Car spend to salary ratio
Discussion
Hi all,
I'm currently on the hunt to replace my wife's car and just wondered how much people spend on their cars versus how much they earn a year? Someone once told me the max you should spend on cars is half your salary. For whatever reason that always stuck in my head, and I now can't bring myself to exceed a 50:50 ratio.
What do you all think is a good ratio? I'm sure PHers must spend a much higher ratio than non petrol heads.
I'll be interested to know whether I'm normal or not.
I'm currently on the hunt to replace my wife's car and just wondered how much people spend on their cars versus how much they earn a year? Someone once told me the max you should spend on cars is half your salary. For whatever reason that always stuck in my head, and I now can't bring myself to exceed a 50:50 ratio.
What do you all think is a good ratio? I'm sure PHers must spend a much higher ratio than non petrol heads.
I'll be interested to know whether I'm normal or not.
In 2007 I had a fairly good job earning around 50k.
I bought a Porsche 911 costing 30k on finance. I put down 3k and financed the rest over 4 years @ £650 a month.
I wouldn't have been bothered if it had cost £1650 a month. I wanted a Porsche 911 and that was that. Screw earning ratios and all that crap.
I got made redundant from that job a year later, but I hung onto my Porsche and scraped by earning what I could here and there to pay for it each month.
I had many memorable drives in the car, did lots of runs and events including PH tunnel runs, met some great people with it - and heck, although she's not materialistic and wouldn't admit it - I'm sure it helped me to pull my current Girlfriend!
But I also suffered some fairly big problems with it, the biggest being a horrendously unreliable gearbox, and in 3 years or so had to spend around £5k in repairs and maintenance.
I sold it in 2010 to a well-known Porsche dealer, after being mucked around by some idiotic private buyers. However, selling to a dealer in a recession meant I received £18,000 less than I had paid.
The privilege of driving round in a 911 cost me around £8,400 a year, plus petrol on top. It had to use V power, and I so for the mileage I covered I also spent around £7,500 in fuel. So the final bill of ownership, including depreciation, repairs and finance interest, plus fuel, is around £32,000, or £10,700 a year.
Bloody hell, I've just scared myself with that figure - never added it up before, lol!
But do I regret it? Not one bit. This is Pistonheads, right? Where we all give an arm and a leg for nice cars! Plus, I could get run over by a bus tomorrow - so yeah, forget car spend to salary ratios, and just buy what you really want, ok?!
I bought a Porsche 911 costing 30k on finance. I put down 3k and financed the rest over 4 years @ £650 a month.
I wouldn't have been bothered if it had cost £1650 a month. I wanted a Porsche 911 and that was that. Screw earning ratios and all that crap.
I got made redundant from that job a year later, but I hung onto my Porsche and scraped by earning what I could here and there to pay for it each month.
I had many memorable drives in the car, did lots of runs and events including PH tunnel runs, met some great people with it - and heck, although she's not materialistic and wouldn't admit it - I'm sure it helped me to pull my current Girlfriend!
But I also suffered some fairly big problems with it, the biggest being a horrendously unreliable gearbox, and in 3 years or so had to spend around £5k in repairs and maintenance.
I sold it in 2010 to a well-known Porsche dealer, after being mucked around by some idiotic private buyers. However, selling to a dealer in a recession meant I received £18,000 less than I had paid.
The privilege of driving round in a 911 cost me around £8,400 a year, plus petrol on top. It had to use V power, and I so for the mileage I covered I also spent around £7,500 in fuel. So the final bill of ownership, including depreciation, repairs and finance interest, plus fuel, is around £32,000, or £10,700 a year.
Bloody hell, I've just scared myself with that figure - never added it up before, lol!But do I regret it? Not one bit. This is Pistonheads, right? Where we all give an arm and a leg for nice cars! Plus, I could get run over by a bus tomorrow - so yeah, forget car spend to salary ratios, and just buy what you really want, ok?!
Ray Luxury-Yacht said:
In 2007 I had a fairly good job earning around 50k.
I bought a Porsche 911 costing 30k on finance. I put down 3k and financed the rest over 4 years @ £650 a month.
