Any ideas on getting a car on £600 budget per month?

curious_1

I earn about £1600 a month. After all expenses, I have just £600 left, per month.
I need a car. Any idea how I can go about getting one on this budget?

I've looked into PCP - deposit aint a joke. Probably have to get a loan for that. Also looked into leasing a car (personally, don't like this option).

Any ideas please?

walwyn1978

Buy banger for £500. Run till it dies/becomes too expensive to repair. Save the money you would have spent on the payments in a separate account. When the banger dies, use the money you've saved to buy another one. Rinse and repeat until you've got enough saved in the car account to use as a deposit on a 'new' car if that's what your long term goal is.

seatbeltnoob

dont pcp, definately not on your earnings. god why does everyone want to drive a brand new car

curious_1

Thanks guys.

No, I don't want to buy a new car. I just would like a decent car and I'm happy to pay monthly for it.

At my age, I'm just hoping for something fairly nice.

I'm currently driving a banger (been doing so for a while now), I'm happy with it. But it isn't mine. It might be taken back sometime soon. This will be my first car too, got my license this year.

GunJack

walwyn1978 wrote: »

Buy banger for £500. Run till it dies/becomes too expensive to repair. Save the money you would have spent on the payments in a separate account. When the banger dies, use the money you've saved to buy another one. Rinse and repeat until you've got enough saved in the car account to use as a deposit on a 'new' car if that's what your long term goal is.

Ignoring the bit in red, this is your answer. It will give you good motoring for a fraction of the cost of PCP, nearly-new, etc.

curious_1

seatbeltnoob wrote: »

dont pcp, definately not on your earnings. god why does everyone want to drive a brand new car

By march/April next year, I'll be on at least £2,169 per month.
Is a PCP ok then?

tacpot12

Spending all your free cash on something as ordinary as a car seems daft to me, but then I saved all my money so I could retire early.

I drive a Skoda Octavia Elegance 130BHP diesel. It is fast, totally reliable, very comfortable and does 50mpg. It would sell on eBay for less than £1000.

I'd recommend buying a car, whether you buy older car off eBay or a newer car using a personal loan.

curious_1

GunJack wrote: »

Ignoring the bit in red, this is your answer. It will give you good motoring for a fraction of the cost of PCP, nearly-new, etc.

Money I would have spent on monthly payments = £180. That will take a while to get something tangible. But still worth a shot.

Thanks

walwyn1978

curious_1 wrote: »

Money I would have spent on monthly payments = £180. That will take a while to get something tangible. But still worth a shot.

Thanks

If you get lucky and your £500 banger does six months of motoring at a saving of £180 per month, that's 1080 saved, plus the £100 from your original £600. (I know I've not factored petrol tax etc but still). Buy another £500 banger, you're still in the black £680, if you get another 6 months out of that you're still 1.5k in hand for the next one, and so on. It will add up quite wuickly.

Even if you're a bit less lucky and the banger only lasts 3 months, you're still where you were in terms of what you'd planned to spend on monthly payments in the car. View every month after 3 months you get out of one as money saved up.

Good luck!

neilmcl

curious_1 wrote: »

I earn about £1600 a month. After all expenses, I have just £600 left, per month.
I need a car. Any idea how I can go about getting one on this budget?

I've looked into PCP - deposit aint a joke. Probably have to get a loan for that. Also looked into leasing a car (personally, don't like this option).

Any ideas please?

Not being funny but if you take home £1600 per month I don't think committing £600 of that over 3 or 4 years for a car is a very wise decision, maybe you should, at the very least, halve that figure.

uknick

curious_1 wrote: »

By march/April next year, I'll be on at least £2,169 per month.
Is a PCP ok then?

What do you intend to do at the end of the PCP period; pay balloon payment, trade car in for new one or walk away?