Car purchase: please check my logic

SAM81

SAM81

SAM81

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3 Dec 2005
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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
 
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
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Will do, thanks. And already made the mistake of fighting women's logic. Ended in a huge argument. Utterly bonkers.
 
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
 
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
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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)
 
realscot said:
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!
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Thanks for the suggestions so far. She seemed OK with the idea of driving a bigger car than a focus / golf etc so that helps.

Any reason why I should avoid vauxhalls (in particular insignias) ? If they are thought of as being crap to drive then that's not a worry, anything is going to seem like pure luxury after the 323. Or are they notoriously unreliable? If that's the case then it's a different matter...


Would a mondeo be a better option?
 
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