Car vs allowance

ard123en

I've always taken the car but as I now have no debts at all as paid house off this year and the way we company cars are taken has got me thinking

I have 11 months left on current car so plenty of planning time

I'm a basic rate tax payer at the moment 360 is paid into my wages which I use to pay the lease on a car at 400 pm its quiet tax efficient classed as a benefit of 4k a year which means over the 4 year lease I've shelled out 19200 for a car I'll never own

There are no limitations on age if run your own started to save 500 pm after paying house off so will have at least 6k to buy own car with to get me started i have more to add to this if needed

My other thoughts are if redundancy were to hit after doing this a few year at least I'd still have the car

Can I have peoples thoughts please

rs65

ard123en wrote: »

My other thoughts are if redundancy were to hit after doing this a few year at least I'd still have the car

... which is depreciating.


If you didn't buy a car and carried on saving, you would have money to buy car if something like redundancy hits.

CKhalvashi

The other option is to take the allowance and buy a sub-£1000 car.

Work out your costings before you do this, however if you get a year from a £500 car with no major bills (perfectly possible), you could still be significantly up in real terms, assuming you get a mileage allowance too.

There's a bangernomics thread on here, with a number of people doing something like the above, and I believe the record is about 10 years from a £250 Astra.

silverwhistle

Many years ago I worked for a company where one of our overhead line distribution engineers (ISTR) used his mileage allowance to run a Lada. I believe he maintained it himself too, and I suspect when one of our various rounds of redundancies came round he was sitting quite pretty with all the money he had saved. If he was made redundant I suspect he went out and bought himself a posher car.. :-)

It depends a bit how you feel about having a newer car, but financial independence would be my choice. Even my older cars have always got me to and from the Alps for my annual skiing holidays, on the snow tyres I put on myself..

ard123en

Thank you I have no problem with having an older car at all just need to make sure its reliable

There again with sub £1000 car could in theory have two one for me the other for my wife and as back up

CKhalvashi

ard123en wrote: »

Thank you I have no problem with having an older car at all just need to make sure its reliable

There again with sub £1000 car could in theory have two one for me the other for my wife and as back up

Look at what taxis are in your area.

Skoda Octavia, Toyota Avensis and any Rover seems to be a good pick.

Old Fords are good, too. Not the most reliable cars in the world, but there are literally 1000s in breakers yards, so very easy to get replacement parts for. We had a £350 Focus ST (bought as OH's car was nearing the lease mileage limit and we still had 8 months to run), and after 30000 miles and 18 months, sold it for £1200 (it's had about £600 spent on it in this time, £400 of which was work I knew needed doing for the first MoT).

Pop onto Autotrader, select your postcode and within 10 miles for less than £1000. If it breaks, take that down to the scrappers and repeat.

Cheap lease car at £300 a month = month 4 being in profit (minus probably a little extra fuel due to the older engine).

Saving the £300 a month you would have spent leasing should see a nice pot of money building over time.

ard123en

This has really got me thinking had the day off today to spent it looking at various cars both online and found a fully loaded 3 series BMW with 66k on the clock and 12 month MOT for £1400. with road tax and insurance wound still be under £2k if I got a full year out of it would be still in profit

CKhalvashi

ard123en wrote: »

This has really got me thinking had the day off today to spent it looking at various cars both online and found a fully loaded 3 series BMW with 66k on the clock and 12 month MOT for £1400. with road tax and insurance wound still be under £2k if I got a full year out of it would be still in profit

Nice one!

Hopefully it'll last a lot longer than a year.

5 years = possibly £15k saved up after tax, if you save £300 a month, and whichever way you look at it, it's a lot of money!

Enjoy the new car.