AIBU to resist replacing our old cars despite my mother-in-law's comments?

[ISO3456]

To be honest, we’ve had some bad luck recently with our cars…

This week our car broke down this week on the motorway with a snapped belt (£400 fix)

Only 2 months ago an engine light came on the other car (our main car). Both cars are >10 years old & both just over >100k miles t

Both situations were stressful as they were on the motorway & 1 year old in the car. We had to sit at side of motorway for about an hour. Imo just unfortunate events & bad luck

Now my DHs mum (MIL) is pushing us to get a new car. It’s her comments which have annoyed me most & I think I need a AIBU check

We’re in our mid 30s & have ~100k between us in investment ISA but only <2k actual cash. Infact we do owe still for our main car 3.5k.

She’s mentioned it a few times since breakdown #1 but this week her comments were “what’s the point in having all that money in the bank & driving around in broken down cars”

My opinion is that our investments aren’t “money in the bank’, instead it’s our future income or early retirement
if we had decided to buy 2nd homes or pay off our mortgage instead, it wouldn’t have been seen the same so why should the stocks

Since she’s been going on about it, DH now talking about cars.

Maybe I’m just out of touch. So looking for opinions

AINBU - MIL keep her nose out (and talk to husband about NOT getting a new car)

AIBU - you need to buy a new car

Is the campervan overpriced and under used? I can see her frustration if the entire fleet is just not feeling fit for purpose.
Saving are there for rainy days but just because it's raining you don't need a new thing.

Why does she know you have “all that money”?
keep your finances to your selves and ignore her nonsense. It’s non of her business.

A lot rather than a car with over 100k miles on it.

Op, I'd be getting a new car tbh.
You can get amazing lease deals too if you'd consider that?

It’s a difficult one. We generally buy a car that is a couple of years old and hang on to it for 8 or 9 years. Our last car was a BMW and we kept it too long. In the last year we had it we spent about £1000 keeping it running “just to make it last another year” before our retirement. Unfortunately diesel started leaking into the wiring loom which would have costs about £2.2 k to fix. Not worth it and the car had to be scrapped. We got virtually nothing for it to put towards our next car. Very poor/unlucky decision for us to hold on and keep repairing it. We plan to change this new car in 5 years.

Make the decisions which work best for you and your family. It’s nothing to do with your MIL. But make those decisions with your eyes wide open.

1. Her opinion doesn't matter; this is entirely your decision unless she is paying for it. I'd tell her that directly.

2. Stop telling your MIL how much money you have in the bank/investments.

I see your mil poverty and pretty much agree with her.
Sure, new cars can also break down but im guessing less likely to compared to a new one.

I was really pleased when I bought a new car on 5 year finance once, I paid it off in 2.5 years and kept the car for 10. Around the 10 year mark it started to go wrong, initially small things like needed oil frequently, then other things, I cant remember what now. Dh had been nagging at me to change for years and pointed out that I do a lot of motorway driving and did I really want to chance it going wrong when I was in rush hour on the M62. I got a new car and heard that my old car's engine gave up the ghost two weeks later! Since then I change every two or three years. I did look after the old car and have it serviced regularly but as most cars age things are more likely to go wrong.
Reliability and safety are the two most important things for me However I dont want to be worrying what im going to paying for next.

Why are you borrowing money from your parents and driving your child around in unreliable cars if you have over 100k sat in investments? It doesn’t make sense.

I drive an old car that has needed some work on it lately but the difference is I don’t have a child who could potentially be stranded and I can’t afford a new car without going into debt.

I think it depends if your cars are actually dangerous.

Although in general I am with you. Brits seem to be quite out of touch with what they will need to save for the future, and when they do save often it is just cash in the bank or a buy to let, rather than the stock market which generally offers much better returns.

While cars are an excellent way to waste money, you do need something safe and reliable to get you from A to B. Stranded on a hard shoulder is a dangerous situation to end up in.

Sometimes you do have to recognise that instead of saving for a rainy day, it is drizzling right now. Getting older, high milage cars is risky because you don't know how they've been treated, what's been worn through and how much life is in them. Some cars were just made more reliably than others, some have been driven more gently with better maintainance.

It sounds like your husband is considering a new car. So it's a discussion for the two of you to have.
I personally would feel uneasy driving cars with over 100k on the clock that have broken down on the motorway. I'd think they were unreliable after that and wonder what was going to go wrong next.

I put YABU because I think breakdowns put you and your family at risk. Also because once a car goes over 100k miles the chances of things going wrong go up and up and they can become a money pit. You don't need to buy a brand new car but you could (and IMO should) use some of that money to buy a much lower mileage car. But all that said you are adults, how you spend your money is your decision. If I was your parents though I'd be telling you off too. I was in a shitty old car once whilst heavily pregnant, and it developed a water leak which one time I was driving to the hospital for a scan became catastrophic, the engine had no water, and it cut out in the middle lane of the motorway. It was terrifying. I wouldn't risk that again ever.

Older cars are fine if you are happy to accept that things will go wrong. But your saving seems skewed. Save money for car replacement, household items, holidays etc before investing. It doesn't seem fair to borrow from your parents when you have money. How are you about to pay them back if you only have 2 thousand in accessible savings?

Seems strange to have to borrow money from parents when you have £100k in investments. Why so little in liquid savings?

I think MIL has made a valid point even if it's not her place to make it. You've got plenty of money but chosing to buy old cars that will have issues and having to borrow from your parents is madness.

