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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To ask how much you pay monthly for your car?

123 replies

Mysteriousgirl2 · 14/12/2023 19:20

I’ve got an EV (basic, not flashy)

I pay £325 a month.

Is that a lot?

I’m on a PCP deal, with a payment at the end (£9000)

I can, and probably will hand it back in April and do have savings (£12,000) ish

Should I buy something outright?

One consideration is that we do have solar so the electricity is out of the sky (mostly - less so in Winter)

I do about 120 miles/ week

Please could anyone tell me what they pay a month and whether they enjoy their car. I would like to save money.

OP posts:
roundcork · 14/12/2023 21:05

This reply has been withdrawn

This has been withdrawn by MNHQ at the request of the user.

Original poster
Mysteriousgirl2 · 14/12/2023 21:06

Is Dave Ramsay a YouTube thing? Never heard of him…

OP posts:
shockeditellyou · 14/12/2023 21:12

Don’t get me wrong, I’d like a flash car but I can’t justify hundreds of pounds of monthly payments to own nothing at the end. Currently have a 2013 Ford that was bought outright at around 3 years old for £10k. It costs peanuts to run - insurance is around £200 per year, service and MOT anything between £100 and £400, plus tyres every 2-3 years. £60 to fill up and that generally gets me a month’s driving.

Footprintsinthesand · 14/12/2023 21:12

I bought a car recently and was shocked by how much second hand prices had gone up. Managed to get a 2019 Ford Ka plus for £9000. Paid half outright and got a 0% credit card for the rest. I think it will be £145 over 28 months, then I'll own the car until it dies. I tend to run cars into the ground (the car I've just replaced was a 2008 Honda Jazz). I've never seen the appeal of paying hundreds every month with nothing to show for it at the end

Mummyme87 · 14/12/2023 21:21

We have a 4yr old VW Tiguan, was brand new When we got it (not anywhere near top of the range) and pay £330 a month. We have got a loan and bought it outright so we can sell it for more. About to get a Volvo xc90 which will be anywhere between £290-350 a month depending how old we get.

we certainly aren’t keeping up with the jones’, but have certain requirements, so long drives and don’t want lots of miles on the clock

Octowussy · 14/12/2023 21:23

I have a 2011 VW polo, insurance is extortionate due to the area I live in, one claim and my age. Insurance is about £1800, £50 a month for fuel, £180 road tax and £200 ish for full service and MOT (Kwik Fit offer student discount). I own the car outright.

Everybodylookstheirage · 14/12/2023 21:25

Don’t use your savings to buy a car. If you have good credit score get a 0% purchase credit card and either pay the balloon payment with this or buy a second hand car with it. I’ve bought all my cars using 0% credit cards usually spend around 15k to 20k with a 5k to 7k trade in. Barclays are doing 21 months at the moment so feasible.

Ilovemyshed · 14/12/2023 21:26

Mummyme87 · 14/12/2023 21:21

We have a 4yr old VW Tiguan, was brand new When we got it (not anywhere near top of the range) and pay £330 a month. We have got a loan and bought it outright so we can sell it for more. About to get a Volvo xc90 which will be anywhere between £290-350 a month depending how old we get.

we certainly aren’t keeping up with the jones’, but have certain requirements, so long drives and don’t want lots of miles on the clock

Thats a 60-80k car, how on earth do you inly pay £250-300 pm?

Baffledandalarmed · 14/12/2023 21:30

I have an XC40 - petrol (2020 plate).

I bought outright as new.

Petrol = £60 a month. Does about 450 miles.
Insurance = £25 a month (£300 a year - I pay as a one off payment + it includes a driver over 80yrs old so would be way cheaper otherwise)
Road tax = £140 a year?
MOT/Service this year = £350

It’s a total dream tbh. Had a classic run around before (ford) and the insurance, MOT and petrol costs were higher!

I wouldn’t do PCP - not even for an electric vehicle. My friend has PCP on her XC40 (2022) and pays £450 a month!

You have the money for a decent second hand so you may as well get that and save yourself the monthly payments! Besides, the way lithium batteries are mined for electric cars is awful - mostly child labour + the lithium batteries are just as bad for the environment as petrol!

Toddlerteaplease · 14/12/2023 21:32

£195 for a Hyundai i10. Got it when it was 6 months old. In a 0% finance deal.

Taxi4adayrate · 14/12/2023 21:32

Zero

The last 10 years, I've bought out right several old bangers for less than 1.5k or under 1k each time
Drive until uneconomical to repair
Some I've paid for new tyres, clutch, brakes
I used to drive lots of miles

justalittlesnoel · 14/12/2023 21:42

Just to buck the trend of the thread - £450pm for mine, £1350 for my husbands 😂 not quite the 0 of most of the other posters on here!

Happyhappyday · 14/12/2023 21:43

We bought our car secondhand cash about 4 years ago for £20000. Plan to do same for next but probably a bit bigger budget. Cars leased or on finance has always seemed mad to me. It’s just an enormously expensive disposable item at the end of the day.

we have a Subaru but don’t live in the UK and go to the snowy mountains a lot and drive on rough roads so AWD is an absolute must.

