imagine paying out some of the sums on here 😳

If you look at it as a percentage of disposable income, it makes more sense. A friend I went to uni with is a solicitor with her own practice. She drives a Porsche, owns an air bnb in addition to her home, and no debt. Different careers pay differently and being self employed makes a difference. My joiner bought his three children their first homes; he is easily on £70-80k. An in-demand tradesman today can write their own cheques.

Love this thread. So interesting.

I buy second hand and outright - no finance.

Currently have a 10 year old Mazda.

The reason being I work in an industry with high redundancies, if my job goes I want to know that I can still afford my car. This has been borne out of experience - I had a lovely Honda company car but it went after I was made redundant and I realised how marooned I was.

I am not a petrol head. My DH laughs at me as my requirements for a car are:
cup holder
leather steering wheel
heated seats (recent addition to the list, I blame old age)
cruise control.

I also see no point getting an amazing car when it gets trashed by young DC

If I drove a lot for my job, I would probably get a better car with all the gizmos

Simply not true!

We have a relatively new car, an Audi, we can easily afford the monthly payment and with our savings could buy the car outright., so have money for anything that needs repaired. We also have a relatively low mortgage and earn under 50k between us.

we’ve always bought our cars outright and kept them for 8-10 years but I’m travelling more for work so wanted a more reliable car, hence why we have gone for finance and a newer model.

There's a lot of posts at the moment trying to fathom how much people earn 🤔

We have no children (yet) and live in a rural area, our mortgage is about £800pm, house is only 5 yrs old so its energy efficient. Good example of why you can't really compare circumstances on income alone, so many other things come into it. If we lived somewhere else, it would be entirely different on our income!

God, can't he find a different passion

I think twice about buying fancy fruit teabags instead of own brand. I do spend time wondering how on earth we got things so wrong financially when apparently every other bugger in the neighbourhood has 40k to spend on a car

You probably haven't got anything wrong financially and the likely truth is that your neighbours don't have £40k either. As long as they can afford £300/month, that's likely all they need.

Apparently 90% of private new car sales are on PCP nowadays so rest assured that you're not doing anything wrong. In fact you're one of the winners if you've yet to get sucked into this scheme. The people on MN that say they've bought expensive cars outright are in a very small minority.

You would be surprised at the price of some RR on PCP, we looked at them before we got our car 4/5 years ago and they were less than £400 a month, albeit it would vary according to mileage but if you live in a town it would unlikely be that high. You would be looking at something seriously luxurious if spending £1k a month!

BIL has a brand new car every 2-3 years. He works in sales at a dealership and gets them through work. He does have to pay towards it though. SIL also gets a brand new car at the same time from him and she is on NMW in a warehouse.

We have a lovely brand new hybrid car but it's through motability. I would rather have my legs working and our 12 year old focus back though so you can tell him from me there's more important things to life than a brand new car.

Agree with this. We have a moderately cheap older hot hatch (one raved about by petrolheads), and after 11 years it's actually worth slightly more than we paid. That's the route most genuine car enthusiasts go down, surely?

How? If he starts by doing his own research rather than by asking his mum, that will be a good first step.

Tell him that parents are not the font of all knowledge (he should have worked that out years ago) and they aren't his PA either.

Yeah he has had a couple of fun cars along the way and loves them too. I don’t think he’d really want eg Range Rover. It’s more that he’s astounded that in this financial climate that anyone can afford to buy a £50k car, but I guess not having a mortgage frees up a lot, having two (very) high earners together helps and the other little bonuses along the way help too.

I do think a second job could help but I’m not sure if his industry allows it, as there are quite strict rules on working hours. But if he had his own business I think he could comfortably earn another £1k a month on his days off. He hates being bored so would be an ideal candidate for that, as he gets 4 days off in a row at the moment.

😂. He just knows I ask MN whenever I need to know something, so I said I’d ask!

There’s always lots of threads on here about earnings, mortgages etc so thought I’d get a reasonable spread of replies to demonstrate to him that there are many ways to get where he wants to be. There’s sort of a ceiling on the amount he can earn in this job, but that’s not to say he couldn’t pivot into a different industry or role in future where there’s potential to earn the big bucks.

oh and screenshot for the poster doubting this was even real (probably the same one who doubted my DD was real on my previous thread because she dared to call me mama!)

Oh and @FloydPepper he’d absolutely take the 911 - I think he just wants to be in a position where had the choice!

MIL and FIL drive a Range Rover Evoque and some kind of sporty, very low down and hard to get in to BMW. Paid for on finance - I know FILs was about £700 a month. MILs was probably similar but is paid off now I think.

They drove a convertible BMW and a Jaguar before that. She’s a retired senior assistant head teacher at state secondary, he’s a self employed SAP/IT project manager/consultant. They live in a cheap part of the country and have long since paid off their mortgage. They have comfortable private pensions.

Personally I think it’s ridiculous. Awful for the environment, gas guzzling, flash cars look ludicrous parked on the driveway of a normal, small suburban home. Why in the name of God would you shell out £1400 a month between you on CARS. It’s ludicrous.

In your position I’d advise your son to buy a used Fiesta and save every penny he can to buy a house and save towards his pension. The days of cheap credit and good workplace pensions are gone. He’d be mad at his age to sink a fortune in to a flash car.

DH and I paid cash for a second hand used Astra which we share. We’ll drive it until it claps out. Getting in to debt for a car is insane.

Oh, if it’s relevant - DH and I are high earners - banking and law. Hell would freeze over before I’d prioritize paying out for cars though.

That's definitely it. Only people I know who can afford nice cars (for cash) are people in their 50s, good jobs, mortgage paid off etc. When I see someone in their 20s driving 22 plate Audi/BMW, most likely it's on finance or company car, so practically they don't own it. You lose the job, you lose the car.

Not having a go, but sometimes to answer a question or solve a problem, you have to take a step back and ask a different question/solve a different problem.

Waking up one day and thinking "How do I get a load of money to buy a nice car" is great and a good start - but making money often starts elsewhere. It can be a journey that ends up bringing in money - and maybe you even end up buying a nice car because you might as well - but you didn't for years which is why you have even more money than you would have done if you'd only got into a position to do your job, and then done it, just for the money and then spent it on a car.

Ask him to think around and before the problem a bit.

Oh, and to add I also have car in finance, but I share it with my husband, so we have 2 incomes security, and it's ours next year (we need to pay 1 grand). We bought it as used car, it's still worth over 10 grand, so not old banger at all. Decent German SUV. I told my husband this car needs to live now as long as possible, as we are not getting anything new (baby on the way and planning to build the house without mortgage- not in the UK though). It's best not to be bothered by new reg cars. His time will come, but he's only 22.

DH gets a car allowance which pays for it

We have a salary sacrifice lease through husband's work, around 400 a month, new car every 3 years. Not a flashy brand but a decent new car. We had 2 old bangers and were able to swap them for one lease car for a while. It's reliable, we don't pay anything extra for insurance or tax. We fill it with fuel and we'd pay excess if an accident was our fault. But any minor repairs, service etc are all paid for. To me it saves us having to have a "car pot" as such. It was the best solution for us and now hubby has a v cheap company car as well to me it's worth the money to be hassle free. We earn around 70k household between us

I usually buy cash but would consider leasing in future if the cost was the lowest after comparing total cost over the lease period, against the car's depreciation in same time period, and expected increase in value if the lease amount was invested instead.

Leasing per se, isn't necessarily a mug's game.

I fell off the property ladder for a long time. I have only owned my own home since about 47, and a fancy car for the first time at 51.

I don't think at 22 this is realistic! Finances and living are a long game.