Budgeting for a used car or big repair bill?

Shoxt3r

Hi all,

We currently have a 2013 Ford Focus with about 46,000 miles on the clock and it's due to have a big service this year which includes cambelt and water pump. I've been getting quotes from a number of local garages and the bills are coming out at around £400-550.00 depending if I have just the cambelt and/or the water pump replaced (I've always known for it to be a good idea to get the water pump done at the same time due to location and general wear and tear). One garage which I've frequently used and trusted for a number of cars is offering a full service along with the cambelt/water pump etc. replacement for £725.00.

For a long while now I've been contemplating about upgrading to a newer car with more space - with a little one we're struggling for space, especially when it comes to long car journeys (not that we're planning to do those anytime soon due to Covid!). We'd ideally upgrade to an estate car which would give us ample room for our on-the-large-side pushchair along with plenty of space for the future UK holiday every now and again (the Focus just isn't big enough to take the 3 of us with our luggage comfortably as we found out on a trip to the South West at Christmas 2019).

There's not only the fact that a large service is due but also that the car is 8 years old and spending £725.00 on a car that we're not entirely happy with now just doesn't seem worth it. However, the difficulty is that a majority of cars I've come across (due to a slump in car sales generally but also due to an abundance of SUVs or small hatchbacks in the local area which just wouldn't be suitable) are in the £10-11,000 bracket for the spec I'd like (i.e. big boot, good age, low-ish mileage) but still have a mileage of about 35-40,000 miles. However, given that most cars I've been looking at are from 2016/2017, that would still give us a few years before the cambelt is due on that car, with the added benefit of it being a car we're more likely to want to keep for longer.

As I said, a replacement car would be £10-11,000 which could be financed using a loan (we used a loan to pay for the majority of the Focus) plus the part-exchange. Based on a quote I got when I was looking into cars last Summer, the Focus is worth about £3,500-4,000. The part-exchange quote I received back in August was between £3,750 and £4,750 when the car had tipped over to 40,000 miles. Therefore, it means we have a deficit of £7,500 as a worse-case scenario; at least as a ballpark figure anyway.

Our circumstances have changed since we bought the Focus (for one thing we have a child now!) - we are down to 1 income, but since Covid hit I'm no longer paying the huge train commute costs (£5,500 a year) , and I get a £6 tax rebate each month. We previously took out the loan when we were both earning and paid it off after 4 years last Summer - we've been down to 1 income for about 2 years now and that isn't likely to change soon. However, taking out another loan does make me nervous if things were to go back to the way they were on 1 income, with a train ticket to pay for on a monthly basis (which has undoubtedly increased in price due to inflation/price hike) along with all of our other out-goings. There are no firm plans either way for my employer to allow working from home permanently as yet so it's all very uncertain - but as I say I'm struggling to find an answer to my car dilemma.

Something which I'm fully aware needs to change is the way that we do our accountancy and budgeting - we are pretty money-conscious but don't have firm monthly budgets and typically only look into outgoings vs income on a monthly basis after the previous month's bills have been paid. Obviously if we have looming large payments coming up I ideally want us to look forward and get some firm predictions rather than winging it and just entering the past numbers into a spreadsheet which is what we do at the moment.

Apologies that this thread has floated off a bit, but I'm basically struggling to work out what the best outcome would be, along with how to go about budgeting for either scenario given that things could change so drastically.

Thanks in advance for any help!

Flight3287462

Your cheapest and best option is keep your current car.  It sounds as if you are fairly strapped for cash and this trying times it is total madness to take out a loan for another car.  You say the focus is a bit small, no its is just fine, you are tryting to use that as justification to buy a new car.

Get it serviced and run it for another 5-6 years, in the mean time put a couple of hundred pounds away to cover future bills and build up a fund for the future.

williamgriffin

Five years old and forty thousand miles is getting into new cam belt territory so where's your saving? 

Herzlos

If you really want a new car, then you may as well trade up before the belt change is due or it'll no doubt be factored into the price.
If you're struggling for money, then I'd try and make do with the Focus for a bit longer. A roof box is an awful lot cheaper than a bigger car!

theoretica

Do you fold part of the rear seat down?  You are considering a very large outlay for the number of hours you would be in it with all your luggage.

forgotmyname

£725 is excessive and a newer car will depreciate more than that in a year anyway and will need a cambelt one day also.

£400 is more like it and not bad to do that every 5 to 10 years.

Shoxt3r

Hunyani_Flight_825 said:

Your cheapest and best option is keep your current car.  It sounds as if you are fairly strapped for cash and this trying times it is total madness to take out a loan for another car.  You say the focus is a bit small, no its is just fine, you are tryting to use that as justification to buy a new car.

Get it serviced and run it for another 5-6 years, in the mean time put a couple of hundred pounds away to cover future bills and build up a fund for the future.

