[pjs]

Me

2 cars at approx £500/month each ( depreciation/finance call it what you may) = £12k
15000 miles at 30p/mile (335i) and 25000 miles at 18p/mile ( 250cdi) (Fuel) =£9k
Insurance for both £1200 Tax £600 Cleaning £200
Maintenance & Tyres approx £3k/year

Erm, thats about £26k

[Hotcoupe]

Dave,I'm no mathematician,but as Davy pointed out ,your fuel costs are a long way out,in your favour too.

Do you really expect to spend £400.00pa on servicing?
An oil change is only every 18k approx, and your figures are showing a likely mileage of 9K.
OK,you have other things to take into consideration,but I don't think your estimated costs are going to be as high as your predicting.

Your insurance is a killer,that should come down over the yrs though, hopefully.

Personally speaking, and if I were in your shoes,I'd be ploughing my money into a property.
Now is the time to buy,it's arguable if property prices will drop any further,but once the economy improves,prices will only ever go one way ^

I know I'm a dinosaur,and apologies if it appears I'm preaching

[Reggie-g75]

Life's too short, enjoy the car!!!

I spend about £10k on the two cars, excluding petrol and servicing... But I like cars. I could spend f#ck all and drive a piece of Korean shit and be miserable.

I budget about £3k all in for a weeks holiday (2 plus small child) out of school holidays.

However if I were saving for a house it would be totally different, given you need c.20% deposit these days.....

[s0nu]

I'm in the U.S... I spend abt 16% on my car, and thats because my insurance is insane. I cant imagine spending 30% or more on a car... Thats just rediculous. My problem is the50%+ that my girlfriend rapes from me. Women....

[dopper99]

You should enjoy yourself a bit while living at home, I dont blame you. I did that kind of thing many, many years ago when living at home and didnt regret it. I remember buying an Astra GTE 16V for about £6500 with insurance £1200. Thing is, I was only on about £12K a year at the time. But that was a long, long time ago.

The reason why you should do it now is once you do get property I doubt you'll be able to afford the kind of car you have now - not for a long time. So enjoy it while it lasts.

[fulcrum]

I am not liking this thread!

[mowflow]

Elaborate.

[Palmnuts]

Originally Posted by rogerxp

Cant wait for Andrews contribution to this thread

And so Roger, you'll be surprised to hear that IMO, 25% of total GROSS income is too much....particularly if you've got a mortgage, bills, family etc.

However, 25% of net take home probably isn't excessive although it may be a little outside of the 'comfortable' zone. The main thing is what other outgoings you're committed to...if you have no mortgage, few bills, no debt etc, then to spend 25% of your net income on something that is your passion is hardly a crime that you should get shot for. And if you can do that and have your holidays, and live the lifestyle that you want AND save £1k/month then whats the problem?

Also, looking at your figures and as other have commented on, you're being very prudent with your forecasted spend and I reckon you could knock a couple of k's off that annual sum.

We all know I'm not shy of spending a few quid on a car so heres how I look at it....if I have to think about it or if it gets in the way of me living the lifestyle I want then it's too much. If not....game on

One more thing....a 335d costing £523/month? Really? You surely wouldn't buy a new one at this stage of the e92's(?) life and as they're plentiful at around the £20-25k mark you should be at £450 tops (assuming a PCP is the preferred form of purchase)?

[BGM]

mm.. just did some rough and ready calcs for myself, seem to come out ~23%

i'm 27 have a fairly large-ish mortgage, but no kids or wife so i think it balances out really

plus, i love the car so i don't care.. weeeeeeeeee

[gangzoom]

About 5 years ago, when I was single I was spending around 35% of my GROSS income on a 350Z (car loan/mods/insurance), 30% on a massive mortgage (bought a house pretty much just as the market collapsed ), and the rest went on bills...needless to say I didn't go on any holidays/meals out and had no savings, it did get to a point I seriously thought about getting rid of the car...ended up doing lots of extra shifts at work to pay the car off quicker, and made me determined to never buy a car I couldn't afford again using finance

The whole experience made me much better at managing my money, and currently I reckon I've spent about 10% of my GROSS income on my car in the last 12 months (including all servicing/insurance/mods)....but more importantly me and the wife have managed to overpay our mortgage on a regular basis, and just got our loan-to-value number to 47%..whilst managing to save enough to hit out individual cash ISA limits

Got more important things in life to think about apart from my car now days, probably going to have a family soon...my aim now is to save enough so that the equality in the house plus our saving will be enough to get our deposit for our next house to 40% which will get us the best mortgage deals....I'm defiantly getting old ( I do have a F10 M5 fund though...)