I wouldn't have been bothered if it had cost £1650 a month. I wanted a Porsche 911 and that was that. Screw earning ratios and all that crap.
I got made redundant from that job a year later, but I hung onto my Porsche and scraped by earning what I could here and there to pay for it each month.
I had many memorable drives in the car, did lots of runs and events including PH tunnel runs, met some great people with it - and heck, although she's not materialistic and wouldn't admit it - I'm sure it helped me to pull my current Girlfriend!
But I also suffered some fairly big problems with it, the biggest being a horrendously unreliable gearbox, and in 3 years or so had to spend around £5k in repairs and maintenance.
I sold it in 2010 to a well-known Porsche dealer, after being mucked around by some idiotic private buyers. However, selling to a dealer in a recession meant I received £18,000 less than I had paid.
The privilege of driving round in a 911 cost me around £8,400 a year, plus petrol on top. It had to use V power, and I so for the mileage I covered I also spent around £7,500 in fuel. So the final bill of ownership, including depreciation, repairs and finance interest, plus fuel, is around £32,000, or £10,700 a year. Bloody hell, I've just scared myself with that figure - never added it up before, lol!
But do I regret it? Not one bit. This is Pistonheads, right? Where we all give an arm and a leg for nice cars! Plus, I could get run over by a bus tomorrow - so yeah, forget car spend to salary ratios, and just buy what you really want, ok?!
totally agree and like your style.I bought a Porsche 911 costing 30k on finance. I put down 3k and financed the rest over 4 years @ £650 a month.
I wouldn't have been bothered if it had cost £1650 a month. I wanted a Porsche 911 and that was that. Screw earning ratios and all that crap.
I got made redundant from that job a year later, but I hung onto my Porsche and scraped by earning what I could here and there to pay for it each month.
I had many memorable drives in the car, did lots of runs and events including PH tunnel runs, met some great people with it - and heck, although she's not materialistic and wouldn't admit it - I'm sure it helped me to pull my current Girlfriend!
But I also suffered some fairly big problems with it, the biggest being a horrendously unreliable gearbox, and in 3 years or so had to spend around £5k in repairs and maintenance.
I sold it in 2010 to a well-known Porsche dealer, after being mucked around by some idiotic private buyers. However, selling to a dealer in a recession meant I received £18,000 less than I had paid.
The privilege of driving round in a 911 cost me around £8,400 a year, plus petrol on top. It had to use V power, and I so for the mileage I covered I also spent around £7,500 in fuel. So the final bill of ownership, including depreciation, repairs and finance interest, plus fuel, is around £32,000, or £10,700 a year.
Bloody hell, I've just scared myself with that figure - never added it up before, lol!But do I regret it? Not one bit. This is Pistonheads, right? Where we all give an arm and a leg for nice cars! Plus, I could get run over by a bus tomorrow - so yeah, forget car spend to salary ratios, and just buy what you really want, ok?!
Out here in Germany it's seen as very important to have a visibly new and prestigious car if at all possible, and I've been told several times by different people that having a car worth a year's salary is in absolutely no way unusual!
Personally I have currently never had anything that wasn't at least a bit sheddy thus far (2k tops), but plan to spend around 30% of a year's salary on my next car.
Would be comfortable with more if it wouldn't mean cutting back on other stuff I enjoy.
Got to leave plenty in the coke and hookers budget!
Personally I have currently never had anything that wasn't at least a bit sheddy thus far (2k tops), but plan to spend around 30% of a year's salary on my next car.
Would be comfortable with more if it wouldn't mean cutting back on other stuff I enjoy.
Got to leave plenty in the coke and hookers budget!
Chicane-UK said:
50% of your salary on a car? Seriously?!
I don't / wouldn't spend anything near that!
I don't mean to spend 50% of your salary on a car year on year. Rather have a car/s worth approx half your salary. I don't / wouldn't spend anything near that!
It is already interesting to see the range of opinions already. I love my cars, so probably do spend far more than I should, but hey, you only live once.
k3ybo said:
Would be comfortable with more if it wouldn't mean cutting back on other stuff I enjoy.