I think my main concern is losing too much money on the Focus. For example we part-exchanged a Peugeot 307 to buy this car and it only put £250 towards the new one (the 307 was 15 years old by that point and we were quoted £500 for a new A/C condenser which finally did it for me). I think I'm basically undecided because I don't want the commitment of a loan but I am also concerned about the Focus losing too much of it's value.
I also think part of me is trying to plan for the future when we can travel around a bit more. For example, just putting our pushchair in the boot pretty well fills it and means putting items/bags into the cabin area - I put a few things in the front passenger seat and got worried about it in case we were in an accident, hence thinking about getting a bigger car.
I guess part of me doesn't really understand how people travel around in smaller cars - everyone around here seems to have whacking great SUVs! haha.

williamgriffin said:

Five years old and forty thousand miles is getting into new cam belt territory so where's your saving? 

True, that was definitely something that crossed my mind but I can't seem to find anything newer in-budget...

Herzlos said:

If you really want a new car, then you may as well trade up before the belt change is due or it'll no doubt be factored into the price.
If you're struggling for money, then I'd try and make do with the Focus for a bit longer. A roof box is an awful lot cheaper than a bigger car!

Yeah that was my thought to be honest, trade-in before it loses more money as it gets closer to the "deadline". My guess is that with a new cambelt it won't add any more value, maybe just keep it on an even keel (i.e. it'll be worth £4,000 now for example, £3,500 as I get closer to the time and then £4,000 once the belt is done - with my complete lack of knowledge of how valuations work! haha)?

Good point about the roofbox - my only concern is where you can store the things haha (we have no garage, just a Keter box...or the loft!).

theoretica said:

Do you fold part of the rear seat down?  You are considering a very large outlay for the number of hours you would be in it with all your luggage.

I don't, no. My concern as I said to Hunyani_Flight_825 is that anything in the cabin area floats around in an accident so I try to keep luggage in the cabin to a minimum where possible. True - it would likely only be a couple of times a year (normally) when we'd go away.
There is also the factor that if we carry anything additional to the pushchair that we don't have much room for more passengers (again, not that likely especially at the moment).

forgotmyname said:

£725 is excessive and a newer car will depreciate more than that in a year anyway and will need a cambelt one day also.

£400 is more like it and not bad to do that every 5 to 10 years.

Good to know about the depreciation - I had a similar feeling but thought we'd be more inclined to hold onto a larger car given that we wouldn't need anything else. The problem I'm facing really is that the smaller quotes only seem to cover the cambelt replacement, not a service as well.
Here's what the £725 apparently gets me:

• New engine oil
• Oil filter
• Air filter
• Spark plugs
• Timing belt kit (including tensioners, rollers and belt)
• Water pump
• Fresh coolant
• All the checks and inspections usually carried out on a full service

Thank you everyone for your replies so far. On the budgeting side of things, can you recommend any tools/spreadsheet templates? At the moment we only have a basic spreadsheet that we input our income/outgoings into which gives us a +/- for the month - it would be nice to be able to drop in our upcoming bills where possible to give a bit of a prediction? For example years ago I heard about some Sage software tools which could plot what cashflow would be like in the future based on current and future payments.

GrumpyDil

Your other option is to keep the existing car and hire a larger one for any odd weeks that you go away. 
It's always difficult to decide what to do but part of you decision seems to be around getting rid of your car due to the costs of maintenance.
I'd suggest a better plan would be to keep the existing car and save what you were going to spend buying a new one so you can buy the new one, when you need it, for cash. 

mobileron

Get a skoda octavia massive boot or the superb model,very reliable vehicle see the reviews on Honest John or you tube.

Herzlos

Good point on the car hire, it's an option that almost everyone forgets.

Shoxt3r said:

Yeah that was my thought to be honest, trade-in before it loses more money as it gets closer to the "deadline". My guess is that with a new cambelt it won't add any more value, maybe just keep it on an even keel (i.e. it'll be worth £4,000 now for example, £3,500 as I get closer to the time and then £4,000 once the belt is done - with my complete lack of knowledge of how valuations work! haha)?

Pretty much. It's value will be based on all the servicing being done, and buyers will need to factor that bill in mind. It's just something a buyer will do to knock £500 off.

Shoxt3r said:

Good point about the roofbox - my only concern is where you can store the things haha (we have no garage, just a Keter box...or the loft!).

We don't do much mileage (or visit multi-story car parks) so just leave it on most of the time.
As with rental cars, there are places where you can rent a roof box for a couple of weeks when you need it. They are very seasonal so you can potentially get away with buying one in the spring and selling it again after your holiday.

Norman_Castle

How much longer will you need to take a pushchair? Can you get a smaller pushchair or put it on the roof?

https://kit.honestjohn.co.uk/top-tens/top-10-best-roof-bags/