Car purchase: please check my logic

SAM81

SAM81

SAM81

Associate
Joined
3 Dec 2005
Posts
1,526
So in the new year I will be given a company car allowance of 530 Pre tax. I can take a car out of the lease scheme or take the allowance in my pay packet and spend it how I chose.

My personal background is that I am a lower take rate payer, currently drive a 10 year old mazda 323 and do an average of around 10k personal millage. Any work travel is to London and done on the train. We have a baby on the way (due in April). Why do I need a new car? The mazda is getting a little old now, and although I have no problem driving an older car, the gf does. She seems to think that it is unsafe (based on no logical reason) and is keen to get something newer that will last another 10 years for when the baby arrives. No matter what I say here, there is no changing her opinion.

So I agree we can get rid of the mazda and either purchase a new car (not brand new, just new to us) or take a car out of the company car scheme. I'm pretty sure I don't want to take a car out of the lease scheme, as mentioned before I don't do any business milage and feel as though the money could be taken and used to buy a car privately and therefore have an asset after a few years of paying the car off.

Financially we will be taking out a 10k loan over 3 years and putting the car allowance money towards paying off the loan (minus some money saved from the allowance for insurance, tax and maintenance). The car should be sub 20k miles (as mentioned before, there is no logic to this, she feels anything older than this is starting to get 'old' ... I know I know) and be big enough to carry the standard array of 1 child family luggage (so I'm assuming focus / astra/ golf size up).

Am I doing the right thing in taking the allowance vs leasing and based on the above Criteria what sort of cars should we be looking at? I see on the network q website you can get some insignias that meet the above criteria, or would I be mad to look at these?

Any help here is greatly appreciated
 
I would take the money personally. Doesn't sound like you need a company car.
 
Yeah just take the cash. Before you take a personal loan consider whether you can get a lower overall cost of purchase through dealer financing. Sometimes they'll do 0% or a very low rate, though it can mean you lose a bit of your own negotiating position and may only be onnbrand new cars.

Don't try and fight woman logic, there is no point - you're looking at the right type of car too by the sounds of it. If you really will keep it ten years then depressing as it is consider the Koreans with their decent length warranties
 
rodenal said:
Yeah just take the cash. Before you take a personal loan consider whether you can get a lower overall cost of purchase through dealer financing. Sometimes they'll do 0% or a very low rate, though it can mean you lose a bit of your own negotiating position and may only be onnbrand new cars.

Don't try and fight woman logic, there is no point - you're looking at the right type of car too by the sounds of it. If you really will keep it ten years then depressing as it is consider the Koreans with their decent length warranties
Click to expand...

Will do, thanks. And already made the mistake of fighting women's logic. Ended in a huge argument. Utterly bonkers.
 
SAM81 said:
Will do, thanks. And already made the mistake of fighting women's logic. Ended in a huge argument. Utterly bonkers.
Click to expand...

Tell her to focus on the kitchen and cleaning and let someone who knows deal with motoring issues.

;)
 
And the rest? Warranty will be 90ish quid a month on it's own, tyres are 700ish a set, etc, excise duty is 480 a year.

It's an M3, it's a big money car to run. I would be budgeting more than 50 quid a month to run a 330i let alone an M3.
 
Yeah I think he's posted in the wrong thread, I'll be looking at focus, insignia mondeo etc...

Insurance will be paid as a one off, so I really mean what's the average amount I should be factoring in for maintaining the car
 
Work out how often you'll have it serviced, mot if its 3 years plus, how often you'll need tyres, allow for brakes every couple of years etc and divide it all out then allow I dunno an extra 50 quid a month for the what ifs.

If you really want to go all out you could work out when you'll need a suspension refresh, if it needs a belt change and divide all that back out too.

It will vary car to car. To be perfectly honest I don't specifically keep anything for repairs but take cash out of spending/ savings as appropriate. The only items I specifically keep some money for are insurance, servicing and tyres
 
rodenal said:
Work out how often you'll have it serviced, mot if its 3 years plus, how often you'll need tyres, allow for brakes every couple of years etc and divide it all out then allow I dunno an extra 50 quid a month for the what ifs.

If you really want to go all out you could work out when you'll need a suspension refresh, if it needs a belt change and divide all that back out too.

It will vary car to car. To be perfectly honest I don't specifically keep anything for repairs but take cash out of spending/ savings as appropriate. The only items I specifically keep some cash for are insurance, servicing and tyres
Click to expand...

Thanks. Thinking about it, any money left out of the allowance will go into savings so in theory it shouldn't really matter (providing the car I pick isn't notably unreliable)
 
SAM81 said:
older car, the gf does. She seems to think that it is unsafe (based on no logical reason) and is keen to get something newer that will last another 10 years for when the baby arrives. No matter what I say here, there is no changing her opinion.
Click to expand...

Have you told her that in 10 years time the new car will be older than your current car (given it won't be new when you buy it)? Surely that's unsafe?!?
I think if you want to keep the same car for 10 years then buying definitely makes more sense than the lease.
Don't have a lot to add other than bear in mind if you get a large pram it will take up a lot of the boot space in focus/asta/golf size hatches, so it depends how much other stuff/people you need to cart around.
 
Take the money, lease a cheap car, find a deal, you'll get a cheaper than personal deal as you get a car allowance.

Don't forget to claim any business mileage back through your tax coding.
 
I don't see why you need to go all out and buy something expensive, you can get good modern examples of generic cars such as the Insignia or Mondeo for more like 5 grand for example. Your O/H wouldn't even know the difference.
 
HangTime said:
bear in mind if you get a large pram it will take up a lot of the boot space in focus/asta/golf size hatches, so it depends how much other stuff/people you need to cart around.
Click to expand...

This.

I remember looking at golfs when my daughter was just a few months old and the boot was of no use what so ever.

Please oh please don't look at any vauxhalls, you can thank me later.
Look at smaller estate cars, trust me even with 1 child they will start to make sense. Forget loans etc, find a late model E46 touring, I think they look fantastic, but maybe it's just me, and they feel solid so the missus might find it feels SAFE. Slightly newer, and safer? Volvo V50 R Design - quite like those too!
 
Trouble is my wife didn't want anything bigger than a Golf as she'd only owned smaller cars :) In a few years when we start taking our son on holidays then I think we may need to consider getting something bigger; hopefully she'll be more amenable to the idea then but it is quite shocking really how even an overnight trip somewhere can fill the car up with all the bits and bobs he needs plus xmas gifts or whatever.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom