How much do people spend on cars?

Strangely enough, I didn't expect to have serious issues with my ankle and be forced to quit my job.

But that means you were originally planning on doing 40k a year on a 5k lease for the length of the lease!

If that's a 3 year lease it means you were intending on paying about £7,500 in fees (assuming 7.2p per mile). That's crazy stupid.
 
since october I have spend -;

800 on wheels
500 on maintenance
300 on bits to sort the car out, like obd scanner, tools etc.
200 on cleaning products(including pressure washer, hoses etc)

without those it costs me around 300/month to own it due to crazy insurance price.
 
Dad, is that you?

My dad also never sold a fully working car. He drove everything until it wouldn't drive no more then got another one. Frustrating when you factor in that his first car was brand new.

I've never bought a car new either.
This last one (Ford Mondeo estate) was bought in 2007 for £2000 and it is RK51 whatever year that is.
My longest lasting car was a 3 year old Vauxhall Chevette that I had for 16 years.
That would have lasted longer but it got nicked and they made a mess of it which would have cost too much to put right.
 
[TW]Fox;29759451 said:
Fuel is not a fixed cost - it is a variable cost depending on the choice of car. It is an unavoidable cost but the amount spent changes and it's part of the cost of motoring.

Otherwise we'd all drive a BMW 550i instead of a BMW 520d.

It is entirely rational, therefore, to include it.

Not everyone pays for fuel, and if you get mileage there is a higher rate for >2l petrol engines.
 
Not everyone pays for fuel

So therefore they won't include it in their TCO - simple huh (Though they obviously will include the BIK on the fuel card).

and if you get mileage there is a higher rate for >2l petrol engines.

All of which goes into the TCO calculation.

You cannot ignore fuel - it is part of the cost of running a car.

A friend of mine moved from a 2002 530i Sport Touring which he owned outright with no monthly cost and little depreciation to a leased Skoda Superb costing him a 3 figure amount per month. Ignoring fuel, he spends much more money now. But once you play fuel into both he's breaking even. Whether he made a financially astute decision or not rests on playing through the fuel costs into the figures.
 
Yes, if you get mileage and do mostly work miles, you can pretty much ignore fuel.

No you can't!

Consider a simple example. You do a 100 mile work trip for which you are reimbursed at 45p a mile. You do this twice - once in a car A that does 25mpg and once in a car B that does 45mpg.

In your view, you'd ignore fuel because you are 'reimbursed'. Therefore in calculating car ownership costs, both cars would have zero for fuel. But this is simplistic and wrong - for a start, the mileage reimbursment is not for fuel alone it is for all of the costs associated with making that journey - contributions towards depreciation, wear and tear, tyres and of course fuel.

So, back to the two cars. In both cases, you receive £45 from the mileage claim. But Car B used considerably less fuel and therefore means much more of that £45 went into offsetting the ownership costs of your car. Or to put it another way, the more fuel efficient the car, the more money in your pocket!

This is why TCO is such an important and useful figure. It considers ALL of this. You add up all the fuel, tyres, depreciation, insurance, tax and add in your reimbursements from mileage claims and the figure that comes out at the end is how much you ACTUALLY SPENT on running your car. Anything less is misleading.

The only time you can truly ignore fuel is when you don't actually pay for it at all - ie, you have a physical fuel card provided by your employer. Then you can ignore it - provided you add in the tax you pay on the fuel card, which varies depending on the car.
 
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[TW]Fox;29759773 said:
No you can't!

Consider a simple example. You do a 100 mile work trip for which you are reimbursed at 45p a mile. You do this twice - once in a car A that does 25mpg and once in a car B that does 45mpg.

In your view, you'd ignore fuel because you are 'reimbursed'. Therefore in calculating car ownership costs, both cars would have zero for fuel. But this is simplistic and wrong - for a start, the mileage reimbursment is not for fuel alone it is for all of the costs associated with making that journey - contributions towards depreciation, wear and tear, tyres and of course fuel.

So, back to the two cars. In both cases, you receive £45 from the mileage claim. But Car B used considerably less fuel and therefore means much more of that £45 went into offsetting the ownership costs of your car. Or to put it another way, the more fuel efficient the car, the more money in your pocket!

This is why TCO is such an important and useful figure. It considers ALL of this. You add up all the fuel, tyres, depreciation, insurance, tax and add in your reimbursements from mileage claims and the figure that comes out at the end is how much you ACTUALLY SPENT on running your car. Anything less is misleading.

The only time you can truly ignore fuel is when you don't actually pay for it at all - ie, you have a physical fuel card provided by your employer. Then you can ignore it - provided you add in the tax you pay on the fuel card, which varies depending on the car.

I was talking about fuel advisory rates which vary according to current petrol prices and engine size.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advisory-fuel-rates/advisory-fuel-rates-from-1-march-2016

So yes, in my case, I can pretty much ignore fuel because it would make very little difference to TCO unless I chose a big outlier in terms of mpg vs engine size/type.
 