We traded in our workhorse 11yo car last year. I brought it from new with the bit of inheritance I got from my grandparents, no issues until about 9.5 years in and then I probably spent more fixing it than I had in the previous years in total but that's a car we'd had for years. I wouldn't deliberately buy an old car with 100k miles, especially not with young children. You were lucky to only wait an hour. Even if you don't want a new car there's probably a decent middle ground if you took some out of your savings or looked at a loan/leasing.

New cars can break down too, I don’t think it’s that yours are inherently dangerous.

People are daft if they think a 10 year old car isn’t motorway worthy because of its age.

However, if you have older cars you absolutely must get them serviced. This might have avoided the snapped belt for example, my garage would have checked that for wear and tear.

My car is 11 years old and (touch wood!) has never broken down. It has some work at MOTs but nothing ground breaking.

I had a brand new company car which broke down twice on the motorway… so maybe my judgement is clouded!

Take the irritation that it is your MIL that has raised the point out of it and think about whether you should be using some of your invested money to avoid unnecessary spending and also repay the debt you owe to your parents.

Personally, I wouldn't be comfortable owing my parents £3.5k when I had it available to repay regardless of what I would prefer that money to be set aside for. But that's me.

Once a car has 100k miles on the clock and starts breaking down it is likely to become a money pit so the smart thing to do is to buy a newer car as, in the long run, that will be the less costly thing to do. It makes good financial sense regardless of who suggested it.

Don’t understand why you bought a campervan and then needed to borrow to buy another vehicle?

My MIL would not have known how much money DH & I had in the bank, and she would have been asked to keep her opinions to herself, but given you are borrowing money from your own parents, it seems that you are more open with yours, and that’s fine.

First you need to pay your parents back , then put some money aside towards a newer car, with the latest safety features. Newer technology which helps keep your child safe is a good reason for a new car.

It is not the 1970s. 100k is naff all for a modern car, but you do need to replace belts according to the manufacturer's schedule. If the cause of the failure was that the schedule had been ignored then I wouldn't worry too much and crack on; the problem is fixed. If it was a failure out of the blue and it's a car known to be a bit dodgy like a Ford with a wet belt design, then maybe it is time to look elsewhere.

This'll give some MN'ers a fit of the vapours, but our main car is 12 years old, has done 170k miles, and still gets hammered hundreds of miles up and down the motorway on a regular basis. We're off to the Highlands next week, France a month after that, and I have every confidence it will take it in its stride.

People are daft if they think a 10 year old car isn’t motorway worthy because of its age.

It's precisely because of people who throw up their hands in horror at such a 'dangerous antique' that you can buy really decent 10yo cars with 100K miles on the clock for a relatively great price.

I'd say that's also what drives the whole new car market: people who pay enormously over the odds for brand new, because they fear that something a few years old will be a deathtrap.

If it were 20 years and 200K miles on the clock, I'd be wary of buying it from a stranger - although many cars like that are still perfectly viable if you've owned it for a long time and you know its history. It really does depend on the individual car.

None of her business.

Stop telling her so many details about your lives!

I think you’ve been lucky! A belt snapping while driving can often total the engine so glad it’s was repairable.

I have an 14 year old high mileage car which I love, it’s been very reliable and regularly serviced but more things are going wrong and it’s inconvenient when that happens. It’s time to replace, replace on my terms rather than when it breaks again and it’s too expensive to repair!

I think you have your balance wrong.
You need to keep more accessible money to fund your own cars etc without borrowing from family.
By borrowing from PIL (assuming 'our parents' includes them) you made your finances their business.
I'm also not convinced that buying quite such an old car makes good sense either.

Newer technology which helps keep your child safe is a good reason for a new car.

Ironically, all of that fancy new technology could also be an added reason for the car breaking down in the first place!

Breaking down is never fun; but it's even more infuriating when your car stops working purely because of a failure in some arbitrary accessory feature that wasn't even fitted to slightly older cars.

She doesn’t have the same opinion as you and idk why you expect her to. It might be none of her business but it’s human nature to talk to friends and family about what is going in in their lives and if my ds said his old banger had broken down and he had £100k in the bank and the repair was over 10% of the cost and probably 20% of the value of the car I think a more normal response is either “you should get rid of that car and get a better one” or “but it was a good deal and even with repair costs it’s still a cheap way to travel” rather than just sitting, bovine and opinionless. There isn’t anything wrong with having a normal conversation about car repairs with your own mother.
My dh has a car with 200k+ on it and imo a higher than acceptable level of unreliability (although he does bother to change the belt before of flys off on the motorway - he’s on his third) but he doesn’t want a different car. It’s fine, we don’t agree. I’m not going to substitute his opinion for mine because I’m right but he’s allowed to have his opinion. I think both my own brother and DHs brother have spent a stupid amount on cars. They don’t and it’s their money and their cars.
I’m a total stranger and idk why you would spend £3.5k on a car with 100k on it rather than buying a more basic lower mileage car but it’s up to you. Borrowing £3,5k of your parent when you have £100k in the bank is also weird imo but you don’t think so and isn’t it your opinion that matters? Chatting with your own mum about cars and money is also ok it seems. If your dh wants a better car and can afford it why are you “right”? He’s allowed to think that. It’s a fairly standard resting point in the cost/benefit juggling act. Maybe the “plan” of living with what others may think of as extreme frugality in order to have a very lengthy, frugal, retirement isn’t as appealing to him as it is to you, especially in the context that your current lifestyle involves borrowing from ILs and delaying getting your timing belt replaced.