How not to mess up buying a car...?

[ElleRaiser]

DH and I have got to our early thirties and have never owned a car . Or driven, really, as DH has just got his license and I don't drive . If we had to buy a cheap car, on the basis that no company will rent a car to DH for years, what do we need to DO!? What should we watch out for?

I assume costs are insurance, MOT, AA membership? Anything else?

How do you actually register a change of ownership!? We have led such sheltered lives...

When someone sells you a car, the seller has the responsibility to tell the DVLA who the new owner is (ie you)

when you're thinking about a new car, you've got to factor in maintenance too.. annual service costs can be quite expensive if you're not expecting them. Also petrol/diesel of course.

I tend to buy from dealers, which probably isn't the cheapest way, but I'm not confident about buying cars, so I like to know I have a place to go if something goes wrong.

proper information here because I could be talking out of my backside!

How to buy a car from autotrader

Like Headfairy I prefer to buy from a dealer - you pay more but you have more comeback if things go wrong.

As well as insurance etc you need to budget for regular servicing & also replacing things like tyres on a regular basis. It's a good idea to save a regular monthly amount towards those costs.

Oooh, thanks for those links... Shall get reading

if you own a renault you'll have to pay out to fix all the 'known faults' , with other cars mot if 4yo+, diesel, servicing, insurance, tyres, tax-this depends on emmissions. the garage should sort most things out for you. not sure about buying privately have never done this.

Not as helpful a response as everyone else's but we found as late-on car-owners that once you buy your car it's really worth getting a road-map! Ways to get places we took as granted as pedestrians are quite different in a car (at least in the city we live in).

We also made a point of finding weekend trips that we would really enjoy and would be difficult to get to without our own transport - find the memories of those expeditions quite comforting when it comes round to MOT/tax disc time.

Congratulations to your DH on getting his license! Hope you find the right car for you.

Oh - one last thing - we've found that paying a full road tax year is worth it if you can sync it to be six months off your MOT. Nuisance to have the two due at once.

PPS (sorry!) our joint bank account covers relay, roadside and home-start. Worth checking if you're entitled to this/can get it by upgrading cheaper than getting the package from AA/RAC direct.

look on moneysavingexpert.com - there is currently info on cheap aa membership.

but don't buy a car!!! you can pay for an awful lot of train and bus tickets with the money you would have spent on it. use traveline to find out how you can get to your destinations and in a couple of years your dh will no longer be a new driver and be able to hire cars for the odd weekend/holiday/whatever. that's if it's not possible to hire one at the moment - i wouldn't know. just my opinion...

or join a carsharing club.