How can anyone afford a car?

[PoisedGoldBiscuit]

So we've leased cars for the last 14 years or so. Have paid a non-refundable deposit of between £500 (for a regular hatchback) to around £900 for a SUV. I pay just under £300 p/m now for a Qashqai that includes maintenance (so services, MOTs, most repairs not covered by the warranty or caused by accidental damage). I also don't need to pay car tax.

I'm conscious of the fact that this is a debt that I'll essentially never pay off as I'm not gaining any equity in the car and just hand it back. I've looked at other options and they seem so far out of reach.

• buying cars second hand, friends who have done this seem to regularly spend £££ on maintenance issues, even for cars that are only a few years old.
• buying cars new but with a warranty, the monthly payments are huge and the car seems to drop so much in value that it's not worth the payments.

-taking out a PCP/ other scheme where you can hand the car back or pay a balloon payment, again, these seem to have huge monthly payments. Dealerships have never been able to get anywhere near the lease payments (and then have a huge balloon payment).

Am I missing something?

I drive a 2009 BMW, it's pranged, seats are worse for wear but I only pay about £400 a year for the maintenance when MOT time roles around. I have friends that can do some basic jobs and I shop around a bit for bigger jobs, solo mechanics are much cheaper.

I have tried paying PCP and the maintenance costs weren't much different but I was tied in to who did the work.

I have also bought an expensive new car outright and been stung with expensive breakdowns.

So that's how I afford my car, the more mod cons the more there is to go wrong really but there a lot of lemons out there - old and new!

I drive an old car. It does cost a few hundred a year for maintenance but that's what you pay a month to lease.

I am eternally grateful to have our main family car on Motability. It takes up all of my PIP allowance, plus I had to put a few £k deposit down to get the model I wanted but apart from that everything is covered. I helped young adult DD buy her first car last year after passing her test - the costs are just never ending and it is such a burden

Second hand cars are a ridiculous price now. We have always bought outright and kept the car until it starts to cause issues and luckily that has worked out. I worked out there was not much in it between the maintenance of an older car and PCP or lease payments. I just prefer to have an asset to show for my money such as it is. We have definitely downgraded in the last four years or so. Cars are money pits.

I bought it 15 years ago and will drive it until the day it dies, then I will buy a bike 🥲

Thank god it's a VW and just seems to keep going and going without costing me too much (touch wood)

Save up to buy a reliable car outright and keep it until it dies, usually one every decade or so. It's the nonsense of a new car every 3y that is expensive. Leasing is a mug's game, just buy.

My car was £1500 second hand from a reliable local garage and I spend approx £750- £1000 max annually on Mot and services and replacing tyres. I drive a lot and couldn’t do without it. I’m also a single parent low earner. I guess I’ve been lucky it hasn’t had any problems (so far) in the 3 years I’ve had it. It’s also pretty efficient on fuel. I save £100-£120 per month to cover the bills. It’s very scruffy though and I’m not sure many people would like to drive it but I love my car!

Bought a second hand VW a year and a half ago for £6k. Have spent £5k on it since and have just been hit with another £2k repair bill.

Now my only option is to do it on finance but I hate the fact that I'll never actually own the car. But I love the notion of not having to worry about getting hit with hefty bills

We have a lease car which I’m going to purchase at the end of the lease as it’s my retirement and won’t be affording lease cars then but also I know I’ve had it from new and looked after it. We also have a BW campervan we bought outright from an inheritance and are running that until it will no longer run.
People’s finances differ because of multiple factors.

You don’t need a new car every 3 to 4 years though. You could lease for longer, or extend your lease and get a discount on the monthly rate. You could lease a second hand car. You could buy a cheap second hand car and keep it until it starts to cost too much.

Buy a Honda with as low mileage as you can afford. Done 70k miles on mine with nothing but consumables. Same goes for Toyota or other Japanese makes. They’re just engineered better. Might not be the coolest but they just go and go.

2013 and 2016 plate cars. One bought at approx 1 year old outright
other bought new in 3 year finance and paid the balance off at the end
no plans to upgrade. We do low mileage and
both have been reliable so far 🤞

I drive a small hatch back, always buy second hand something aged 3-5 and sell or part/ex at about 10 or the first sign that I could be starting to face repair bills. I shop around to find something genuine and reliable so it might take a year between me thinking probably time to get something a bit newer and actually buying. I buy for cash, never taking a loan but I only spend 6k tops. My current car was three and half when I bought it and had less than 13000 miles on the clock. Insurance and tax are low so purchase and running costs (apart from fuel) probably cost me less than a grand a year total. I couldn't afford to splash out on a big, flashy, high insurance group monstrosity fresh off the forecourt every couple of years.

