Car, what to do?

[bigshoutingday]

We've had a string of shitty secondhand cars that keep dying. The most recent one cost £3500, has lasted us 18 months and was just refused a service today cos the mechanic said it wasn't even worth servicing and that we need to be looking at a new one asap. I trust him completely, he's actually honest and is a mechanic not a sales garage so it's not like he's trying to push a sale onto us. The car before that was £1200 and lasted a year. So the way it has been going we'd have been just as well paying £180 on HP or PCP on a newer and more reliable car, but something really sticks in my teeth about having a car payment. We drive 500-600miles a month and do not have a garage to put an elec plug-in thing into, but have a pretty close one we could use.

We have about £20k in the bank for a rainy day. Have just remortgaged for 5yrs at a good rate (got 3% just before the shit hit the fan) so that won't be increasing. The £20k would probably equal a years living costs if we were careful. We have two kids and have a relatively low childcare bill of £150 a month which will disappear when DS gets his funded hours in spring 2024. We currently save £200 a month which isn't much and would be where the monthly payment would come from.

Options:

• find another cheap secondhand car, what should the budget be? Hope that it's third time lucky? Go the opposite way and buy a £500 banger cos at least then it's less of a loss if it only lasts a year?
• go to a secondhand dealership and get a newer secondhand one on some sort of finance deal. Trade in current car as deposit.
• buy brand new. Are scrappage schemes still a thing? Current car is 2009 so is it old enough to count?
• electric? Not sure we could even afford it but DH has a salary sacrifice thing at work so may make it possible. Is it too annoying having to stop and charge? Obv there would be the petrol saving there but is the a cost to charging up?

My head is fried with all of this. Any advice welcome!

We ahve the same problem really. So fed up of huge bills for cars. I'm beginning to think a lease car is the way to go. Virtually everyone else in my office of around ten staff seem to lease lovely cars.

I think depends really... do you need a big car or is a smaller car sufficient.
Do you need a car for commute or is it mostly sitting on the drive while you commute using public transport or WFH.

Big cars are £££

Smaller cars the monthly payments are smaller.

Personally I wouldn't get a brand new car. But maybe a newer second hand car. Depending on needs and budget.

Lease.

Secondhand cars cost a fortune. I’ve just sold DDs for more than I bought it for 3 years ago.

I just can't get my head around paying £200 a month for use of a car. But then my sums work out I've spent £4700 on two cars that have lasted a combined 27 months so I'd have been as well paying £200 a month and I wouldn't have a shitty car falling apart. Or at least I hope I wouldn't!

We don't have that high income right now as I'm part time while the kids are small. But even when we had two full incomes and no kids I wouldn't have wanted to pay for a car lease either. I look along my street and see families like ours with nice-ish cars, nothing fancy just 5yr old medium size family cars, and think how are they all paying for them?

We've got two kids in chunky car seats and a double buggy so need 5 doors and a reasonable boot. Astra sized is fine. Had smaller and it was tight. I just don't want to do the whole buy cheap buy twice (or 3 times it seems). It's mainly used for local journeys plus one 90 mile round trip each week to my parents for childcare

What age are kids? How long will you need a double buggy and big car seats for?

I get the whole paying out on finance thing. We didn't want to do that either.

Good you do a mix of use part of savings and part finance... the you could either make higher payments to pay off sooner or make the motherly payments as low as possible.

If you do HP at least at the end you own the car and can resell if you needed to get some money quickly. With PCP you couldn't do that.

There are lots of options, and all depends on what your comfortable with and priorities

Don't buy electric if you can't have a charger installed. DD has an electric car and relies on public charging which is a proper pain in the arse and the more people who buy electric the harder it's going to be to find a free charger. Also they are so much more expensive then their counterparts to buy.

You seem to have been a bit unlucky, but you do have a large mileage.

Kids are 1 and 3 so a good few more years with the big car seats rear facing. Double buggy is probably not going to be used for much longer tbh and I could probably count on one hand the number of times it has been in the boot, but it's still a consideration for now. I'm all for a small car. Had an ancient Yaris for the longest time until it's lack of back doors and a second baby on the horizon became just too much for it. It was a sad goodbye, it didn't give me half the trouble the subsequent ones have.

A few new fangled car selling app/websites have popped up since I last did this exercise. One suggesting I can trade mine in for £3k which would be lovely. Just as long as they don't look underneath it 😬

@princesssparklepants and yes, it's just finding the balance of cash vs loan that works for us. I'm such a tightarse I just hate spending money on something that seems like such a basic necessity.

Thanks. I think I would agree. There is a charger in the car park directly across the road so in theory could be ok, but I think worrying about having a charge is a stress I don't need. I had thought maybe our next car would be electric. But maybe it'll be the one after that.

