How much does your car cost per month?

[ashleyman]

Basically man maths caught up with me and I finally worked out how much it costs to keep my Golf R on the road. It's not good and I need to spend less and save more if I want to have a deposit for a property anytime soon. Thought process behind the Golf was we didn't want to buy something older that could be a money pit so ended up on the PCP bandwagon which is still a money pit. Looking at other cars it doesn't look like there's much saving to be had unless we stop the finance and buy something older for cash.

I just wondered if we were being realistic with what it costs the average person to run a car. Doesn't matter what it is.

If anyone could put down the make and model of car and what it costs it would really help me to understand if we were about average or had unrealistic expectations about actual costs of car ownership.

Monthly Payment - unless bought outright
Insurance - if you pay per year, divide premium by 12 or put in monthly Direct Debit
Tax / VED
Fuel

Mine looks like this:
Monthly Payment: £342.43
Insurance: £100.87
Tax / VED: £15.41
Fuel - £195 (We use on average about 3 tanks a month @ £65 a tank)
Total: £653.70

All of £7800 a year.

Any replies would help and I probably deserve the roasting I'm going to get but looking at PCP numbers on lesser cars it seems like there's not much more than £100 a month to be saved, I know that's £1200 a year but still not enough to make any dent in saving up the £30k I need in less than 6 years!

Any suggestions for a cheap reliable automatic? ha

[ashleyman]

L0gan5 said:

What about servicing, tyres etc ?

You're looking at it the wrong way - if buying a house is your priority you need to figure out how much you can save each month after all your essential outogings. What you have left can go towards your transport.

Unfortunately I think you already know the Golf has to got to go and you'll probably be driving an old banger for a few years.

If having a car is an essential outgoing that needs to be reliable then I can't ignore the fact that running a car will have associated costs. I'm already cutting down in other areas and so far I know I can save £400 a month after 'essentials'. Ideally I want to be saving £650 per month so that in 4 years I could have at least the £30,000 I need.

I think I'm being realistic and I know the Golf definitely has to go. But looking at replacements it doesn't seem like we can get anything but a banger which I don't want to risk therefore asking what other people are paying on their cars might help me get an idea of what's cheaper than a Golf but isn't a banger! I do not want to sell the Golf, buy a shed and then be faced with £1500 bill for repairs, unlikely but possible.

Edited by ashleyman on Thursday 9th November 10:49

[ashleyman]

S100HP said:

Most of this is meaningless however as it depends on your circumstances, how many miles you do, where you live etc.

We do about 600 miles per month unless I need to travel for work in which case it could be double, depends on the job location.

Live in S London. Insurance on something small like a Fiesta for me and the wife is still £800+. I have 3 points and she's a 'new' driver.

[ashleyman]

When I say Banger, I’m talking about a proper banger car that’s probably not worth much to buy but could potentially cause lots of issues and spend on repairs. I know there are decent new cars out there on cheap lease deals or 1 or 3 year old cars we could potentially jump into but I wondered if it was even possible to make a big dent in our current spend or if we were being unrealistic at what it should cost to run a car.

A few people have said I’m not serious. I’m deadly serious but I wanted to find out if it was possible to run a car all in for say £300 a month so I could pocket the extra £300 and stick it in savings.

Our insurance isn’t changing much regardless of what car I put in the comparison websites which is depressing. The cheapest I’ve seen is £950 for a 1.0 ecoboost Fiesta.

I understand that we need to get a deposit together asap because prices will continue to increase. Our saving potential per month was £400 but with a few adjustments I've already made this morning it's now at £600 a month. If I managed to change the car and get the monthly running costs to £300, that’s still an extra £340 I could save bringing our total monthly save to £940 or £11,280 a year.

I fully understand that we won’t be driving a new car similar to the Golf R for a while but I am serious about this and needing to make a change, the wife is picky with her car choice so although I’d be happy to run around in an old manual clio, she wouldn’t do it. BUT she also needs to face facts and might have to start walking to work instead of driving the car. It’s only 2 miles away and the walk will do her good!

She's already gonna be super annoyed that I cancelled the £7 a month she pays to have her favourite Tesco Delivery slot guaranteed no matter when she orders online.

[ashleyman]

For everyone not quoting a car price, are you saving towards something new, if so. How much?

[ashleyman]

Toaster Pilot said:

Why would they need to be saving for a different car rather than just using the one they have?

They might be saving for a house deposit rather than paying for a flash car on finance

True. But cars aren’t free so there’s always some cost involved to purchase no?

Or would it be better to post what the depreciation is?

The thread is about total cost of running and I was ideally looking for what the actual vehicle costs too. Not just the fuel and tax.

[ashleyman]

Yipper said:

Always amazed when people say they are saving for a home, and then proceed to spank £8k a year on a car, when they can easily get that down to £1-2k and save the difference for a house deposit. As others have said, just get a Yaris or similar for a while and save like mad to cobble a deposit together. And then get the flash car.

Wasn’t saving for a home whilst having a flash car. Now that I’m saving the flash car is going but trying to get a handle on what realistic monthly motoring costs are and if it’s even possible to run a car on say £250.

[ashleyman]

Bill said:

Particularly as, by his own admission, the OP can't afford it.

lol. Of course I can afford it but priorities change...

The point of the thread was to get an idea of average running costs to ensure our expectations are possible, this thread has shown you can run a car on less which gives me a good idea of how to lower costs and what they could go down too.

If I could, I wouldn't have a car at all for a year or 2 but that's unrealistic in our circumstances.

[ashleyman]

For all those people who are not including the monthly or the depreciation you're figures are pointless.

How much is it depreciating?

If you can't answer that;

How much are you saving up monthly for the next one?

[ashleyman]

Pizzaeatingking said:

That's a fair point, but it's all guess work. If I had paid that and got rid of it next month it'd have cost me £1000 a month, so what figure should I use? The OP asked for monthly figures, including finance unless purchased, I just answered that as best I could. Maybe I should have put the outgoings then depreciation somewhere between £80 - £1000 a month depending on when I have enough of it. In reality I didn't pay what I should have anyway which would skew the figures even more so it's a bit of a how long is a piece of string question really.

Edited by Pizzaeatingking on Thursday 28th February 17:34

I'm the op and if you read the thread you'd realise that we figured we needed either a monthly or depreciation to make it work. Thats why people were posting depreciation so it was all kinda fair.