New car? it's a lot of money....

JGB1955

We tend to buy our cars as 'nearly new' and then run them for 8 - 10 years or (in my husband's case), until they're over 250,000 miles on the clock.  I bought my last car with 5 miles on the clock.  It was pre-registered and I got it for about 20% less than the 'cheapest' book price.  Previous cars have been ex-hire cars from the Channel Islands (low mileage - not a lot of places to go on the CI).  I would do the same again..... but it's a 65 plate, so probably not for another 5 years....

jarv81178

9.9% finance from the actual dealer on PCP so £4k deposit and a low monthly cost of £343 and then can buy it after 48 months for another £8.4k and I think you get the log book up front so you own the car from the start

Bank loan is 3.9% apr with monthly payments of £421 and no deposits or large payment at the end?!

it makes sense to go for bank loan but see how job is for 3 months I think 

DrEskimo

jarv81178 said:

9.9% finance from the actual dealer on PCP so £4k deposit and a low monthly cost of £343 and then can buy it after 48 months for another £8.4k and I think you get the log book up front so you own the car from the start

Bank loan is 3.9% apr with monthly payments of £421 and no deposits or large payment at the end?!

it makes sense to go for bank loan but see how job is for 3 months I think 

The bank loan is a representative rate, so bear in mind the actual rate you are offered may be much higher.

You also need to look at the actual interest payable. The APR between a loan and PCP may be similar, but a PCP will always charge more in interest since there is a large final payment, so the balance decreases slower (hence the lower monthly payment).

redux

I wish people would factor in the depreciation as well, rather than just notice that the headline interest rate may be cheap.

And if you won't buy what you call a crappy car now for £5000, why do you want to buy that one for £8000 in 4 or 5 years time? Or can we guess it will then be time to part exchange upgrade again and commit to losing another £20000?

macman

^What he said. For a typical car, 10k miles pa, the monthly depreciation will be £216pm, so worth about £12,050 after 5 years.

EssexHebridean

Do you need a car?

Do you need a car right now?

Does it need to be brand new - what is the advantage of new over three years old so the major depreciation hit gets taken by someone else? 

If you were to defer buying something for a year, you would potentially have a savings pot of somewhere close to 10k. That would buy you a three year old car outright, nothing owed, no finance. If you decided at that stage you still wanted to go new, and hybrid, then you could borrow to add to that, but borrowing a far lower amount - 25k is a massive amount to get a bank loan for, to be honest. 

aoleks

maybe not the best time to do it, but you can negotiate a lot of money off the list price. I easily got 30% and free servicing off the price of a brand new car, bringing the monthly payment of a premium, large saloon down to that of a travel card. transport will cost something regardless and there's a "cost" to not having a car.