Re: selling your car on. I sold my old, very knackered car to webuyanycar earlier this year. All they were interested in was whether it had an MOT (it did - handed it over the day before it ran out!).

they gave me £4000 for it, and it was going to cost over £3000 to get it through the next MOT (conservative estimate). They didn’t look under the bonnet at all, just checked it turned on, would stay running, and looked around for scratches etc.

you may well get more than you think for yours.

I didn't think 600 miles a month was an awful lot? We'll go with unlucky 😅

Maybe you could ask your mechanic for advice/to maybe inspect the next car you buy. It sounds like you have been unlucky or not chosen your cars wisely. I have always bought cars around 3k and they go in for years.

If you’ve not experienced any problems with the car and just been declined a service I’d ask around for a recommendation for a second opinion.

I know you say you trust him but surely you don’t want to buy a new car just on the say of one mechanic. Different mechanics have different mindsets and another one may be better suited to pushing this car over the next couple of years.

Of course only if safe and if you’ve had specific problems than you need to consider if worth throwing good money after bad to repair.

But get a second opinion

I bought a Seat Ibiza 11 reg and have had nothing but problems with it since I bought it. It also cost just over £3000. It was off the road all summer as needed a new pump filter then something else went wrong. It's working fine now but I'm selling it as ice had enough. Whilst it was off the road I bout a little runaround 06 reg Suzuki. Its been amazing and reliable! I bought it thinking I'd sell it on when I got this car back but have decided to keep it till my insurance runs out next summer.

If you can afford it I'd bite the bullet and either buy brand new or go to a really good secondhand dealer. I'll be doing one of these next time 🤦‍♀️ Good luck.

We have always bought older cars and have had no trouble with them. We always buy reliable brands, Toyota, Mazda, Pre 07 Nissan, Suzuki and bought the simplest model we could find.

Bear in mind that new does not equate to reliable and if you are unlucky enough to get another pup with a financed car, you would still be liable for repair bills.

Take a look at what cars private hire people are driving. They need cars that are very reliable so maybe buy what they do.

I would spend a bit more on a 2nd hand car. Speak to your mechanic about which brands he has easy and cheap access to parts.

I spent £5k 3 years ago on a 2011 Nissan Micra and it's been really reliable. Has required a few small maintenance bits done, all of which have been cheap and quick to fix, a new back box on the exhaust, wheel bearings replaced on a couple of wheels, new tyres.

I was having a similar dilemma after my not very old second hand car died. I needed a 7 seater and it has been cheaper to buy a new Dacia than any decent second hand 7-seater and I've got a 6 year warranty.

I've had to wait 6 months and have been borrowing a very old small car to just get me through. I can't say if it will be the right decision as I haven't even got the car yet but it gives me peace of mind and I liked the car when I test drove it. It cost under 20k but a smaller one would be less. I did struggle to get over my car snobbery but I'm hoping they are the new skoda's and will prove to be a sound buy.

i wonder what job you do?
I bought a very cheap new hyundai and because i'm a nurse they gave me the equivalent of all the VAT back. it's not flash but has a long warranty etc.
They seemed offer this to quite few occupations maybe other car brands do as well?

When you say no garage do you have a drive you could install a charger on (although that obviously costs). We went electric because the PCP payments are almost equivalent to my petrol costs on my old car, to charge on an overnight tariff costs me less than £5 per week. I also looked at leasing but my pension would have been affected so PCP made more sense.

I doubt my job would qualify for anything like that. DH has the electric car scheme at work but even with that it's £300-£400 a month for a car probably too small for us anyway.

@FlyingFlamingo no drive either. There's a charge point in the carpark for the school/leisure centre across the road that's usually empty at night and I could charge at my parents house once a week too. We spend less than £100 on petrol a month and I'm not convinced that saving would be worth paying the extra to have an EV in the first place. Especially since it would have to be a pretty old model for us to afford it.

Need to plug all the variables into a spreadsheet and see if I can come up with the answer. Plus point is that We Buy Any Car will give us £3k for our car so not quite all lost there.

If it's salary sacrifice it's worth doing the maths on an electric car because you might be able to pay a £300 pre tax cost and then only a lower tax rate because the tax on company cars that are electric is very reasonable.

I don't know what the answer is TBH. I have an old ish car, Toyota, very reliable. But I bought it 5 years ago for £5k, have put 40k miles on it and the current state of the second hand car market means it's still worth £5k. So the market itself is very inflated currently.

You mentioned an Astra.

You can get a 4 year old Astra with around 50k miles on the clock for about £170 a month (for 4 years) with a £3k deposit.

Look on Autotrader, of course you can get a cheaper brand like Dacia for less or a better brand like VW for more.

If reliability is the most important thing then buy Japanese or lease.

Would love an electric car but can't justify paying the cost
As for not being able to.charge it,my brother Hassan electric company car. He paid for a charger for outside his hour. Think it cost less than 400 pounds