Notsurehwhattdo · 14/12/2023 21:44

Have a 9 year old car I bought with a small £6k loan, 4 years ago. Car has been very reliable. No plans to change.

User2856948 · 14/12/2023 21:50

I have a 2016 Fiesta (£0 tax) which I bought outright at about 18 months old for £9k, I am hoping to keep it for a few years yet.

SinnerBoy · 14/12/2023 21:51

We have a Volvo V60, which we bought on a PCP, with no trade in, as the other one was written off by someone rear-ending us. It was £15,000, 3 years old with about 26,000 miles on the clock.

I think the deposit was about £6,000, which we shared. My wife was paying, I think, £230 monthly. I made the final payment of something under £3,000 in May and we now own it.

She needs a reliable car, which she also uses for work related deliveries and collections, we also have family from Aberdeen to Reading and visit them, so a cheapo older one, which needs regular repairs wasn't really an option.

Bluevelvetsofa · 14/12/2023 21:51

I was in a car showroom today.

A couple of years ago, there was an issue with manufacturers being unable to get chips for cars, waiting lists lengthened and second hand cars rose in price. The manager of the dealership said today that the opposite is now true. The market is dropping and EV particularly so.

Titsywoo · 14/12/2023 21:53

We earn well but would never buy a brand new car. To me it is just a waste of money as it depreciates so much so fast. We buy 2nd hand and drive them until they give up. DH is pretty good with cars so the ones we buy tend to last a long time. Currently I am driving the most expensive car I have ever bought at 3.5k - just a Ford Focus. I don't think it was worth the money. I prefer to pay around £2k for a car. DH paid more but his is a 7 seater that you can remove the seats in so it converts to a van which is useful for our business. It was £8k I think. Insurance is about £450 a year for mine and £500 a year for his fully comp. My petrol costs are only about £120 a month. His were higher when he was driving a lot but now he doesn't drive much at all due to working from home so probably £100 a month. He does a lot of repairs himself and anything he can't do we go to a local friendly mechanic who is very reasonably priced. For me as long as it is clean enough and gets me from A to B safely without breaking down all the time I am happy!

PickAChew · 14/12/2023 23:16

We're just moving the other way. Always bought outright - generally a largish but not flash car. Mostly Toyota. Around 18months old ex fleet cars with low mileage, then run them into the ground. Current car is 12 years old and owes us nothing but is now getting expensive to get through its MOT as succumbs to the British weather.

We have the savings to do it again but with a slightly smaller car and no guarantee of being able to save for the next one duento COL and cost of cars, now. Those of you with 5 year old cars, the cost of lightly used cars has skyrocketed due to scarcity, since the pandemic.

Luckily (and unluckily) we are now entitled to a 3rd Motability car for Ds2. That currently works out at 300pcm plus a couple of grand down-payment for a car that suits our needs. It's an electric vehicle and we would never buy one outright because no way could we get the life out of it, with current battery technology, that we have out of our rustheap, so we were expecting to lease when the time came to make the switch, anyhow. I can't see our house not being in or very close to a ULEZ within 10 years so we felt it was time.

Saddlesore · 14/12/2023 23:19

I pay £650pm for my EV through my company car scheme. The payment is deducted before tax, so it reduces my tax bill. I charge it at home (solar panels) and the car scheme covers servicing, tax, insurance, AA, tyres. I could select a cheaper vehicle, and probably will when this contract ends in 18 months’ time, but wanted - for the first time in my life - to be in possession of a brand-new car that was chosen by me, for me (and is better than my husband’s).

Letsgetouttahere2023 · 14/12/2023 23:20

We own our car

Faz469 · 14/12/2023 23:22

Dp has a small electric nissan leaf. Full charge gets him 100 miles, but we have the BG EV tariff and charging costs 9p per KWH overnight, so it works well. The car is lovely. it could just do with a bigger battery. That costs him £150 a month on HP. He works locally, and the furthest he has to drive is a 15 mile round trip to pick up DSS.

I drive a big dirty diesel kia sportage that's £300 a month HP. However, we do have a 5 month old and a rottweiler, so mine is used as the family car. My commute to work is also a 70 mile round trip, so it works well for that.

PickAChew · 14/12/2023 23:22

No idea where 3rd came from.

Cosyblankets · 14/12/2023 23:27

That's nearly 4k a year
I own my car is 8 years old with low mileage and I'll keep it until it dies. It is a 1.4 diesel and in the 5 years I've had it it's had a yearly service and a couple of tyres and a battery as i wfh. Insurance is 300odd i think. I have no interest in cars they get me from A to B and as long as it's reliable it will be staying. I will then buy another low mileage second hand.
The thought of paying what you're paying makes me shudder!

OldTinHat · 14/12/2023 23:31

I bought a now 14yr old car for cash, £1k, two odd years ago. It's a great little thing, costs next to nothing to run.

I've had expensive car leases before. Never again, they're just not worth it imo. I just buy cheap secondhand, and run them into the ground.