30th Anniversary Monster

[Yorick]

S'funny. There's little snobbery and one-upmanship over here.
Very few flash cars. Most have nice new cars, but just small to medium range stuff.

Same with clothes. No power dressing. Everyone's in t-shirt and shorts.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Went shopping at 8am today, school run time for the £££ schools. Water main replacement means lights bunched everything up coming the other way so a great swathe of traffic came by and it was just like that, interspersed with 'Transits'. All the SUV stuff was driven by identikit women in big sunnies with sprog(s) in the passenger seat(s), it was like 'there's a glitch in the Matrix'. Give the kids a couple of years and they'll be insisting on being delivered to school in small electric cars.

It's quite funny at the aforementioned school. As you might expect it's essentially a German SUV showroom in the car park, except there are a few marked up vans. They're generally pretty niche vans though, got one Farrier, one Blacksmith and one Thatcher

[Noggin]

An awful lot of people here seem to lease cars. But generally they don't go for the really high spec ones. It does seem vaguely sensible - sometimes!!

[Couchy]

If you're earning decently then leasing a depreciating asset where you'll have pretty much no repair bills and minimal servicing makes a lot of sense. If I was starting out in work again I'd do it my whole working life tbh. You can get plenty of useable cars for £2-£300 a month and that makes sense to me. I'd rather my money stays in my pocket. I don't get the SUV thing though, more expensive, use more fuel, pollute more and drive worse than an estate car. They're a status symbol and I don't want to impress the people that get impressed by them.

[Mr. Dazzle]

If you're earning decently then leasing a depreciating asset where you'll have pretty much no repair bills and minimal servicing makes a lot of sense. If I was starting out in work again I'd do it my whole working life tbh. You can get plenty of useable cars for £2-£300 a month and that makes sense to me. I'd rather my money stays in my pocket. I don't get the SUV thing though, more expensive, use more fuel, pollute more and drive worse than an estate car. They're a status symbol and I don't want to impress the people that get impressed by them.

This is basically what I was thinking, succinctly put

Buying the car youself with cash might "feel right" but at the end of the day you're sitll losing the money to depreciation. With PCP you just pay the money you were gonna lose anyway without having to front the capital and have it all tied up first?

Taking on more debt that you can afford is a different problem!

[Count Steer]

My approach is (probably completely illogical ), if I can pay cash for a car I'll think about the PCP option. If I can't then I'll have something cheaper. That way I know the money is there for the monthly payments (earning interest) and for the 'balloon' payment if I want to keep it for a couple more years. I bought my brand new V70 in '98 for 'cash'. Sold a few shares etc. Decided I was daft after...but I did keep it for about 20 years.

It's basically, if I can afford it, then I'll think about the options. Went PCP on the hybrid shopping trolley because, in 3 years after the time of purchase, might want to go electric, might want to keep it and it makes things simpler. Didn't want to sink lots of cash into something that we might want to hand back after 3 years (or before) and don't have any worries about selling at any point.

[Supermofo]

All the people I know with SUVs bar 1 have been chosen by women, mainly women who wear big sunglasses. Don't get it, bloody horrible things.

[Mr. Dazzle]

Bah! Some people but overpriced motorcycles just cause they're red/white/green with gold forks. They probably don't even have big sunglasses neither.

[v8-powered]

All the people I know with SUVs bar 1 have been chosen by women, mainly women who wear big sunglasses. Don't get it, bloody horrible things.

My wife say Hi

[Count Steer]

Ah, I found a picture of my old school runner next door neighbour. Not driving but this is The Look' although the sunnies tend to have thicker frames and darker lenses.

[Supermofo]

Bah! Some people but overpriced motorcycles just cause they're red/white/green with gold forks. They probably don't even have big sunglasses neither.

Bet they do!!

[Le_Fromage_Grande]

I have a simpler approach to buying vehicles, can I afford to throw that money away if it the vehicle goes wrong in a terminal way, if the answer is no, I don't buy the vehicle.

[cheb]

I'm wary of the drip drip payment style, partly small c conservatism, partly scepticism (dealers push it hard, it must be beneficial for them), partly I've never found any really good deals (albeit I've not looked too deeply) and partly idly fearing the small print (Mileage, I do more than average. Condition, my van goes on a small ferry regularly. Servicing, I'm a long time and distance from a main dealer.)

My last van cost about £20K, just under 3 years old and allowing it lasts 10 years that's £2K per year before it has no value. Being pessimistic, allow £250 per month depreciation. Am I likely to get an L2 H1 Vivaro or similar sized van for that? No VAT to be added.

Random pricing example after a quick search: A £35K new Vivaro is £529 per month allowing for 8K miles per year. That's under half what I'd expect to do. Pro rata-ing the value the monthly payment would be about £250 but I'd expect that to rise with the mileage. £35K seems to be the lowest spec, I'd need a towbar and rear camera too, I'd being expecting a minimum of £40K for a new van.

