I recorded total spend on cars over 2013

racing_blue

This is probably the most boring post you will read this week... you may want to stop reading now and go straight to the next thread.

But last year I kept a record of every penny our family spent, just to see. Here is the itemised spend for cars:

1. Older work car, executive saloon, petrol, value £650.
Miles driven: 5850 approx
Petrol: £1,706
MOT, Servicing and repairs: £508
Vehicle Excise Duty: £280
Depreciation: £240 (estimate)
3rd Party Insurance: £134
Total: £2,816

2. Newer family MPV, diesel, value £4,600
Miles driven: 6050 approx
Depreciation: £1440 (estimate)
Diesel: £1,079
Servicing and repairs: £557
Comprehenive insurance: £183
Vehicle Excise Duty: £154
Total: £3,413

No finance – both cars owned outright.

Work car: 75% business use allows £2,112 to be offset against tax. Marginal tax rate is 40%, tax bill is reduced by £845, so the effective cost was £1,971

Running the 2 cars cost us £5,384 this year- a little bit less than we spent on groceries (£5,439) but more than we spent on going on holiday or doing fun stuff (£5,058)

I'm interested how this compares to other people spends & really just for any comments, if anyone has actually read this far without falling asleep or having a thrombosis, well done and a happy new year!

drdog_2

Given my lack of record keeping (and therefor my non-MSE expert spending profile/increasing overdraft) I am very impressed with your level of detail.

Or should I say, I'm very impressed with you rigour

Or should I day, I'm concereed by your OCD ...

... but if I had half the rigour you have I'd be getting interest from the bank rather than paying it to them - I need to develope OCD to help my bank balance in a positive way!

NeededToChooseAUsername

racing_blue wrote: »

This is probably the most boring post you will read this week... you may want to stop reading now and go straight to the next thread.

But last year I kept a record of every penny our family spent, just to see. Here is the itemised spend for cars:

1. Older work car, executive saloon, petrol, value £650.
Miles driven: 5850 approx
Petrol: £1,706
MOT, Servicing and repairs: £508
Vehicle Excise Duty: £280
Depreciation: £240 (estimate)
3rd Party Insurance: £134
Total: £2,816

2. Newer family MPV, diesel, value £4,600
Miles driven: 6050 approx
Depreciation: £1440 (estimate)
Diesel: £1,079
Servicing and repairs: £557
Comprehenive insurance: £183
Vehicle Excise Duty: £154
Total: £3,413

No finance – both cars owned outright.

Work car: 75% business use allows £2,112 to be offset against tax. Marginal tax rate is 40%, tax bill is reduced by £845, so the effective cost was £1,971

Running the 2 cars cost us £5,384 this year- a little bit less than we spent on groceries (£5,439) but more than we spent on going on holiday or doing fun stuff (£5,058)

I'm interested how this compares to other people spends & really just for any comments, if anyone has actually read this far without falling asleep or having a thrombosis, well done and a happy new year!

Wow! What MPG is the saloon getting, i'm guessing around 20mpg?

That's an insane amount for fuel, I probably spent around £850 for roughly the same mileage.

Herzlos

NeededToChooseAUsername wrote: »

Wow! What MPG is the saloon getting, i'm guessing around 20mpg?

That's an insane amount for fuel, I probably spent around £850 for roughly the same mileage.

It's more than made up with with the almost complete lack of depreciation though.

racing_blue

NeededToChooseAUsername wrote: »

Wow! What MPG is the saloon getting, i'm guessing around 20mpg?

That's an insane amount for fuel, I probably spent around £850 for roughly the same mileage.

Yeah, you are right, about 23mpg. I mainly drive on B roads, lanes and farm tracks, lots of small journeys. When I bought it petrol was about 90p per litre, the dealer told me I'd get 35mpg, and I believed him!

It has done about 98% of its depreciating though, like Herzlos says, and as you can see overall I reckon costs less to run than our diesel MPV which does 45mpg+

It has a few expensive advisories on MOT though, so I'm thinking of scrapping it this year in favour of a 4WD (cf other thread) possibly an old Fiat Panda 4WD

The OCD thing... I guess. The main thing that shocked me was to find that last year my family spent more propelling two metal boxes than on holidays, eating out, hobbies and entertainment combined. Going to put that right this year.

27col

Yawn! Yawn!

scaredofdebt

I used to keep records but lost the data when my phone died!

My old Mondeo cost me 18p per mile all told and I was doing around 30k a year, so it was costing me around £4,800 annually.

Depreciation was low as the car only cost £3k and I ran it for 3.5 years totalling over 100k miles, it averaged 53 MPG during that time, repairs, MOTs etc came to around £2k in 3 years.

Just got a new car so will keep track of this one, I'm also building a web site for people who are interested in keeping track of these expenses.

WTFH

We are a two car family, but do well over twice the mileage of the OP.

A few months ago we changed my wife's car based on a similar type of calculation. Old car (7 year old) was doing 24-25mpg, costing £295 (I think) in VED, about £450 a year on insurance and was about to need another MOT and a cambelt change.
It worked out cheaper for us to change it to a car that does about 50mpg, £165 VED, £300 insurance, was 1 year old and had 2 years free servicing/free first MOT, provided we keep the car for about 6 years, we should be saving £1000 a year. (I did one calculation where I got the figure up to £150 per month saving, but in reality we're more likely to be around £100)

Both cars are roughly the same size, although the new car has a more powerful engine (170bhp v 147bhp)

im-lost

I was going to post a witty reply earlier..... But I fell asleep half way through reading . sorry

bigadaj

im-lost wrote: »

I was going to post a witty reply earlier..... But I fell asleep half way through reading . sorry

I'm sure that's a great loss to us all.