[fulcrum]

Originally Posted by mowflow

Elaborate.

Making me realise with cold figures just how much I am spending on running my car. as a percentage of net income its ok but hell it is still a heck of a lot of money.

I know it costs me a fortune but i think I rather not knew the precise figure.

[rogerxp]

Dave, if you can afford it, and enjoy it, then there's no worries.

You've got plenty of time to do 'grown-up' things so live whilst you can mate. Before you know it, you'll blink, then your entire salary will be absorbed by a mortgage, bills, family, etc. My Zed is the only trace of my past young/foolish side and I fecking love it .

I've recently seriously trimmed my outgoings (utilities, sky, phone/broadband, insurances, cars, etc) since the arrival of little Jacob so cars are probably more like 15% of gross earnings these days - that' s a huge guess though.

[335 oClock]

Originally Posted by chris325

you forgot about cleaning it - i bet some on here spend as much on wax etc as they do on tax

you got that right.

[335 oClock]

including all of my mods, my gas, and insurance.. about 22%; and I am still strongly consitering selling it and getting something that cost about 10% so I could save up for a home :P

[335 oClock]

Originally Posted by s0nu

I'm in the U.S... I spend abt 16% on my car, and thats because my insurance is insane. I cant imagine spending 30% or more on a car... Thats just rediculous. My problem is the50%+ that my girlfriend rapes from me. Women....

lmao, get rid of the girl add 25% into car =
1) BAD ASS RIDE!
2) SAVE 25%!
3) MORE GIRLS BECAUSE OF 1) AND 2)

[chris_s1]

If you can afford it, enjoy it. Life's too short to not have the things in your life that make you happy.

I spend 30% of my money on cars, 30% on women, 30% on gambling.........and I waste the other 10%

[MEGA]

Originally Posted by Palmnuts

One more thing....a 335d costing £523/month? Really? You surely wouldn't buy a new one at this stage of the e92's(?) life and as they're plentiful at around the £20-25k mark you should be at £450 tops (assuming a PCP is the preferred form of purchase)?

Off topic but..

Back in January I paid 27k for mine, an LCI (July '10) with 19k of the clock - pretty much every option ticked, brand new 313s fitted and a host of other sweeteners. It was around 1k above guide trade price so I was happy enough.

But I'm on HP not PCP. I have been stung by PCP before and will never do so again.

[MEGA]

Re: page 1 end.. The definition of a "decent holiday" differs. I did a week in a 5 star hotel in Rome with Naomi for 1400 the trip/hotel and about a 1000 spend when we were out there. Saw all the sites lived like kings. Loved it.

If I want to lay down and do nothing all day I can just book the time off and stay at home. I've never been one for the beach holidays etc.. so I don't see the need to fly to other side of the world to be too hot, too sandy, etc etc.

It's probably because I'm ginger. Scared of the sun. Blah blah blah.

But 4k for two decent holidays should be easy.


couple of other points.. Not that it matters but Salary is higher than you think Kerr (Although not hugely so... I get about 5-6k in bonuses per year that are basically guarunteed which I'll admit not salary but I can include in these numbers for now) and good for my age/circumstances but clearly I will keep pushing on.


And Ian: I like to be negative with fuel and service costs rather than overspend. Appreciate you telling me actually it's not as bad as I think it is: But it's far better to have budgeted and have spare money than the alternative

[MEGA]

Anyway I somewhat feel this topic has a danger of becoming all about me which is not what I intended

But 28% is alot lower than some people, and alot higher than others. Guess I'm on the higher side of average compared to others whom have posted so far but not perillously so .. ?

[xenon]

If you're still saving then it's not perilous at all, just perhaps more extravagant than others would feel comfortable with (it being dead money, so to speak) but that's up to you. However, if you can afford to save as you do whilst at the same time paying for HP payments then there must have been a more effective way to finance the car in the first place?

[creepy coupe]

Running the two cars, as near as dam it £1300 per month

[rabble]

Originally Posted by Kerr

I posted a thread a while ago that the BBC put out about families living a good lifestyle on a combined £40k a year.

I asked the question how they manage as I couldn't work out how £40k could cover a big mortgage, 2 cars, children, social activities and nice holidays.

Maybe some people are just a lot better with cash than me but I don't have the lifestyle of people earning far less than me.

mainly to do with lifestyle i think. alot of people i work with are on average £20k - £25k combined salary and manage kids, bills, car etc...

i think more money you have the more expensive your lifestyle is (bigger house, expensive cars, higher bills etc...)