Got to leave plenty in the coke and hookers budget!
This man speaks sense! I would never put money into a car that I could make better use of elsewhere. Got to leave plenty in the coke and hookers budget!
At the moment I earn 4/5ths of f
k all and want to use all of my holiday leave this year climbing, sailing and skiiing and I don't want to live like a monk in between those trips, so I'll keep my little car for this year at least and enjoy living within my (modest) means.Like a lot of people have said though, just do whatever you're happy doing.
I have in the past spent some serious wedge on decent motors and once added up how much I had spent over the years in depreciation and running costs.... Don't ever do that it will kick you in the balls!
These days I could probably more afford to do it than I ever have but I now choose not to and I have a couple of nice motors which as a % are very very low as I have ploughed most of my capital into property over the past 3-4 years as prices have been right for purchasing also it is in lieu of a pension. Possibly not very "PH" but I do have a brace of Jags which are both quite contrasting and I think both are smashing motors.
I do occasionally hang my nose over something at the thick end of three figures again and each time I have given it serious thought I have taken the cash and ploughed it into another property again. Will I again? Very probably even Mrs H has said she is getting concerned that I am losing my sanity as I keep making very sensible decisions and that I really ought to let my hair down again and get something very silly and full of potential fiscal ruin! To which end I have promised myself and been given full approval to get something for my 40th in a few years.
If for no other reason than one day Craig will stop inviting me back to VMaxx events as I keep saying no and it has been a few years since I did the last one and I do miss it!
These days I could probably more afford to do it than I ever have but I now choose not to and I have a couple of nice motors which as a % are very very low as I have ploughed most of my capital into property over the past 3-4 years as prices have been right for purchasing also it is in lieu of a pension. Possibly not very "PH" but I do have a brace of Jags which are both quite contrasting and I think both are smashing motors.
I do occasionally hang my nose over something at the thick end of three figures again and each time I have given it serious thought I have taken the cash and ploughed it into another property again. Will I again? Very probably even Mrs H has said she is getting concerned that I am losing my sanity as I keep making very sensible decisions and that I really ought to let my hair down again and get something very silly and full of potential fiscal ruin! To which end I have promised myself and been given full approval to get something for my 40th in a few years.
If for no other reason than one day Craig will stop inviting me back to VMaxx events as I keep saying no and it has been a few years since I did the last one and I do miss it!
VR46 said:
totally agree and like your style.
Cheers lads.Look, for the responsible PH'ers - I'm not advocating ridiculous unmanageable credit, or massive debts that put you at serious risk of losing everything.
And to qualify my apparrent recklessness - I didn't have at the time (and still don't have) a wife, a household to pay for or dependents, and I've never had children. I've also tried to put some of my earnings away over the years, and am lucky enough to have one or two investment properties (although they're now worth next to FA thanks to the recession - I reckon I'd have been better off buying some solid cassic cars or wines or something!)
But the exercise did cost me a bloody fortune and line the pockets of lenders too. It was a big bill in anyone's book - all for a vaguely nice car, which wasn't even a Turbo, and wasn't really all THAT fast - and you could equal it's performance with a car costing a third as much - I reckon a good Mitsu Evo could blitz my old Carrera 4
But I wanted a Porsche Goddammit - and I had a Porsche and lots of fun in it too!
I mean - who can put a price on taking it out in the dead of a Summer's night for instance - roof down, driving a deserted country A road, with only the odd rabbit on the verge for company? Feeling the still-warm summer air around your face and body as it whips into the cabin at a questionable speed? Hearing the wail of the sports exhaust bouncing off the sides of the verges that line the road, and filling your ears with the aural delight of a flat-six engine being wrung out to it's limit? Startling for the wildlife, but music to the ears of an enthusiastic, committed driver, leaving all the stress and worry of day-to-day life behind, and concentrating on nothing else except the simple purity of the next apex, the line through the corner, and getting the engine revs perfectly matched to the necessity of sling-shotting the car out of the turn with maximum acceleration and minimum fuss?