[Noggin]

Buying my daily car was a no-brainer, right now today it's cost me considerably less than leasing one would over the same period, and it's still going strong, plus I have it to sell and recover some cash whenever I want.

The economics are fairly simple, if someone else owns something and leases it to you, then you're paying what it costs including interest and depreciation, plus their profit.

I'm only pointing out the volatile situation of encouraging people to load up with monthly payments to the point where an interest rise sends them bust.

I 100% agree. However, the situation I'm in is that I can't afford to buy any car, but equally, live somewhere with no public transport!

The reason I started thinking about leasing is that even if I get to the point of being able to buy a car, it'll be a1000€ shitter (and out here a 1k car is a proper shitter!!). No guarantees it'll last six months.

But, when I was surfing the net a while ago, through the bank I could have got a second hand Fiat 500 for 130€ a month. To rent a car from the local supermarket would be 180€ a month - but I'd need 1500€ deposit (FFS, if I had 1500€ chances are I'd have bought an old shitter!!!)

I don't need or want a huge expensive car. For now I don't even need a car that could tow anything (since ANTS haven't given my my towing category on the my new licence ). So something small and cheap but reliable would be awesome.

So, right now it is something I will consider, mainly because even in the seasons the public transport is very limited and the paid public transport costs quite a lot

Not sure I'll actually commit, but it seems like a cheap and relatively sensible idea for a couple of years and I don't have a massive depreciation/have to throw it away at the end. Maybe

[Noggin]

I 100% agree. However, the situation I'm in is that I can't afford to buy any car, but equally, live somewhere with no public transport!

And this is what they call progress.

I wasn't alive in the 1950's but my take on it was that most people worked close to home, they had access to whatever transport they needed to get there and it didn't cost them more than they had to spare, so fewer people owned cars.

Fast forward to 2023 and all kinds of inventive debt instruments are available, everyone expects that you'll use them and you either buy into the maximum monthly payment or you get left behind.

Back to the subject of motorbikes, if you turn up to a bike meet on a knackered old shitter then people think that you must be eccentric or outrageously poor, because unless you really are eccentric or outrageously poor then you'd do what everyone else does and buy a new(er) bike on the drip.

You extrapolate that to everything in your life and as soon as a debt squeeze comes along you get whole sections of society that can't actually afford to live.

I live in the same building that I work in! (Well, summer my commute was about 130m!). But, interseason the only place I can shop up here is a minimum of 50% more expensive than in the valley. And there's no public transport because historically there are very few people living up here in the interseason. I'm the weirdo that's ended up with no transport! LOL

So I do agree with some of what you say, but not all!

[weeksy]

If we put £25 each in on payday we could buy you a car by Oct.

[Noggin]

If we put £25 each in on payday we could buy you a car by Oct.

But with my history of buying vehicles in the last few years it would blow up within a month!! x

[Yorick]

If we put £25 each in on payday we could buy you a car by Oct.

But with my history of vehicles in the last few years I'd crash it within a month!! x

FYFY

[Noggin]

If we put £25 each in on payday we could buy you a car by Oct.

But with my history of vehicles in the last few years I'd crash it within a month!! x

FYFY

That's not very fair! I've been pretty good at not crashing cars (and minibuses!), despite driving in snow most of the last few winters!!

[Couchy]

I'm wary of the drip drip payment style, partly small c conservatism, partly scepticism (dealers push it hard, it must be beneficial for them), partly I've never found any really good deals (albeit I've not looked too deeply) and partly idly fearing the small print (Mileage, I do more than average. Condition, my van goes on a small ferry regularly. Servicing, I'm a long time and distance from a main dealer.)

My last van cost about £20K, just under 3 years old and allowing it lasts 10 years that's £2K per year before it has no value. Being pessimistic, allow £250 per month depreciation. Am I likely to get an L2 H1 Vivaro or similar sized van for that? No VAT to be added.

Random pricing example after a quick search: A £35K new Vivaro is £529 per month allowing for 8K miles per year. That's under half what I'd expect to do. Pro rata-ing the value the monthly payment would be about £250 but I'd expect that to rise with the mileage. £35K seems to be the lowest spec, I'd need a towbar and rear camera too, I'd being expecting a minimum of £40K for a new van.

You can buy on straight finance without a mileage limit and comparing a new van with a 3 year old one isn’t like for like. If you bought a van for cash now that same £20k can get 5-6% interest so that needs factoring in, finance will cost you a bit more but there’s usually more discount to be had offsetting that. If the van is a business purchase it’s even more complicated.
I’d rather finance a work tool as if I haven’t got the work I wouldn’t need it, toys on the other hand I prefer to pay cash.