Pay Balloon or another PCP?

hufc2002

hi all

So my balloon payment is due 05/08 and I can't decide what to do. Balloon is £11200. Car is a 2015 BMW 318d M Sport which I have had from new and has covered 44k miles. I am relatively happy with the car; had no issues with it and just had 2 rear tyres fitted at a cost of £350. I'm about to book it in for its MOT too.

I can get an £11k loan over 3 years for about £320 a month.

Do I pay the balloon or trade it in for a 'new' car. If a new car I would be looking at keeping the payments at a max of £320 or possibly less. I like the look of the Civic 1.5 Sport but dubious about MPG as I'm currently getting 58mpg and cover about 11k miles per year.

Any advice?

AdrianC

Simple question... Do you WANT to keep the BMW?

Looking on Autotrader, it may be worth buying simply to resell, but probably not worth the ballache if you'd need to finance the balloon.

https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-search?sort=price-asc&onesearchad=Used&make=BMW&model=3%20SERIES&year-from=2015&year-to=2015&maximum-mileage=50000&body-type=Saloon&fuel-type=Diesel&maximum-badge-engine-size=2.0&exclude-writeoff-categories=on&keywords

neilmcl

hufc2002 wrote: »

hi all

So my balloon payment is due 05/08 and I can't decide what to do. Balloon is £11200. Car is a 2015 BMW 318d M Sport which I have had from new and has covered 44k miles. I am relatively happy with the car; had no issues with it and just had 2 rear tyres fitted at a cost of £350. I'm about to book it in for its MOT too.

I can get an £11k loan over 3 years for about £320 a month.

Do I pay the balloon or trade it in for a 'new' car. If a new car I would be looking at keeping the payments at a max of £320 or possibly less. I like the look of the Civic 1.5 Sport but dubious about MPG as I'm currently getting 58mpg and cover about 11k miles per year.

Any advice?

You'll only be able to "trade it in" if there's any equity left in it, which will be unlikely, therefore to start a new PCP you'll need to stump up with the funds for a deposit. If you like the car and the balloon is around the car's value then it'll be cheaper the find the the funds and keep the car.

loskie

you forgot the other option. To be able to hand the car back and walk away. Dependant on the "real" trade value you may be better doing this. To get a realistic auction value input your details into WBAC.

ratrace

op, you have taken the major hit already buy buying new, if it was me i would keep the car (love bmw's) and drive it for many more years so overall a time the depreciation comes down



dont make the same mistake again buy getting in to another pcp/lease and find yourself in the same position in a few years, you like the car which is a bonus thats my mse point of view

ToxicWomble

Agree 100% with the above.

You will have already taken and paid for a bit chunk of depreciation - seems silly to rinse and repeat.

If you still like the car and have looked after it - keep it.

Will be in a similar position next year with mine and I will be keeping it assuming the balloon payment reflects its value as a second hand motor

Goudy

We've had a fair few PCP deals and we have never just handed one back at the end.

The one I did end up keeping, I rang the finance company and stated I will be paying the balloon with a loan at X%. (a genuine loan quote might be needed)
If they can beat it, they can have our custom for the loan on the balloon, otherwise they can kiss goodbye to our custom.
They did, by quite a way, it was almost interest free as at the time used car prices were taking a hammering (like now).

The others we've traded back in, but on the provision they work the deal to include a decent contribution to the next deal (over what they normally offer), otherwise we'll go elsewhere or just pay the balloon and keep it.

You just need to stick to your guns and have a bit of time, don't leave it until the balloon is due.

We managed an extra £1500 over the GFV on the trade in on our last deal (on top of the £2500 contribution via Abarth Privilege for NHS slaves) but we had to slog around 4 dealers.
Was well happy with that until some dirty !!!!ers stole it!