Accelerating as hard as possible out of a high-speed, 3rd gear corner, feeling the tyres scrabble for grip upon the road surface, and then slamming the gearbox into the next ratio (probably why I had so many gearbox problems, lol
), whilst the canopy of trees above your head, that have grown across the road enough to meet in the middle, are illuminated by the headlights to form a kind of luminous, green tunnel for you to tear through like it's your own?Despite concentrating on the black ribbon of tarmac in front of you, like your life depends on it, reading the road and anticipating how the car requires to be set-up and settled for the next corner - you allow yourself to enjoy at least one of the external influences on your senses without distracting you from the all-encompassing focus of driving - your nose can enjoy the sweet smell of previously sun-drenched fauna and foliage from the hot day before, as it fills the cooling night air with magnificent aromas of nature's summer growth.
Getting home, parking the car on the drive in the dead of night. No-one except you and some random wildlife knowing what you've just been up to. Miles and miles away from town centres, traffic, and even our friends in Blue.
Giggle a bit like a naughty schoolboy as you exit the car, to be met with the smell of hot, well-worked tyres, brakes and engine. There's no smell like it! And as you close the car down for the night, she seems to sigh with the pleasure of a leg-stretching, exciting run and the anticipation of a relaxing cooling down, showing her appreciation with an ensemble of tings, ticks and creaks of metal that's looking forward to expelling some of the heat gained from tonight's fun back into the night's atmosphere.
Press the fob, the indicators flash, and with that the car gives you a goodnight wink of a shared, guilty pleasure that not too many people on this planet are fortunate or lucky enough to experience.
Is that enough to drag you away from the worries of car spend to salary ratio???!!!
if the OP means value of cars to salary I'm well over the 100% mark. My current GT3's worth what I consider to me a hell of a lot of money but I consider devaluation far more important that the cars actual value.
The last 4 cars I've owned (clio 172, integra type R, s2000 and M3 CSL) I lost a total of £300 when comparing purchase to sale price over approximately 3.5 years and 40,000miles, won quite a few sprint trophies and enjoyed each and everyone of them which to me is the point of buying these things.
The last 4 cars I've owned (clio 172, integra type R, s2000 and M3 CSL) I lost a total of £300 when comparing purchase to sale price over approximately 3.5 years and 40,000miles, won quite a few sprint trophies and enjoyed each and everyone of them which to me is the point of buying these things.
(Rayluxury-Yacht) I like your attitude (and honesty about the performance compared to newer Evos, etc), you lived the dream and survived to tell the tale. Just watch out for the buses tomorrow as it would be better if you don't get hit by them. 
I've been far more restrained myself, having had my fingers burnt at the tender age of 20 when buying (of all things) a 2 year old MG Metro. That was probably 50% of my salary at the time, but entirely on finance apart from a small deposit from my PX. The engine blew up a month out of warranty and I was fobbed off by the garage, so I had to learn how to rebuild it myself at the barrack's 'Car club'. The bills for the rebuild and subsequent MOT failure as it was by then 3 years old meant I had to sell it to clear my debts. Since then I've only bought cars that I could pay cash for (granted I've had company cars more recently).
My recent purchase was about 10-15% my current salary, but it's given me so much fun and helped revive my interest in cars and going to meets, even though it's hardly likely to be voted top PH car of the year.
Just watch out for the buses tomorrow as it would be better if you don't get hit by them. I've been far more restrained myself, having had my fingers burnt at the tender age of 20 when buying (of all things) a 2 year old MG Metro. That was probably 50% of my salary at the time, but entirely on finance apart from a small deposit from my PX. The engine blew up a month out of warranty and I was fobbed off by the garage, so I had to learn how to rebuild it myself at the barrack's 'Car club'. The bills for the rebuild and subsequent MOT failure as it was by then 3 years old meant I had to sell it to clear my debts. Since then I've only bought cars that I could pay cash for (granted I've had company cars more recently).
My recent purchase was about 10-15% my current salary, but it's given me so much fun and helped revive my interest in cars and going to meets, even though it's hardly likely to be voted top PH car of the year.
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