Do I finance a car at University?

Herzlos

I'd strongly recommend against it. 20 hours a weekend (2x 10 hour shifts?) at £10/hour is only £200/week so £800/month. You'd need to pay the finance (at a high rate due to history age and occupation), insurance (at a high rate due to history age and occupation), maintenance, parking, etc.

What are you planning on using the car for? Getting to work? Going home? Shopping?

When I was a student, I had a £2k car which lasted me for about 5 years. Take someone with you that knows cars and buy something for a lot less. Part of the journey of studenthood is driving a banger, it means it's not as big a deal when one of your friends throws up in the back of it

MinuteNoodles

jordgoldsmith said:

I’m an 18 year old starting university in September. I will be working around 20 hours on a weekend so I would be able to afford finance on a car. I bought my first car in November 2019 and broke down on me after 2 days, I’ve looked at buying cars from dealerships from but the lowest I can seem to find is around £7000. I pay for it all myself and will not receive any financial help. From Mid-June I will be working over 50 hours a week until September 1st, which means it goes down to about 18 hours a week. Is it better for me to finance a car or buy one?

No, just no. You're CURRENTLY PLANNING on doing 20hrs a weekend but you may decide to change your mind once the uni work starts coming in. If you're doing any BEng degree then that is very likely to happen especially with Mech. Eng. where your contact time with the university can be over 40hrs a week due to the machining workshop sessions etc and you'll still have coursework to do outside of that.

The problem when you take out finance is you tie yourself into 3/4/5 years of payments. The finance companies won't give a toss you have to spend any spare time you have working to pay for it because of your degree course workload, they'll expect paying.

Buy outright then at least you know that if it turns out you can't manage 20hrs a week you're not going to be forced into having to work them to service debt.

kmb500

Do you mean a used £7k car, vs a new car on finance? Or do you mean buy a used £7k car on finance? 

Do not buy a £7000 car on finance you'll pay extortionate amounts of interest plus you'll be kicking yourself when it goes wrong and you're still stuck in 5 years finance agreement on an old car.

You might think you will do 20 hours of work a week, but your circumstances can change, and you may at some point be not working, but still have to pay the monthly payments. I would think in particular a part-time student job is not espeicially secure.

Buy a cheap (like £1-2k) car. You said the last used car you bought  broke down 2 days later. How much did you spend and what car was it?

Its worth saying, that just because you have to fix a car once you've bought it, does't mean it will have high running costs. If you buy a car for £500, and it turns out as soon as you've bought it that it needs a £500 fix - well that doesn't mean you will be spending that kind of money all the time! Once it's fixed, it could quite well run for a couple of years without any major issues. 

The truth is that any used car out of warranty (i.e. a car more than 3 years old) has the potential to invade your wallet with repair bills. You simply don't know what you are buying and any used car purchase is something of a gamble. I really would not do a used car sale on finance.

If you dont know what you are looking at with used cars - do you have any mates who are car enthusiasts? They are usually a good place to go for, for advice on used cars. 

fred246

I blame the parents. When our children were teenagers we taught them how to use different forms of transport. Walking or cycling to their friends and school, getting the bus into town, using trains to go anywhere in the country, occasionally getting taxis. When they were 17 they were saying "what is the point of driving? we can get anywhere we want to go." They had to be persuaded to learn to drive. When they went to university I asked them if they needed a car. Nowhere to park. Parking extortionately expensive. Traffic horrendous. Can't have a drink. For young people cars are really expensive and often not a good form of transport. Ours use a combination of public transport and Uber. The only students we know that have cars have parents who also won't access other forms of transport. It's either use a car or stay at home. These people also have problems at the other end of life. When they are old and have health issues and they lose their licence it's like you've killed them. "I can't leave the house. My life has ended". No just phone a taxi. Await all the "I live in the country. I can't go anywhere without a car" comments.

AdrianC

fred246 said:

Await all the "I live in the country. I can't go anywhere without a car" comments.

Well, at least you recognise that your guff is incomplete to the point of being nonsense, at best.

You really can't cope with anything outside of your own very narrow sphere of experience, can you?

Herzlos

It seems that far fewer teenagers drive now than even when I was a teenager, which was probably fewer than in the 60's and 70's.

Not everyone can make do without, we don't know the OP's situation here.

Andy_L

AdrianC said:

...or you could use your earnings to reduce the debt at the end of your course...

Wild thought, I know.

BTW, there are a LOT of perfectly good cars for sale in the UK for <£7k.

ISTR that Martins advice is that it's only financially worth doing that if you're in a particular sweet-spot of earnings. 

Mercdriver

Andy_L said:

AdrianC said:

...or you could use your earnings to reduce the debt at the end of your course...

Wild thought, I know.

BTW, there are a LOT of perfectly good cars for sale in the UK for <£7k.

ISTR that Martins advice is that it's only financially worth doing that if you're in a particular sweet-spot of earnings. 

There are other debts than the student loan.  Overdraft etc

noclaf

I wouldn't want to be taking on unecessary debt in uni. If you have wealthy family members who can provide you with a financial safety net it's not such an issue but why anyone would want to take on that much debt in uni (esp for a car of all things) is beyond me.
My last two cars were £3500 and £5000 respectively...the £5k one is still going strong 10 years later. You do not need to spend £7k or anything close to that. I would be looking firmly in the shed/banger territory though appreciate you need some level of reliability and want to avoid big bills.
Simple petrol Jap or even Ford Fiesta/Focus from the early 2000's is what I would suggest unless you will do the miles do justify a diesel.

Mercdriver

Even if a car is necessary, I wouldn't get into debt to the extent that you need to work to pay it off to any real extent.  You would be limiting your ability to fully avail yourself of the social side of being a student.  You have plenty of time to weigh yourself down with debt.  Do it only when you absolutely have to, not when you should be enjoying the freedom and joy of student life.