2004 Celica TSPort

I spend on a monthly average:
-£109 on fuel
-£133 on all other costs, from servicing, MOT, insurance, VED, and parts
 
Lord knows.

Bought it in 2007 for about £11k at 4 years old, but it's still worth around £7k now - and prices are either stable or improving, so that's going to be about it for depreciation unless it gets broken.

Because of a couple of majors, it's averaged about £1000 a year in cost of 'work' on it since I bought it - including things like tyres, MOTs, cosmetic repairs and the like as well as service and maintenance work.

And it only manages about 20mpg - but then I only do about 6000 miles a year (and that is due to drop significantly as I now work from home. It's a month since I last filled up in fact.

Overall, while a lot of people would look at the grand a year costs and think it's been expensive. But I reckon the depreciation of significantly less than half of that a year, due to get even better, offsets that nicely.

Plus it's fantastic fun to drive, while also being rather practical (except for fuel economy!)
 
I was talking about fuel advisory rates which vary according to current petrol prices and engine size.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/advisory-fuel-rates/advisory-fuel-rates-from-1-march-2016

So yes, in my case, I can pretty much ignore fuel because it would make very little difference to TCO unless I chose a big outlier in terms of mpg vs engine size/type.


There are huge variances between fuel efficiency within cars that fit into those bands. Plus almost nobody is paid those rates - people using their own car will receive much more for the first 10,000 miles as it covers not only fuel but all variable cost elements of motoring, whereas those in company cars will likely receive less because it genuinely does cover only fuel.

Both my current car and my previous car have exactly the same sized engine and therefore have exactly the same advisory rate. Yet my current car uses approximately 30% less fuel than my previous car. If I ignore this, then my current car costs more to own than my previous car. If I include this, then my current car, over the first 2 years I had it, actually cost about the same despite being considerably newer and having noticeably higher depreciation.

Why don't we arbitrarily exclude other costs too?

Let's ignore tyres. Or perhaps we'll ignore depreciation?

If you start to cherry pick what you do and don't include you end up subconsciously massaging the figures into what it is you want them to tell you and end up ignoring the reality.
 
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But that means you were originally planning on doing 40k a year on a 5k lease for the length of the lease!

If that's a 3 year lease it means you were intending on paying about £7,500 in fees (assuming 7.2p per mile). That's crazy stupid.

I could more than afford to cover the excess mileage charge with the money I made from my 25p per mile expenses and actively saved money away exactly for this. I simply didn't have the money to buy a decent reliable car up front at the time and couldn't not have a car due to the traveling required.

The main plan was to purchase the car at the end of the 3 years and sell it on or part ex it for something else.
 
My 2016 Golf cost me £138/month and I net £200 in mileage profit a month. So in total my car earns me £62/month. Do I win?
 
[TW]Fox;29759807 said:
There are huge variances between fuel efficiency within cars that fit into those bands. Plus almost nobody is paid those rates - people using their own car will receive much more for the first 10,000 miles as it covers not only fuel but all variable cost elements of motoring, whereas those in company cars will likely receive less because it genuinely does cover only fuel.

Both my current car and my previous car have exactly the same sized engine and therefore have exactly the same advisory rate. Yet my current car uses approximately 30% less fuel than my previous car. If I ignore this, then my current car costs more to own than my previous car. If I include this, then my current car, over the first 2 years I had it, actually cost about the same despite being considerably newer and having noticeably higher depreciation.

Why don't we arbitrarily exclude other costs too?

Let's ignore tyres. Or perhaps we'll ignore depreciation?

If you start to cherry pick what you do and don't include you end up subconsciously massaging the figures into what it is you want them to tell you and end up ignoring the reality.

Pretty much everyone with a car allowance rather than a company car gets those figures. Many people (me included) are opting for car allowances these days.

Fair enough, it should be included for a fully accurate TCO figure. However it makes much less difference to TCO than if you pay for fuel.
 
My 2016 Golf cost me £138/month and I net £200 in mileage profit a month. So in total my car earns me £62/month. Do I win?

Yes.

I mean no, you must ignore the mileage profit and pretend your car costs you £138 a month even though it doesn't :D
 
Fair enough, it should be included for a fully accurate TCO figure. However it makes much less difference to TCO than if you pay for fuel.

If you hand your debit/credit card over at the pump, you pay for fuel.

Even aside from that it's unlikely you never, ever, ever drive anywhere ever for anything other than business use. And your daily commute isn't expensable either so there is still fuel expenditure that isn't covered by mileage reimbursement.
 
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[TW]Fox;29759880 said:
If you hand your debit/credit card over at the pump, you pay for fuel.

Even aside from that it's unlikely you never, ever, ever drive anywhere ever for anything other than business use. And your daily commute isn't expansible either so there is still fuel expenditure that isn't covered by mileage reimbursement.

Nice assumptions about my personal circumstances :)

I work from home and go to the office around once a week (450 mile round trip) and yes I can expense it, plus customer visits. I don't use my car other than work trips.
 
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