• buying cars second hand, friends who have done this seem to regularly spend £££ on maintenance issues, even for cars that are only a few years old.

The trick to buying second cars is to do careful research. If you Google 'best second hand cars UK' or 'the most reliable cars UK' it will provide links to reliability data. You can also do this by year of manufacture. This has always been my starting point. This will give you the best options and you can research each car and make a decision from there. Personally, I never buy privately, always from a reputable dealer. Also, if you put the vehicle reg into the DVLA website it will show the outcomes of every MOT plus any outstanding advisories. If you choose a car with a full service history manufactured by Honda, Toyota (incl. Lexas), Suzuki or Hyundai, it's highly unlikely it will need costly repairs. I drive a Honda Jazz, my second, it has a reliability rating of 97%! My first HJ I owned for 13 years, purchased as a 5 year old car for cash. I never had a single problem with it and as a consequence only had to pay for wear and tear such as brake pads, shoes, exhaust, tyres etc.

I use my car allowance from work to fund a new car every 3 years. It’s a decent amount and gets me a 50k car each time.

I’d probably buy a new one and keep it for a lot longer than 3 years if I was funding it from salary.

I bought a 59 plate Note around 6 or 7 years ago, cant remember now. 5k, paid outright, only ever have needed brakes, tyres MOT, services, tax obviously, suspension/bushes or whatever they're called. I think the key got sticky at one point and I paid 50 to fix that and I think I had something wrong with the heater which did cost a bit. Its dented a scratched, but virtually bullet proof

I would never, and couldnt afford it anyway, pay these high monthly costs that you quote OP, I dont understand how people do that. I expect my car to go on for more than several years more. Its got nearly 150k miles and I expect it to do probably 50-100k more, our last Note did the same.

The option you're missing is buying a nearly new car with outstanding warranty.

I bought an 18 month old car in 2014 with 8.5 years outstanding warranty. It was 10.5k. It's still going. The only things I've spent money on in that time are tyres, pads, bulbs and wipers. Averaged over the years I've had it, it has cost me less than 1100 a year, ignoring any residual value it might have.

You can pay for a lot of repairs and maintenance with £3600 a year! Even my worst, most problematic vehicle (yes looking at you Mercedes ambulance, and also at you Old Hairy Bastard the Transit Connect) cost an absolute fraction of that in annual repairs (and both those gleaming examples of mechanical engineering cost me well under a grand).

IME the trick has been to always buy second hand and keep for as long as possible. They're so expensive now since COVID. My first car I had for 10 years, the second for 7 and then had to buy my latest in 2021. Weirdly it actually appreciated in value for the first 18 months of ownership!

But because I buy them so infrequently, there is plenty of time to save up. Not sure whether that will continue to be possible with current prices though.

Problem is, dealerships make more money from selling finance products than cars. So it's in their interest for cars to be unaffordable.

You cut your coat according to your cloth. That’s a very old-fashioned concept but it remains a very valid one.

I drive a nice car now, which I own outright & can can easily afford. But when I was younger I bought & drove older used cars which I could actually afford. A six or seven year old Toyota or Honda should be very economical, very reliable & cheap to run. Buy sensibly & run it until the wheels fall off.

We got a car loan from our bank to pay back over 8 years. £400 out a month and we own the car at the end. Car was only a couple of years old and bought second hand from a VW dealer. No costs needed except for the usual MOT/ insurance. Leasing sounds like a pretty poor financial decision.

I had my VW on finance but paid it off and kept the car, had it since 2014 and it’s got 50k miles on
looking at changing it next year and I’m going for a Kia, probably a couple of years old low mileage financed by redundancy payment/small loan/part ex of my VW

My current car, and the last one, were both Kias. Only got rid of the last one because we became a low pollution zone and it was diesel. They are great, really reliable.

We bought a 2018 Astra in 2021, had it just over 4 years and we’ve never had any issues with it except some new tyres which is expected. Other friends who bought their cars second hand don’t seem to have many issues either. I’d never buy a brand new car.

I bought a second hand car outright when I got a small inheritance. And plan to drive it into the ground. No idea what I'll do then