Car at 19 years old ? (financial info included)

kteara

I am 19 years old with about £5,000 saved in my ISA account (this is pretty much my life savings). I am going to university in september but I really would like to own a car. its not a necessity but I would thoroughly enjoy having one. My unis will be close to my house (1 hour and a half being the furthest one)

Now, a car would cost me £4-5 thousand pounds (this is the car of my choice which includes insurance and maintenance costs). Is it worth getting a car? the car I am looking at is a Audi A3 or Bmw 3 series which cost around 3-4 thousand second hand and insurance costs around 2500. If i decided to go for a cheaper car the insurance will still be around 1500.

so can anyone help me and maybe help my aim and joy of owning a car or deter me and put me onto a better path? Has anyone been in this situation of being a male, living in london, fed up and desperate to own a nice car?

thanks

bigfreddiel

have you factored in the cost of owning a car

road tax
MOT
Maintenance
Tyre
Exhaust
Battery
Petrol

Road side assistance(eg AA)

approx cost of that lot is approx £2,000

is that okay

see ya

fj

jimjames

If you are living in London is a car really worthwhile or even necessary. I can imagine living somewhere remote that it may be needed but in London I can't see a reason for needing one as a student.

You will have blown your entire savings on buying and running a car for under a year.

However cheap you buy the car the insurance will still be a huge price. As per the post above with all those costs as well as purchase and insurance you'll be looking at around £7000 for 1 year, then £2-3000 or so per year afterwards.

Think whether that is the best use of your savings and your grant. Insurance etc will be cheaper once you finish uni as you'll be older and also hopefully have a more steady income to cover costs. What happens if you have a huge bill on the car and cannot pay it as you need to buy food, pay rent. Car is then off the road for a long time. While those cars may be great fun to drive the potential for any recent car to have large bills especially for electronic items is very high.

kteara

thanks for the responses, personally Insurance is the only factor that really frustrates me because the cost is simply ridiculous and there isn't anything I can do to make it cheaper. I am not sure wether insurance will be that much cheaper once I finish uni (21-22) because I won't have any NCB.

Any advice on what I can do with my savings? I know its not much

TheSandman

From personal experience I would either buy a banger or don't buy one at all.

Just two months before Uni in 2008 I spent £7K on a pre reg motorbike, it was great fun and it looked flash in the uni car park but to be honest between the 7k and £250 p/month insurance I could have gone on 3 month holidays every summer. Only chance you'll get of spending 3 months in Thailand at 21!!

The reson I recommend the banger is I had use of my parents car and having your own wheels is epic, carrying crates and groceries back from Tesco - awful. £4K is a waste though because at uni it's totally acceptable probably even cool to be broke, it's the only chance you'll get to rag around in a 90's hatchback still running on carbs.

Anyway I think best advice would be to hold off just now, it seems like ages away but go to uni and make the decision as to whether you need it or not after a couple months.

sterlingstash

Good on you for at least facing this dilemma with some money saved up rather than going down the credit option. Unless someone has just given you that cash, you know that saving £5k is a hell of a lot harder than burning through it.

Still, it is still worth putting it in perspective, as the lure of a shiny car seems to override peoples common sense gene.

I reckon £3,000 is a pretty good ballpark for annual cost of running a car (the above plus depreciation), but probably more like £4,500 for you because of the crazy insurance. That is over £12 a day, including the days you don't use it.

That equates to 900 local £5 taxi trips so more than 2 trips a day. At 19 you should be able to rent a car no problem, so for £50 a day, or a bit more when you've got someone to impress, you could still be looking at nearly 100 days hire - every weekend if needs be, for some brand new wheels.

It depends how much use you reckon you'd get out of it, but if it is just to get you to uni and back, then you may find you can think of better things to do with the money when you get there. And you may regret having a rust bucket instead of a house deposit a couple of years down the line.

kteara

truly appreciate the responses, Im still more depressed and angry than ever at the costs of owning a car due to insurance prices but I guess i'll have to wait till im 21-22 before buying one. the only problem I can think of now is that once I reach that age it will be even worse buying a car that time because it would set me back on my mortgage deposit right?

Masomnia

I recently got a Peugeot 206 as a first car, 1.1ltr, was less than £2,000, 9 years old, runs very well.

Having one is not absolutely necessary for me, but it makes my life a lot easier and as I travel round a lot it's worth having. I'd say for me just having one is great, and I really don't mind that it's a crappy Peugeot. I don't think I'd love a BMW 3 series any more.

J_i_m

Yeah... I'd drop the drop the prestige car aspirations for now, as for 5k it'd be a relatively old and high mileage... Yet if anything went wrong it'd cost an arm and a leg to put right.

If you're desperate to have a car, then there's really nothing wrong with spending £500 on an old vauxhall corsa or something similar to last you through uni.

Because honestly at your age, it's far more sensible keeping 5k back for a future house deposit rather than !!!!ing it down the drain.

Derivative

In London, a small motorcycle would be a much better bet.

The days when it's horrific weather, get a taxi or the train. Otherwise you're in the money.

My 500cc motorcycle can hold its' own on the motorway, carry pillion, costs £200 a year for insurance (age 21).

hcb42

Spending that kind of money on a car when you have uni to pay for seems foolhardy. Wait, or get an older cheaper car